Austin Jennings

Displaying Real-Time Data Feeds

This was part three of a laboratory assignement for my Web-Based GIS course. The purpose was to use several web map APIs to link to live data from other sources.

The data I linked to was from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, this time using thier Real-time KML Feed. This map displays all the earthquakes that occured in the last week that were greater than 1.0 on the Richter Scale. It is centered on the Ring of Fire in the Pacific, because this is where the most earthquakes tend to occur.

Esri's ArcGIS JavaScript API, which I used for this map, does have a lot of great customization tools that are fairly easy to use. However, similar to the Google Maps API, KML data is difficult to format. You will see that in this map (compared to the same data displayed in Google), I was able to restore the circle-sizes based on magnitude and eliminated the cluttered legend table. Pop-up window functionality is also preserved in Esri's API, so users can click on the earthquake circles to get more information!

If you would like to view this map in full screen, click here.