20081208

GIS, Online Mapping, and Google's Reverse Geocoding

Having recently undergone some training in GIS, online mapping, geospatial databases, and the tools available to create web based map and routing solutions, I researched some free alternatives to achieving embeddable maps online.

I was surprised to find a large community of open source map developers out there.

Google has also recently provided a nice addition to their mapping API, allowing reverse address searches (click for example) using a longitude and latitude, as can be seen on GPS devices, and online maps.

To Quote Google's Documentation:
The term geocoding generally refers to translating a human-readable address into a point on the map. The process of doing the converse, translating a point into a human-readable address, is known as reverse geocoding.

This is very handy for creating functionality where users can interact, returning the exact nearest street address, or any kind of address resolution using only coordinates provided by some other data source. In my opinion a great addition to an already powerful API.

To see more examples of what can be achieved with the free Google Maps API Click Here.

Another powerful mapping solution purely based in javascript can be found at OpenLayers.org

100% open source, the framework is fully extendable, the interface is fully customizable using css and it already supports most major mapping API's such as the: Google Maps API, Yahoo Maps API, Microsoft's Live Virtual Earth API, as well as other server hosted data sources such as the enterprise ArcGIS solution, and UMN's free MapServer alternative.

The tools are there, all they need are someone to put them to good use.