Thematic Mapping Engine: Create Thematic Map Mashups

Andres Ferrate, December 12th, 2008

Comments(0)

In a very generous move, Bjørn Sandvik has open sourced the code for his Thematic Mapping Engine (TME) under a GPLv3 license.

This is great news for developers looking to add intelligence to data in their map mashups. Bjørn announced the news on his blog, and he has a succinct description of TME:

The engine takes statistical data, spatial features and thematic mapping parameters as input and returns a KMZ file. This file can be viewed in Google Earth, or other geobrowsers supporting the KML standard. TME can be accessed from a web interface or a PHP script.

The engine can also be used as an API, and Bjørn has put together a PDF User’s Guide. Before you get started, note that TME has the following requirements:

• PHP 5
• MySQL 5+
• Apache HTTP Server
• Ext JS 2.1
• Google Earth Plug-in

In addition to TME, Bjørn has also released an Ext JS extension for the Google Earth API, which generates an browser interface similar to that of Google Earth.

Nicely done, Bjørn!