Government Computer News
Real road maps
Most mobile users don’t have mapping software; GeoPDF gives them geospatial data on the go
Digg
De.licio.us
Slashdot
Technorati
Image: DefenseLink Photo by Cpl. Jeremy Colvin
ON LOCATION: With a small plug-in, soldiers can use Acrobat Reader to view GeoPDF maps, turn layers on and off, query attributes, display coordinates and create redlines and notes.
A number of companies are taking advantage of the extensibility of PDFs — a feature introduced in 2003 with version 6.0 of Adobe Systems Acrobat — to make that possible. And the Army Corps of Engineers, for one, is eagerly using it.
“We now have the ability to get data with a geospatial component to anybody,” said Ray Caputo, a geographer at the Army Corps of Engineers’ Topographic Engineering Center. “They don’t need to have elaborate or expensive mapping tools. They can simply use Adobe Reader. That’s a revolutionary change in the way we do business. It’s completely changing the way we do things.”
The Army uses a commercial product — Map2PDF from TerraGo Technologies — to create its GeoPDF files. With Map2PDF, Caputo can export maps he has created in a geographic information systems application to an Acrobat file. Soldiers use Acrobat Reader to view maps, turn layers on and off, query attributes, display coordinates and create redlines and notes. A small, free plug-in from TerraGo is the only requirement for users to view the GeoPDF in Acrobat.
“There are about half a percent or less of the people in the Army who have sophisticated mapping tools and can see the data that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency creates,” Caputo said. “So we have about 99.5 percent of the Army that can’t see the data. This file format gives us the ability to take [the agency] data and put it in a format that 100 percent of our soldiers can see.”
Caputo said his group is using Map2PDF mostly to create flat raster maps. “But we are developing maps that have interactive layering schemes that you can turn on and off,” he said. “You can turn off the transportation, you can turn off the population, you can turn off the contour lines, and flip and play with the layers any way that you want. It’s like having a miniature GIS system inside of Adobe Reader.”
![1105 Government Information Group [justice]](/images/1105logo_website.gif "Government Computer News [justice]")
© 1996-2008 1105 Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
