Geospatial Web Applications
E-commerce and web based managed service solutions are provided by Infoterra to facilitate access to geospatial information on a just-in-time basis and with an appropriate commercial model. A number of different types of service are operated:
- E-commerce supporting web sites, allowing visitors to purchase small areas of data as needed. Examples are www.GeoStore.com and Stanfords Portal.
- Data distribution web sites, allowing visitors to draw down data for which they already hold a licence. Examples are the Environment Agency GeoStore, the Highways Agency data archive and GeoStore for PGA, the web site supporting the Pan Government Agreement data licence.
- Customised web based applications with in-built geographic data, charged on a transactional model. Examples are Crawfords Insurance Claims Management Support, Stanford Asset Management System, Grid Connection and Lloyd's of London Flood Risk Assessment service.
All of these services draw down from a common store of geospatial data for Great Britain. Thus data is stored and maintained once, saving users the cost of data storage, the overhead of applying updates and the associated database administration and in some cases the cost of holding a corporate licence for information that is accessed only occasionally.
Infoterra's capability enables us to handle both invoice and credit card based payments, according to the target audience of the site. The production aspect of delivering the data is totally automated, with data being made available for download within minutes of order. Many of the sites (like GeoStore and Stanfords) offer an opportunity to act as Infoterra's shop window for data products and have been instrumental in raising awareness of data products in many of our vertical markets.
