How to use our own data to create map layer dynamically?

Question

We are creating a speed limit map application using different colors to highlight street with different speed limits (similar to ITO speed limit map: http://www.itoworld.com/map/124?lon=-79.37151&lat=43.74796&zoom=12).

The problem we have is that we are conducting our own research and have our own speed limit data instead of pulling the data from OpenStreetMap or Google Map like ITO map. We also need to create a data storage in order to dynamically update the map as we add more speed limit information in the future.

Is there anyway to create our own instance of OpenStreetMap and replace only the speed limit information with our own data? We don't have any vector data and we have no experience working with them.

Is there any suggestion of tools to use for creating highlighting layers based on the speed limit we have? Is OpenLayers a good option?

Any help is appreciated, thank you very much.

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Update 2013/11/20

Thank you very much for your answers, now we have a much better understanding of your problem. This is a university design project so we basically have no budget. We are looking for:

1) A basic "base map" that include the basic tile information (openstreetmap seems a good choice since google map api doesn't provide free road information as long as we can find)

2) A geo data server that can host our own street speed limit data (looks like geoserver and mapserver are good choices), or a design simple database that can fulfill our need(doesn't know is it possible yet)

3) A plotting tool that can render our speed limit data as "group of lines" on the map since these data will be changed frequently (openlayers and leaflet are good candidates).

Is there anything else needed?

Answer 1

What you want to do is a trivial programming task once you have decided a few things:

These are probably the three biggest questions you need to answer. I added some commentary, but look at each of these questions beyond this post to find what works for you.

Who do you want to use for your map? Since you only have one type of data you will want to display that data on someone else's nice looking map. The big choices are Bing, Google, OpenLayers/OSM, and ESRI. Your choice will most likely be driven by the licensing of the above services and if you are willing to pay or not. A need to support mobile devices may also factor into your decision. Since the map is what your users will see, choose the best looking map you can afford.

How will you serve up your data? You have several options to serve your speed limit data. GeoServer and MapServer and ESRI are some popular mapping software packages. If you only displaying a few layers of data all mapping software will be overkill. The actual software to render your map data will most likely affect only your pocket book, so free is good here usually.

Tiles vs Lines You will server your data as either a group of lines sent to the browser, or as pre-rendered tiles to be loaded on top of the map. If you data changes frequently you will want to serve it dynamically as line data (an array of points.) If your data does not change frequently, you should consider tiling your data. Tiling involves pre-rending of the entire map at all zoom levels. This allows the map to be loaded very fast and this how almost all base maps are rendered. The downside is that the tile generation can take a long amount of time and tiles can take a large amount of space.

Answer 2

This is a very broad question. There are many components to drawing your own speed limit map.

On the front-end, there is a web browser map interface. OpenLayers is good at that. There are plenty of other tools that can do this as well, such as Leaflet or even Google Maps API.

Next is something to provide the actual speed limit route data. This can be served as a vector layer or a raster layer. There are plenty of tools here, too. UMN Mapserver is free and reasonably good. ESRI makes a whole fleet of products in this area as well.

The speed limit route data also needs to be saved somehow. This can be done in files or in a database such as PostGIS. Again, lots of great options.

It is the role of the system architect to determine which technologies to employ to solve the problem.