Behind the scenes
Learn about the technologies used to create and support the GEO.ca web presence.
Our technologies
GEO.ca is built on leading‑edge geospatial knowledge and technologies. Explore the tools, applications and APIs that drive GEO.ca. We develop in the open—follow the links for a deep dive on our open‑source technology! We aim to provide all Canadians with innovative and adaptive geospatial services.
Search and discovery
Introducing geoCore, our geospatial search and discovery engine.
GeoCore transforms traditional metadata inputs into a metadata lake that permits faster, more flexible search functionality. With geoCore working behind the scenes, Canadians can quickly find what they need within our deep collection of geospatial content.
GEO.ca uses a private cloud service provider to deliver data and services to our users. Our search engine technology is built on this cloud storage infrastructure resulting in efficient access and discovery of geospatial content.
The Government of Canada uses the Harmonized North American Profile (HNAP) of ISO 19115 as a metadata standard to ensure quality and facilitate sharing and use of geospatial content; however, GEO.ca recognizes our public users may use varying standards for their metadata. Therefore, we designed the geoCore search engine to work with other metadata standards.
Curious about using geoCore for your own website or application? Learn more about the geoCore API, available on the GEO.ca GitHub.
New and improved ways to find data with semantic search and similarity engine.
We continue to improve the search of our extensive collection of geospatial content.
Named the Similarity Engine, machine learning models provide a list of recommended datasets under each metadata record. Learn more about the similarity engine and it’s development in the GitHub repository.
The semantic search engine improves the GEO.ca search results. The semantic search is trained on the meaning and relationships of words rather than simply matching the exact word. In GEO.ca, semantic search is combined with keyword search to sort through thousands of metadata records to provide accurate results. It continues to be trained and improved. Learn more in the semantic search API GitHub repository.
Map viewer
Visualize geospatial data with geoView, our interactive map viewer.
GeoView is a map viewer that is easy to use, easy to learn, and highly configurable. Based on the open source OpenLayers library, a leading open-source JavaScript library for interactive maps, the viewer provides Canadians with an easily customizable map to visualize geospatial content without needing advanced mapping knowledge.
To learn more about geoView, visit our GitHub repository.
Features |
geoView |
|---|---|
Mapping Library |
OpenLayers v9+ |
Framework |
React v18+ |
Rendering capacity |
High |
Authoring tool |
Non Graphical |
Customizable |
High |
Custom plugin support |
Yes |
Advanced tools |
Yes |
WCAG |
In development |
Keyboard support |
Yes |
Bilingual |
Yes |
Load time |
Few seconds |
Size |
3.4 MB |
The Canada Basemap (CBMT)
Display Canada’s geography with our basemap
The basemap of Canada is an improved, up-to-date, authoritative vector basemap providing geographic context for Canada’s land, water and infrastructure. It is the default basemap used in GeoView and provides:
- official Canadian place names and Indigenous place names from the Geographical Names Board of Canada
- authoritative administrative boundaries
- support for both official languages: French and English
- open and accessible use for anyone
- detailed coverage of Canada’s landmass
The basemap uses CanVec topographic data and GeoBase initiative data. It is supplemented with Open Street Map (OSM) data for larger scales and to fill in data gaps. It is available in both the Canada Atlas Lambert and Pseudo-Mercator projected coordinate systems.
Want to use it yourself? Access the basemap metadata and web services:
The cloud
Learn how we host Canada’s geospatial information and technologies on the cloud.
GEO.ca uses a private cloud service provider to deliver data and services our users can rely on. Using globally recognized cloud providers allows GEO.ca to provide our best-in-class services to Canadians in a scalable, flexible way.
As we develop our cloud infrastructure, we’re focusing on leveraging the best in class technologies available to us, whether open source and serverless technologies or from commercial vendors. Our goal is for Canadians to have easy access to content, while reducing the need for it to be duplicated and sourced from multiple locations (e.g., data centres, organizations, hard drives, etc.).
We have migrated many of our technologies and workflows to our geospatially enabled cloud.
The cloud is a low maintenance, low cost solution for Canadians to access regularly updated information and services from a single location!
Open-source communities
Our developers and programmers use open source communities to co-develop and share their creations such as apps, widgets, and more. These open source communities allow collaborating developers to easily work together, download the most up-to-date version of projects, make changes, and upload their revisions. The GEO.ca GitHub is an example of an open source community. All users of an open source community can access and download projects for their own use.
It is important to note that featured open-source websites are not products of the Government of Canada. Content may not be available in both official languages.
Please consult the licence of respective products for usage terms and conditions.
