Cloud Scalability and the OpenGeo Stack: Publishing Statewide Broadband Availability Maps

This session will describe the recent nationwide broadband mapping effort undertaken by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) through a state grant program and focus on the statewide map publishing activities that were completed for Oklahoma and Massachusetts. Broadband mapping is a key component of nationwide, ARRA/stimulus funded efforts to increase broadband availability and adoption and to bridge the “digital divide.” The presentation will provide an overview of the national broadband mapping program and how the underlying data are produced, but the focus will be on the production and publication of statewide broadband availability web mapping sites using the OpenGeo stack (i.e. PostgreSQL, PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers and GeoWebCache). Topics covered will include: reasons for selecting Open Source software; data access using .NET; customization approach using HTML and jQuery; development challenges including statewide cache creation; and the cloud-based hosting approach.