Alternatives for implementing Web mapping applications: a case study using Argentina's Life Quality Index

CELEMÍN, JUAN PABLO; RODRIGUEZ, JUAN MANUEL; GUILLERMO ANGEL VELAZQUEZ; HIRSCH, MATÍAS; ALEJANDRO ZUNINO; MATEOS, CRISTIAN

International Journal of Geo-Information

MDPI

Lugar: Basilea; Año: 2020 vol. 9 p. 1 - 20

2220-9964

Recent Web technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript, and WebGL have enabled powerfuland highly dynamic Web mapping applications executing on standard Web browsers. Despite thecomplexity for developing such applications has been greatly reduced by Web mapping libraries,developers face many choices to achieve optimal performance and network usage. This scenariois even more complex when considering different representations of geographical data (raster,raw data or vector) and variety of devices (tablets, smartphones, and personal computers). This papercompares the performance and network usage of three popular JavaScript Web mapping librariesfor implementing a Web map using different representations for geodata, and executing on differentdevices. In the experiments, Mapbox GL JS achieved the best overall performance on mid and highend devices for displaying raster or vector maps, while OpenLayers was the best for raster maps onall devices. Vector-based maps are a safe bet for new Web maps, since performance is on par withraster maps on mid-end smartphones, with significant less network bandwidth requirements.