Automatic Symbolisation Methods for Geoportals

There is currently a high demand for spatial data usage within web applications. From a technical viewpoint, web services and geoportals aim to fulfil user requirements; however, the current cartographic methods do not satisfy the needs of the end users. The problem is more challenging when the final map contains data from various sources that have various cartographic characteristics; therefore, the vital information might be located under the base map layer. In this paper, we propose the concept of layer priorities as foreground, middle ground or background, and we propose the two following methods to enhance the symbolisation: polygon overlay and colour saturation methods. The results from two case studies show that these methods can satisfy the requirements of the end users.