Are there benefits to streaming geospatial data directly into Arcgis or QGIS?

Streaming geospatial data directly into ArcGIS or QGIS gives users access to mapping and spatial information without having to download, store and continually update every dataset themselves.

Instead, the GIS connects to an online data service. Once that connection is established, the required mapping or features can be accessed from within the software alongside the organisation’s own data.

One of the biggest benefits is currency. With downloaded datasets, somebody needs to obtain each new release and replace or redistribute the previous version. A managed service can maintain the source centrally, helping GIS users access current information without repeating that process.

There are other practical advantages:

Less, direct data management. Large spatial datasets consume storage and require processing, version control and maintenance. Streaming can move much of that workload away from the individual GIS team.

Consistent information across users. If several teams connect to the same maintained service, there is less risk of different people working from different generations of a dataset.

Faster access to new datasets. Users can connect to relevant information without first finding, downloading and preparing it for use.

Access to a wider data library. This is particularly useful with open data. There are thousands of potentially valuable public datasets, but finding and maintaining them individually can consume more time than analysing them.

It’s important to remember that different services suit different GIS tasks. WMS and WMTS are useful for streaming mapping for display, while WFS gives ArcGIS and QGIS users access to geographic features and attributes that can be queried and analysed. Downloads still have their place, particularly for offline working, intensive processing or workflows requiring a locally held copy. Streaming is most valuable where teams need continuing access to maintained data without taking responsibility for every update themselves.

Idox Geospatial provides managed web services for authoritative geospatial data, while theMapCloud makes more than 300 curated open datasets available through WMS, WMTS and WFS. For ArcGIS and QGIS teams, that means useful external data can become a maintained part of the GIS environment rather than another collection of files that somebody has to keep up to date.

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