Earth Resource Mapping announced that Image Web Server 2.0 adds OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) image access, selective image area security, enhanced I-Wizard for ArcIMS 4.x integration, per-image user access security, real time image contrast and intensity enhancement, additional support for Linux and Mac users, and an enhanced Java plugin. The Image Web Server provides advanced image serving capabilities for geospatial images. It is widely used by organizations needing to serve country, state and citywide seamless image mosaics integrated with GIS map servers. Image mosaics served often exceed a TB or more in size per image and are compressed using the popular ECW wavelet imagery format to less than 5% of their uncompressed size.
Imagery places unique demands on web map servers because image data is so large compared to vector data. The Image Web Server has proved popular in addressing imagery needs, particularly because it also tightly integrates imagery with GIS map web servers such as ArcIMS. Organizations using the Image Web Server include the US Border Patrol as part of the Homeland Defense initiative, the Italian Ministry of the Environment to allow Internet access to various types of maps and photographic images covering the whole of Italy, and the UK’s East Midlands Electricity to distribute its 500GB of orthophoto data. The Image Web Server technology increases efficiency and reduces operating costs. Images can be zoomed and panned over in real time over the Internet from an Image Web Server, simply by opening the image using a URL path instead of a local image path inside ECW aware applications. Most GIS and CAD applications have built-in ECW imagery support using the ECWP protocol, or users can download free plugins from www.ermapper.com/downloads for other products such as ESRI applications or Microsoft Office.
