DC-11 - Street-level Imagery

Street-level imagery consists of collections of photographs taken from the perspective of moving pedestrians or vehicles. These collections are often stitched together digitally and georeferenced to create interactive and immersive landscapes that are virtually navigable by users. Such landscapes, sometimes called 360-degree panoramas, or bubbles, are uploaded onto web platforms, and linked with geographical databases, which allows users to search and explore the imagery in various ways. IT companies such as Google have created street-level imagery platforms that rely primarily on paid drivers, although they have begun to rely on contributor submissions to complement and expand their coverage. Recently services such as Mapillary and OpenStreetCam have advanced a model that relies primarily on volunteer contributors, leveraging community interest from projects such as OpenStreetMap. While street-level imagery has become a widespread tool with multiple commercial and non-commercial applications, it is also entangled various legal and public opinion controversies, due to its capabilities for private data collection and surveillance.
PD-16 - Web GIS Programming
Web GIS programming involves creating, extending, utilizing, Web GIS or web mapping solutions to solve specific problems, build complete applications, or consume or produce data and geospatial processing services. With the expansion of the internet and availability of Web GIS or Web mapping options, web GIS programming is becoming a commonly required skill set in many organizations. Web GIS programming is a type of software development that provides a means of handling internet, browser-based software application development tasks which require unique solutions to web GIS or web mapping problems. In addition, a number of Web GIS software options offer application programming interfaces (APIs) that provide a means by which developers can leverage the published data and processing services of others to build and customize applications through standardized interfaces with external web GIS software, data, and services. Web GIS programming applies to mobile as well as desktop application development. A browser typically runs software applications by submitting Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) requests to a server hosting resources the application user wishes to access available through a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and the server replies by providing resources or performing functions requested by the user. This entry reviews the fundamentals of web GIS programming, accompanying the Web Mapping and other entries in the Programming and Development section, the Web GIS entry in the Computing Platforms section, and the User Interface and User Experience (UI/UX) Design entry in the Cartography and Visualization section (Sack, 2017; Quinn, 2018; Roth, 2017).