Research and development of a GIServices engine for three-dimensional visualization and analysis

The increasing requirements of online geo-data services and geo-processing services and the need of 3D information together make the web-based 3D GIS more demanding. Web-based 3D GIS are widely applied in a variety of areas. However, there are many open issues in this research field. The requirement for high-quality visualization and spatial analysis cannot be met. This thesis examines the existing problems, compares and identifies the key technologies involved, and builds a methodology to meet the defined criteria for a web-based 3D GIS. A prototype system supporting raster data visualization and spatial analysis has been implemented. Integrated with GeoServNet, the prototype system takes advantages of the progressive data transmission. It uses a flexible data transmission strategy to support both high quality visualization and spatial analysis. The prototype also improves the rendering performance comparing with other research systems and well integrates the rendering and data transmitting procedure. A scalable framework for extension functions is also implemented, making the functionality of the system easily extended. This improves the value of this system as a GIServices engine.