Relevance of Web Mapping Applications
We may see that every day more and more web mapping applications are released in this domain. But are such a large number of web mapping applications necessary? What is the importance of web mapping tools in our society? To these questions, I will try to answer in this post in order to give some answers to those people that are not involved in web mapping.
The role of web mapping in modern society
The modern society is changing very often and the progress in the computational techniques brings progress in other domains and web mapping is one of these domains. Because high speed is one characteristic of these times, we may use web mapping in order to create our routes and share our trips. For example, we may find a great tool in Illustreets, which is a perfect web mapping tool for such traveling routes.
According to GIS Lounge, the web mapping domain has reached a mature level and it is a stand-alone area. Even if you are not a web developer or a specialist in GIS, you can easily use most of the web mapping applications. The providers of these applications are looking to create user-friendly and intuitive applications in order to have a market for their products as large as possible.
Are web mapping applications important for us?
Well, in my opinion the only answer to this question is YES. Of course, you may say that my answer is this due to my profession as a web developer. I think that nowadays, most of us can see that web mapping is used even by the large public. Maybe some of those that are using web mapping applications do not know that they are using such tools because they see only the final product.
Mobile devices are used in a wide range of tasks in our daily life. One of these tasks is to find routes, share our routes or find different services during our trips in outer locations. All these features can be provided using web mapping applications.
Web mapping can be used with success in disaster management such as tsunami or earthquakes monitoring. I’m sure that you have seen or maybe used some online weather forecasting applications. Well, you have to know that these applications are based on web mapping techniques. There are many official websites that have integrated web mapping applications that should help the community, as for example Humboldt County, California.
Web mapping applications are also used in the petroleum industry, to oil spills disaster and in the oil industry in order to avoid risks, to implement certain decisions and as an emergency response system. We can easily find out the weather forecast for the next few days using web mapping applications such as Weather Forecast or YR websites.
As you may see from this short list of web mapping applications in the contemporary society, we may assess that geo web developers should continue to improve web mapping applications in order to improve our lives.
I think that using web mapping applications in almost all of our society domains we can greatly improve our life standards. Based on web maps and web mapping tools, almost everyone can learn more about spatial representation.
