Maine Uses Open Source and Open Standards to Deliver Imagery

Government Technology reprinted an article by Mike Smith of the Maine Office of Information technology, describing how the Maine Office of GIS (MEGIS),with the Maine Library of Geographic Information (GeoLibrary), has put together a tool using mostly open source software to prepare and deliver imagery of the state via a WMS. Among the tools: GDAL, Python, and MapServer. The goal is make any publicly available imagery available in a standard way for use in the many software clients via a webpage.

With only two municipal datasets online, the site already gets 2000-3000 hits per day. And, teh cost saving?

Earlier attempts at providing web imagery services were costing the state $110,000 per year, prohibiting the inclusion of municipal data. Using WMS and open-source software, that cost is slashed to $6,000 per year.