Web-based model visualisation
A model result that only its authors can read is not finished. A large part of our work is the last step: turning a model into maps that a policy adviser, an alderman or a housing corporation can open in a browser and put on the table that same afternoon.
There are two ways in, for two different readers. The GeoDMS viewer is for people who work on the model: every intermediate result can be opened, and any number can be followed back through its expression to the source data. A web map is for everyone else: the findings that matter, in a browser, with no installation and nothing to learn. The second is not a simplified copy of the first. It is the same model, shown at the level the reader needs, which is why the two never disagree.
Why we build them ourselves
We build these viewers on top of the same GeoDMS pipelines that produce the data, and that is not a technical detail. When a model is rerun, the map follows. There is no manual export in between, no spreadsheet that someone corrected by hand, no moment where the map and the model quietly start telling different stories. If the two ever disagree, that is a bug rather than a fact of life.
It also means the map can show what the model actually computed, at the resolution it computed it. A national model that produces results per building does not have to be flattened to municipal averages before anyone is allowed to look at it.
What that looks like in practice
WoonZorgwijzer is the largest example: a public map application showing per neighbourhood how many people are expected to have which care needs, and whether local housing and services match. It runs for four provinces (Zuid-Holland, Noord-Holland, Noord-Brabant, Gelderland), for regions including Breda en omstreken, Hart van Brabant, Midden-Holland, Gooi- en Vechtstreek, Rotterdam, Capelle en Krimpen aan den IJssel, Waardenland and Zuid-Kennemerland en IJmond, and for individual municipalities including Leiden, Schiedam, Hoorn, Lansingerland, Hengelo and Nieuwegein. Seventeen live applications, on one shared method.
Startanalyse aardgasvrije buurten: the web mapping for PBL's neighbourhood-level analysis of heating alternatives, so a municipality can look up its own neighbourhoods instead of reading a national average.
KansenVerkenner, in use by the municipality of The Hague since 2006 to analyse and visualise target groups, suitable housing and services. Nearly twenty years of continuous service is its own kind of test.
How it is built
The chain is deliberately short. A GeoDMS model computes the result; the same configuration declares the export; the viewer reads it. Standard services (WMS, WMTS, WFS) are generated from those pipelines, so results can equally well be pulled into a client's own GIS or portal rather than only viewed in ours.
We work with BaasGeo and Mapification on the viewer side, which is how the WoonZorgwijzer applications reach the polish they have.
What we can build for you
- Public or restricted map viewers on top of your own data and models
- Standard map services (WMS, WMTS, WFS) generated straight from the model
- Dashboards combining maps, tables and indicators around one policy question
- A rebuild that keeps an existing viewer alive when the model underneath it changes
- Cartography that survives contact with a real audience: sensible class breaks, honest legends, and a defensible answer to "why is my neighbourhood that colour"
This is the part of our work we would like to do more of, because it is where a model stops being a report and starts being used.