Géoportail

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Le Géoportail is a Web portal allowing access to public georeferenced data, of the whole French territory, in a cartographic interface.

1 Origin of the project
2 Partners
3 History of the portal
4 See also
- 4.1 Links

[edit] Origin of the project

The project originated for two main purposes:

INSPIRE (Infrastructure for spatial information in Europe) European directive and ADELE French programme aim at the development of on-line administrative information;
the success of other online projects like Google Maps, in which navigation in maps and satellite views is possible.

[edit] Partners

The DGME (French General Directorate for State Modernisation) is in charge of the project, and the realisation is managed by two state entities:

IGN has to realise the visualisation interface, with the background of its own data (maps and photos),
French Office of Geological and Mineral Research BRGM has to realise the catalog and search system.

Each administration or partner will provide the data they are responsible for. For example, Sports Ministry could provide the localisation of activities and links to the corresponding websites.

[edit] History of the portal

[edit] Project

The project was launched during summer 2005 in the IGN. The goal for the opening of the Géoportail is summer 2007.

On January 6, 2006, in Metz, the President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac, expressed the wish to open the Géoportail during the year.

In early March 2006, the IGN launched an advertising campaign about the Géoportail.

[edit] Launch problems

On June 23, 2006, the site was launched by Jacques Chirac and other ministers.

In this first release, the user can browse in 2D over:

the orthophoto (corrected aerial photographs) of the France, including a great part of French overseas departments and territories, with an image resolution of 50 cm;
the IGN maps, at a scale adapted for the chosen zoom (up to 1:25000 with a zoom of 1/3000).

As long as the site was online, the connection requests were 5 times more numerous than expected by the project team, which lead to a crash of the servers. A message was posted apologizing for this problem while a solution was found.

After July 1, the access to the site was restored.