2022-08-25, 14:15–14:45 (Europe/Rome), Room Limonaia
Protomaps is a new, open source set of tools for vector cartography on the web. It’s designed to enable projects of any scale - from hobby projects of a neighborhood, to dense datasets covering the entire planet. It finally makes it simple to both host tiles and render them using web standards, and accomplishes it in the most affordable way possible.
This talk will be an overview of the entire mapping stack, driven by an ethos of simplicity. Component projects include:
- The OSM Express database for syncing and querying fresh OpenStreetMap data
- The PMTiles cloud-optimized archive format for serverless hosting on platforms like S3
- The Protomaps JS renderer for custom cartography on the web using Canvas 2D
- The relationship to complementary projects like GDAL, Leaflet, MapLibre, Tippecanoe and FlatGeobuf
I’ll also describe successes and failures in adoption among users over the past two years, as well as future development plans.
Brandon is a cartographic technologist based in Taipei, Taiwan. He has a background in computer graphics and systems programming; some of his interests are language & localization, digital heritage, and computational map design. He's currenly working on Protomaps, a new suite of developer-friendly tools for mapmaking on the web.