The cartographic background is a fundamental part of the publication of maps on the web. These huge maps must be up to date, attractive and precise. FME is a great tool to achieve all these goals. Until now IDE Rioja has been producing pre-cached raster tiles and their current objective is to streamline production and multiply the supply of their cartographic backgrounds. For this purpose they are using the advanced technology of Vector Tiles within their FME workflows. Vector Tiles are a way to arrange spatial data in small blocks of information with geometry and attributes. IDE Rioja's corporate information and other external providers data are combined in order to obtain Vector Tiles in geoJSON format. IDE Rioja uses this technology to create different backgrounds (styled on the fly using Mapnik) for their Web applications.

1. Creating Vector
Tiles for Background Maps
with FME
Francisco Girón Gesteira

2. Francisco
Girón Gesteira
con terra in Spain
@Fran_Giron
www.conterra.es

3. Pablo Martínez
Ana García de Vicuña
Regional SDI – La Rioja
iderioja
iderioja
www.iderioja.larioja.org

4. • FME World Tour 2011
– Automated Production of Orthophotomaps in GeoPDF
• FME World Tour 2013 (FME Stories from Around
the World)
– RapidEye Imagery Processing for Generation of
Vegetation Indices (Safe’s blog)
• FME World Tour 2014 and FME UC 2014
– FME-Based Tool for Automatic Updating of
Geographical Git Repositories
• FME World Tour 2015 (FME Stories from Around
the World)
– Multilevel Tile Cache Generation Engine
• FME World Tour 2016
– Stylised Vector Data in Mobile Devices
• FME World Tour 2017 and FME UC 2017
– Creating Vector Tiles for Background Maps with FME

5. VECTOR TILES
WHAT ARE
AND WHY SHOULD YOU USE THEM?

6. WHAT ARE TILES
Clipped geodata for use in web mapping
Different information depending on the zoom level

7. VECTOR TILES VS RASTER TILES
Raster Tiles:
• static PNG files
• each collection has its
own symbology
• require considerable
storage space
• slow generation of tiles
• updating the collection
takes a lot of resources
Vector Tiles:
• PNGs generated on-the-fly
from GeoJSON files, using
style defined in an XML file
• each collection can have
multiple symbologies
• zoom levels can be reused
• less storage space needed
• faster generation and easier
update

8. GeoJSON?
WHY DID THEY USE
Protobuf (pbf)
• Mapbox specification
• Very compressed vector information
• Only compatible with Mapbox libraries
• Processing power required for visualization
(client)
GeoJSON
• OGC Standard
• About 30% bigger than pbf
• Desktop GIS and FME compatible
• Rendering through Mapnik Python
• Processing easier, on-the-fly rendering

9. WHAT DID THEY GENERATE
Geodata stored in GeoJSON format within a SQLite
database, with different data for every zoom level

10. HOW DID THEY GENERATE IT
Input FME Desktop Output
tiles
View

11. TILES RENDERING
- Vector data
- Labels
- DEM
- Orthophotos,...
Vector Tile Mapnik
Symbology
Visualization in client
(PNG, JPG)
Tile rendering in
Server

12. Composition combining
Vector and Raster Tiles

13. DATA SOURCES

14. Place your screenshot here
IDErioja TILES SERVER

15. Creating Vector Tiles for
Background Maps with FME
Different background maps with
very good performance
http://vtms.larioja.org/mapa_base/0/0/0.png

16. THANK YOU!
Francisco Girón Gesteira
f.giron-gesteira@conterra.es
www.conterra.es
Ana García de Vicuña
agvicuna@larioja.org
Pablo Martínez
pmperez@larioja.org