One thing that strikes me as potentially important for OAM is getting away from the idea of just a few global "layers". I wonder if it is feasible to instead have the global layer that folks look at made up, somewhat dynamically, of some arbitrary number of layers that are the best fit for what someone is wanting to look at.
I get the impression that the suggested layer workflow right now is we start with some base data (blue marble?) and then as "better" data arrives (NAIP for the US, some 2cm data from a model plane for my neighborhood, whatever), we mosaic it in to the master global layer. Each tile might then have some set of provenance metadata, perhaps with historical sources of the tile, but definitely with the X number of sources that may right now be displayed on that tile (where in the existing mosaic suggestion, X would always be 1). I've been looking at Google Earth a little this week, and I really like the historical imagery abilities. As you change locations, different sets of imagery become available. If you haven't checked it out, you should. These days, it is far from impossible for browser-based maps to do similar magic, and it seems like maybe the upcoming architecture of OAM could allow for, and even recommend, a setup where clients expect to get different tile layers for different regions and different criteria. In this scenario, instead of some new data from my kite-cam being viciously (and not in a visually appealing way) mosaic'd into "the" global layer, it first gets added to my local tile server(s) with appropriate bounds and metadata, and based on that metadata it will propagate to other tileservers, and may even a) get requested by various clients who would overlay it amongst whatever other base layer(s) they have onscreen, and b) mosaic'd into one of the appropriate global layers. One downside to this is much more data needs to be stored than if you just have a couple total layers. But an upside is not requiring datasets to compete for which shows up on "the" layer, which in my mind makes the future OAM a much more useful tool. Think of things like visualizing historical change, whether that's forest cover over decades, or UAV imagery from a crisis situation over a period of days. Or just being able to view an area comprised of a single source of imagery w/o having it not only uglified, but also made useless for any analysis by a few tiles of "better" imagery someone stuck in the middle. I realize arbitrary layers make for a more complex metadata and distribution system, but I don't think that's unsolvable. Am I the only one who thinks it's worth it? And please let me know if I'm missing some key technical point that makes it infeasible. -Josh
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