# Review of Web Mapping: Eras, Trends and Directions
## 4 Trends and Directions in Web Mapping
### Trends in Web Map Usage Components
#### 4.1.3 Web Mapping Functionality Trends
Open source and vendor based developments include MapServer, GeoServer, ArcGIS Online, AspMap, GeoNode, GeoShape and QGIS Cloud. Through their exposure on the web to a broader community of developers, many of these GIS and mapping functionalities are becoming embedded into web interfaces for global community users, among whom geospatial information and maps are just another information resource. These emerging online mapping and GIS environments are beginning to provide more support for increased user sharing, collaboration and team-based content provision, including real-time shared environments that synchronize map sharing and geo-processing by collaborators at different locations at the same time [132]. For example, ArcGIS Online [133] was released in 2012 and initially provided users with a simple online GIS interface to create, visualize, manipulate and customize maps that could be mashed up from various map sources and services. Subsequently, the online cloud environment expanded to include  
Figure 8: Focus and trends in increasing web mapping functionality. GIS and spatial analytics functionality. Users can add and build data, maps, 3D scenes, analytics and apps in the cloud and integrate with the content from ESRI's Living Atlas of the World combining ESRI and user community resources. Users can publish, collaborate with and share their mapping data and analytics resources with other users and applications in desktop and mobile environments. A further development is the release in 2015 by ESRI of ArcGIS Pro which is a redesigned GIS suite integrating the desktop and online environments with sharing and collaboration between ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro [134]. The integration of online platforms into desktop environments is part of the increasing trend towards cloud-based mapping. A second example is GeoNode. Its development commenced in 2009 with work between the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery of World Bank and other partners [135]. As a web-based, open source software under GPL licenses, it enables organizations and general users to easily create catalogs of geospatial data, and to access, share, and visualize data, associated metadata, documents, permissions and maps. Further developments for GeoNode using interoperability and available open source tools such as GeoGig [136] and the GeoTools libraries, lead to this software evolving into a fully distributed and online GIS. As an example, the UN OpenGIS Initiative Platform can be found in Eom [137]. Through the intelligent web mapping era, which is still the current era, there are substantial developments still being researched and developed to build and manipulate ontologies to support information discovery, retrieval, linkage, interoperability, integration and querying (refer to Section 3.2.9). The trend is towards increased automation in the construction of ontologies that can then be used in generating knowledge and gleaning insight into specific application/business processes. The resulting knowledge and insight are being captured and integrated into apps and dashboards that provide summaries, snapshots, analytics and scenarios of current business and application processes (Figure 8). This intelligence and insight is then being used by end users for decision-making and in the context of particular preferences and choice sets or determined by the users.