Tile based map publishing with WMTS TileServer, MapTiler and TileMill

Almost all mapping applications available today on the web and in mobile devices are in fact using tiles as the core for online distribution of maps. This presentation shortly explains the tiling basics and shows the open-source software typically used for generating and distributing tiled maps in the most popular Spherical Mercator system (EPSG:3857 / EPSG:900913) visible in Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Bing Maps and other online maps. The tools for rendering maps such as the MapTiler (powered by GDAL/GDAL2Tiles) and TileMill (powered by Mapnik) will be demonstrated. The presentation also introduces a new open-source project called TileServer which allows to distribute rendered map tiles (directory or MBTiles) from any ordinary web server (Apache/MySQL) in the standardised OpenGIS WMTS format without a need to install, configure or maintain any additional dynamic software or web server extension. Any traditional web hosting can be therefore used for online distribution of maps. It is a rapid, extremely high-performance and scalable way how to publish maps. Hosting of the rendered maps is also possible from the cloud, such as Amazon S3/CloudFront or RackSpace Files. The published custom maps can be used in HTML5/JavaScript applications (OpenLayers/Leaflet), on mobile devices (iOS: MapKit/RouteMe, Android: OSMDroid), or even opened in desktop GIS systems such as QGIS, UDig and ESRI ArcGIS Desktop. This presentation contains a practical demonstration of map tile rendering and online publishing.