MAPSHAREDkartoituksessa

MAPSHAREDkarto is an open‑source geographic information system (GIS) platform designed for collaborative mapping and spatial data sharing. It was first released in 2019 as a fork of the widely used KartoGIS framework, with a focus on improving performance, modularity, and community engagement. The platform is written primarily in C++ and Python, and it features a flexible plugin architecture that allows developers to extend its core functionality with custom modules.

The core of MAPSHAREDkarto includes a rendering engine capable of handling vector and raster data, a spatial database interface that supports PostgreSQL/PostGIS, and a scalable web service layer based on the MapServer CGI interface. Unlike many commercial GIS solutions, MAPSHAREDkarto remains free to use under the GNU Lesser General Public License. This licensing choice has encouraged contributions from universities, non‑profit research groups, and municipal governments worldwide.

Key features of MAPSHAREDkarto include real‑time editing of map layers, support for the Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) standards, and advanced data validation tools. The project also provides a command‑line utility for bulk data processing and a lightweight mobile application for field data collection. A robust API enables integration with other open‑source tools such as OpenStreetMap, GeoServer, and QGIS.

The platform has an active online community hosted on GitHub, where developers track issues, submit pull requests, and maintain a growing library of user‑contributed widgets. Documentation is available as a set of Markdown files, which are automatically converted into HTML through a continuous‑integration pipeline. Since its inception, MAPSHAREDkarto has been adopted by several municipalities for land‑use planning, disaster response mapping, and environmental monitoring, demonstrating its versatility and practicality in real‑world GIS applications.