Open Geospatial & Web Mapping Notes
Practical engineering notes on GDAL/OGR pipelines, coordinate reference systems, PostGIS spatial indexing, and static vector tile hosting.
Recent Engineering Notes
GDAL / CRS
Choosing the Right Projection for Area & Distance Analysis
Why Web Mercator (EPSG:3857) distorts spatial metrics and how to pick equal-area or local UTM zones in GDAL and PostGIS.
WebGIS / Tiles
Serving Cloud-Native Vector Tiles with PMTiles & Nginx
Eliminating dynamic tile servers using Tippecanoe, single-file PMTiles archives, and HTTP byte-range requests.
Open Spatial Data References
Global Basemap
OpenStreetMap & Overture Maps
Community-maintained road networks, building footprints, and administrative boundaries in GeoParquet and PBF formats.
Elevation & Imagery
Copernicus DEM & Natural Earth
Global 30m digital elevation models and public-domain vector themes for cartographic styling and terrain shading.