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PANORAMIC IMAGE INTEGRATION WITHIN A WEB-BASED GIS APPLICATION 
O. Akcay *, Z. Duran®, A. Garagon Dogru PG. Toz*, O. Altan * 
“ITU, Civil Engineering Faculty, 34469 Maslak Istanbul, Turkey - (akcayoz, duranza, tozg, oaltan)@itu.edu.tr 
" BU, Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, Geodesy Department, 34680 Cengelkoy Istanbul, 
Turkey, - garagon@boun.edu.tr 
Commission II, WG 11/6 
KEY WORDS: GIS, Internet/Web, Visualization, Cultural Heritage, Photo-realism 
ABSTRACT: 
This study focuses on the integration of panoramic photographs and web-based GIS. The integration of complementary technologies 
provides more powerful results in GIS applications. Collecting and assembling a series of digital images of large geographic areas 
into single panoramic images allow the user to view a multi-dimensional map that provides significantly more geographic 
information. By adopting the web as a dissemination way for geographic information, we can provide alternate representations of 
our environment. GIS, which include historical monuments, is important theme for various field such as historical conservation and 
tourism fields. The GIS published via Internet so as to come into contact with wide-range user. Because of gaps between providers 
and users, a lot of problems arise on historical heritage especially. The Internet is a perfect solution to speed up interactive 
communication between them. Panoramic Imaging is a major part of the image-based category of the virtual tours. It provides not 
only increased realism but also inexpensive solutions to information systems. 
Digital Camera was used in order to create Panorama. Beauty spots were chosen in historical place so as to show its visual features. 
To determine coordinates of point, where photos were taken, were measured by handheld GPS. As a result, a Historical Information 
System (HIS) was designed and panoramic image was transferred to HIS as a new document. The study is considered as a multi- 
purpose though; it is capable of serving as an expert system. 
1. INTRODUCTION 1.2 Panoramic Imaging 
1.1 Web-based GIS Panoramic imaging is an effective tool to represent 
environment. Its visual features are very successful. Panorama 
Recently, there has been new trend in developing Web-based creates virtual reality well because photographs are used. 
GIS applications. Researchers in this field have recognized Image-based virtual reality has more advantages than model 
Web-based GIS applications are becoming an important tool to 
disseminate geographical information on the Internet because of 
their platform independence, interactivity, and wide 
accessibility (Hu 2002). Geographic information can be 
distributed in a variety of forms on the Internet. In dynamic 
maps, the web server will be connected to a GIS, which is able 
to generate maps on request. They enable to choose features 
that will be displayed, such as the scale, location values etc. In 
this type of applications, maps are drawn according to preset 
parameters. And then the web browser displays the map as an 
image (Garagon 2002). Figure 1 shows detailed architecture of 
connection via internet. : 
Client Server Computer 
Computer 
  
  
Commands, Queries 
     
  
Internet 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Maps. Text, HTML 
  
  
  
  
  
Figure 1. Architecture of Dynamic Configuration (see Plewe 
1997). 
371 
based. It can be obtained by a panoramic camera or an ordinary 
digital camera. Though some problems occur, an ordinary 
camera is an inexpensive choice. 
Although panoramic images are two dimensional as they are 
constructed from a series of photographs, the effect is 
considerable realism (Cohen, 2000). 
By exploiting panoramic images we are able to generate 
relatively inexpensive yet convincing walk through 
representations of complex facilities which support ad-hoc 
measurements. These image archives are very rich source of 
information about the true operational status of a facility and 
thus are already a very valuable component of any FM database 
(Chapman D., Deacon A., 1998). 
Most problems have been debugged by robust matematic 
models. An image squence can be stitched easily. Some 
mesaurement techniques are still discussed in computer vision 
and digital photgrammetry. Panoramic imaging is also useful on 
the internet. A lot of visual introduction is done by cylindrical 
or sphere panoramas on the internet. 
Panoramic imaging is a suitable documentation method for 
information system. Nevertheless, panoramic images need more 
research work to obtain measurements from them. Therefore, a 
new dimension can be add to georeference of information