THE INTERACTIVE “GEO-SCIENTIFIC POTENTIALS OF THE GERMAN NORTH SEA” WEBSITE: A SKETCH OF A NEW APPROACH IN WEB PUBLICATION OF GEO-SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION

The “Geo-scientific Potentials of the German North Sea” project (GPDN) provides a large number of geo-scientific, North Sea-related products like e.g. various thematic geological maps or 3D-models. The products and geologic framework information will be presented online via the interactive GPDN-website.

Although there are numerous different browser-related geo-information systems, the presentation of geospatial data and products still seems limited to just a few exposition-types like e.g. web services (WMS, WFS) or online map servers, which mostly focus on the presentation of spatial data without interpretation or explanation.

The interactive GPDN-website tries to close this gap showing and explaining the “whole picture” of the geology of the researched area, with the emphasis on a user friendly presentation and connection between descriptive text content and related data, products (e.g. maps, 3D-models), films and other media.

For this purpose the GPDN-website will use new designed, intelligent web controls which are able to display the different data types and connect them with appropriate explanatory text content. The connection between the web controls will be accomplished through an intelligent message system which interprets user requests (interactions with the website) and navigates him to adequate website contents.

On the basis of a geological map this presentation gives an outlook on the future functionality of the interactive website and demonstrate possible connections to other data types using the new designed web controls and their message system.