HTile: A high‐performance real‐time raster tile service with data‐fusion and data‐hiding approaches

Abstract

Publication of raster tile services is a widely adopted method for presenting and sharing geographically referenced data, and enhancing geographic information systems (GIS) by serving as either base layers or featured layers. However, the establishment of raster tile services can still be improved in terms of data fusion efficiency and diversity from various raster and vector sources. In addition, addressing data security concerns while maintaining flexibility to meet the requirements and expectations of clients and publishers is crucial. HTile is proposed as a solution to efficiently publish high‐performance real‐time raster tile services. This solution incorporates an innovative tile generation process that enables customized data fusion and data‐hiding and offers dynamic styling while utilizing minimal storage space, ensuring rapid response time to meet the objectives of satisfactory data protection and visualization. Implementations of HTile leverage commonly used raster and vector data, which demonstrate compelling evidence of data‐fusion and data‐hiding capacities with exceptional performance. This study makes a significant contribution to the innovation strategy in publishing raster tile services, proving a novel approach that holds promising potential for GIS paradigms in data management and sharing flexibility.