The chief purpose of the project is to provide a publicly accessible centralized spatial data repository for the State of Maine. Such a repository promotes the distribution and use of spatial data throughout the state via its hosting and cataloging services. Greater access to spatial data will be achieved by providing the data hosting service for users and also providing the portal as an interface this data.

Matthew Blanchette, a Computer Science graduate student, is developing an online GIS portal to provide access to FGDC standard metadata and its associated spatial data for the State of Maine Library of Geographic Data (GeoLibrary) Board. Professor David Briggs of the Computer Science department is a mentor on this work. Spatial data is information that is associated with a geographic location, usually referencing coordinates such as latitude and longitude. Data identifying the shape and location of Maine's rivers or streams is an example of spatial data. This data can be managed, analyzed, and even displayed on a map using a geographic information system (GIS) such as the portal website developed for this project. FGDC metadata is information describing spatial data in an XML format specified by the Federal Geographic Data Committee. With this metadata, spatial data can be searched and identified in ways other than its geographical properties.

The public will be able to use the portal to search and access these types of data. Users of the portal will be able to upload their own metadata and shapefile spatial data which will be hosted for free. The project builds off existing open-source GIS software such as GeoNetwork, GeoTools, MapServer, and OpenLayers. GeoNetwork is being customized and used as the portal's foundation, GeoTools is used to convert spatial data formats, MapServer is used to produce images from the data, and OpenLayers is used to overlay those images on a map. All metadata and spatial data will be stored in a PostGIS spatially-enabled PostgreSQL database. Spatial data will be provided in various formats including Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard Web Map Service (WMS) and Keyhole Markup Language (KML). One goal of this project is to provide user spatial data in modern formats without requiring users to learn new skills.

This work is done through support from USM's Research Computing Group, Computer Science Department, and School of Applied Science, Engineering and Technology.