Improved Implementation of Meteorological Integrated Display System Based on WebGIS

In order to overcome shortcomings of traditional WebGIS implementation method, an application framework of WebGIS based on Ajax is introduced and real-time meteorological data integrated displaying system is established, which can provide quick displaying and querying of meteorological data.pMapper is a MapServer application framework based on PHP/MapScript, composed of a series of PHP, JavaScript, CSS and XML files. It offers broad functionality and multiple configurations to facilitate the setup of WebGIS based on Ajax, including map operation, spatial analysis, and attribution query functions. Meanwhile, custom plugins can be supported to extend the framework. There are two advantages to develop WebGIS based on Ajax by using this framework: Developer-friendly and open source.On the basis of its characteristics and advantages, the main development method under this framework is also discussed. In order to provide a user-center GUI, some new CSS templates and custom plugins are embedded into the framework. In addition, some source codes are modified to present better query result table and charts on the Web. The real-time meteorological data integrated displaying system provides friendly map operation, quick querying and displaying of different meteorological data, and the visualization of statistics charts for observation elements, e.g., temperature, precipitation and wind. Meanwhile, it also provides analysis of rainfall contour overlaid on the map. The system consists of four layers: Data layer, data interface layer, business logic layer and client layer. The data layer on the bottom mainly stores and provides fundamental data for data interface layer which consists of various data access services. The business logic layer provides specific business logic processing and WebGIS services, responding to requests from the client layer, which provides all kinds of meteorological information dynamically and instantly through a friendly browser interface. At present, this system is on trial for more than one year in the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, providing high performance and better data sharing services. The system brings high performance and better user experience, shortening the average response time of most Web pages to less than 3 seconds, and it can support 100-150 concurrent users. The peak access time is 0800 BT and 1600 BT every day, but the total Web traffic will suddenly increase when high impact weather happens. The top three visited pages are automatic weather station page, radar products page, and nowcast products page, and visitors mainly come from Beijing Meteorological Center.