Interactive Visualization for Massive POI Using Tiled Feature Strategy

The role of WMS (Web Map Service) and WFS (Web Feature Service) in geo-data interoperation and exchange has been long recognized, especially in domain WebGIS platforms. Up to now, most research and applications on geo-data visualization are focused on static WMS layers or vector layers retrieved from WFS separately. In this paper, instead, we take POI (Point of Interest) data of address as an example to show how to make an interactive web map for massive point features. We proposed a new interactive visualization approach combining map tiles based on WMS and feature tiles based on WFS. Experiments have been conducted to validate the proposed approach. Comparing with the normal way of loading WMS layers and vector layers, the result indicates that the proposed approach is valid for cross-browser visualization of massive point features and can minimize the loss of information.