Rasterization of Fragmented Spatial Data

Sammanfattning: The Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is nowadays a large industry that has evolved from a highly specialized niche to a technology that affects nearly every aspect of our lives. There is a big challenge to use the functionality of GIS within the organization that works with data in the ordinary old-fashioned way using files stored locally in the computer. The availability of sharing and visualizing data forces an organization to invest in modern software solutions. Sweco is one of the organizations which offer the software solution SMIL to complement the information stored in the organization with spatial support. The aim of the work presented in this thesis was to measure the time needed for rasterization of an image map with different amount of features in a simplified prototype of SMIL with similar data flow organization. This prototype was developed in consultation with Sweco’s software architect and GIS consultant and was tested using the organization’s network capacity. Four different types of tests, which were implemented in order to investigate the presence of possible tipping points, illustrated the similar result that when the number of requested features passes one thousand, both the time needed for rasterization and the size of the raster image increases rapidly. The fifth test, that was implemented in order to analyze the time the involved modules in the system needed to generate a response, identified GeoServer as an apparent critical module in the system that delays data flow when the number of requested features passes one thousand and it can slow down the system when the number of requested features passes ten thousand.