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The Island Eye - Technology Summary
Author: Sean Colson PCC
Email: sean.colson@pcconsultants.co.uk
Date: 31st December 2008
Project: Island Eye - Technology Summary
Brief:
In the fall of 2008 PCC was asked to examine a project concerning the mapping of “Island Eye”1 and positioning of specific area designates as overlays in order that they could be easily identified and displayed onto a suitable map of the Island and display various mapping orientated data that is wanted to be deployed.
As secondary facets, we were tasked to include facilities for commercial and residential sales and rental, as well as a tourism guide to promote the Island as a wonderful place to visit with the possibility of purchase were also included in the overall requirements.
Planning and Preparation:
PC Consultants have worked on several large mapping projects during the last twenty years including a specific task for the UK Ordnance Survey as well as a rather unique star mapping project for interstellar travel. Thus we felt confident we could examine all that was required and come up with the best method available within the six month development and delivery window.
Deployed Methodology:
After several weeks of research and prototyping we decided upon developing a simple user interface that in most cases would give the user a three or four click to answer. For the design and display methods we decided upon a Google Mapping API encompassing some integrated layering software with our own bespoke positioning algorithms.
A tremendous effort then ensued to create all that was needed to meet the vision and time frame for delivery. One of the major stumbling blocks was when we came to realise we would have a million + records to search every time we needed to work out a positing location when using a polygon reference such as “What Happened Here" ” our new “cross hair” search function. This would be perfectly ok if all we had was one or two users, the SQL would return a values in a few seconds, but if we had upward of say 100+ hitting us at once the server would struggle for a speedy answer and could well appear to stall, thus impatient users may well cancel or even worse still close the site.
So in order to speed up the requests we turned for assistance to PCC’s sister company “TriceUK” and have implemented their hardware accelerator package “Iceware”; this is capable of filtering 25 million search records a second which will be more than enough to meet the need. Please visit www.triceuk.com for more information on the hardware and its capabilities.
Software Packages used in the creation and implementation of Island Eye.
1. DB - MYSql
2. PHP Version 5
3. Java Script
4. Ajax
5. Flash
6. Bespoke – Icemetrics VHDL
7. MS Paint V7
8. Adobe PDF Generator
9. Adobe Photoshop CS3
10. Google Mapping API’s
11. Tele Atlas
12. GMapCreator from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London, UK
13. SAGA the System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses from Institute of Geography at the University of Hamburg, Germany
14. In-house bespoke programs to aid processing and data transfers between packages used.
Web Marketing and SEO:
MDpromo2 have been asked to develop a SEO strategy to raise the awareness of the plan through all of the internet search engines. They will be installing Google Analytics into the system to monitor and record site visitors and their habits while visiting and using the site.
Production Team
Mike, Sergey, Sean, Alex, Geo, Mat, Paul, Tonya, Chris, Kosi, Yordan, Alexb, Tim, Jon, Nicola, Peter, Tony
Technical Contact
Further information concerning the development and technical aspects of Island Eye can be obtained from sean.colson@pcconsultants.co.uk
1 Island Eye is a new long term project to develop and promote Island History and Tourism and Social endeavours.
2 The internet SEO specialists can be found at www.mdpromo.co.uk |
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