In HLA, mapping layers are loosely coupled via hyperlinks, functioning as independent web applications.
HLA empowers users to dynamically compose these independent layers directly on their own devices.
HLA is a fully open-source project that is actively maintained and has been used by enterprises for 15+ years.
At the heart of the Web is the hyperlink. Content distributed around the world can be linked and referenced, without the need for centralization. This simple, open mechanism has enabled the Web to grow. Hyper Layering extends this concept to the way we combine information. Users can select information they need from different organizations and overlay it in their browser without involving a central system.
Maps share a common coordinate system: latitude and longitude. These shared coordinates allow information from different organizations and systems to be overlaid as layers within the same geographic space. The Web contains a wide range of information about terrain, roads, buildings, weather, transportation, disaster preparedness, sensors, and local communities. By combining these layers on a single map, we can see the relationships between them that would otherwise be difficult to understand from any one source alone.
A defining feature of Hyper Layering is that information used does not need to be consolidated into a single system. With Hyper Layering, while information remains on the Web systems managed by its providers, users can select the layers they need and freely overlay them in their own browsers. The underlying technology that enables this decentralized use of information is HLA (Hyper-Layering Architecture). HLMap (Hyper-Layered Map, formerly SVGMap) is a Web map viewer built on HLA.
Overlaying different kinds of information within the same geographic space reveals connections between sources that were previously separate. Disaster information and evacuation facilities, weather and sensor data, transportation and people’s movements, local information and urban spaces: the information we choose and how we combine it can offer different perspectives on the same space.
Use information where it already resides, without gathering it in one place.
Overlay and combine layers to discover connections that were previously hidden.
This is Hyper Layering.