The Development Bureau (DEVB) announced today (December 3) that three Map Application Programming Interface (Map API) services have been officially launched and are available to the public free of charge.
The Map API, one of the four quick-win projects under the Common Spatial Data Infrastructure (CSDI), is a web mapping service for the public and private sectors to support their web applications that require map displays. It enables the community to build innovative applications enriched with locational and other features such as virtual city navigation.
The Map API services officially launched include Topographic Map API, Imagery Map API, as well as Map Label API, which include enhancements on the numbers of map requests and zoom levels access. Since the services were soft launched in October 2019, they have been well received by the public with map requests numbering about 7 million, 3 million and 3 million respectively.
By making use of map data maintained by the Lands Department, the Map API enables the public to access the latest topographic, imagery map and other location information through an interface to request map services in a convenient way instead of acquiring a set of raw map data. This significantly reduces time and efforts required in processing the raw map data as compared with the traditional way.
"To attain the target of the CSDI portal in full operation by end 2022, we have been committed to advancing the release of the Map API to the public since its soft launch in October 2019," a spokesman for the DEVB said.
The Map API services are available on the Public Sector Information Portal (data.gov.hk) and the Hong Kong GeoData Store (geodata.gov.hk), which is the alpha version of the CSDI portal.
Ends/Thursday, December 3, 2020
Issued at HKT 11:30
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