Description: The GIS 5574 project is meant to encompass all of the ideas presented in lecture. The goal is not to build a web application with all the latest "bells and whistles" but rather to choose the appropriate tools to meet the needs of a particular audience. Identifying that audience is an important part of the project.

The project itself is a website consisting of the folowing components:

• A main page that clearly idenfies the site purpose, audience etc.
• A metadata page that identifies the sources of the data used for the project. This may include links to existing online sources or short data descriptions that you will create.
• A map gallery consisting on full-sized maps and thumbnails in a variety of formats. Size, format, and so on should be appropriate for your given audience. If Adobe Acrobat can be made available it is required that at least one of the maps be a pdf file. Maps should be meaningful in the context of the project purpose.
• An interactive mapping application developed using the UMN MapServer. At a minimum the application should allow for panning/zooming and simple feature attribute retrieval. Information on exactly how to use the software will begin in week 2.
• Some element of interoperability that would allow information from your website to be re-used by others. This could mean publishing maps using WMS or WFS, or perhaps offering alternative formats of data such as KML, GeoRSS or GeoJSON.

Project Proposal: A short, one page project proposal is due on week 3. The proposal should simply provide a summary of what you want to do. Please a basic description of the audience, potential datasources and any special features of the interactive interface that you anticipate.

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