Platforms for repetitive automated mapping?
I had the same problem last year : a few dozen of maps to produce within three days, same legend, but different locations.
I used this setup :
- vector data in PostGIS
- raster data in GeoTiff (shaded relief)
- cartographic engine : MapServer, with PDF vector output
- batch processing : PHP to automate MapServer, with MapScript PHP
- finalization with Adobe illustrator and a specialized style palette.
It takes a little time to produce and fine-tune the mapfiles, but the gain in time is tremendous. I produced 45 print-quality maps within 3 days.
If you have access to ArcMap, examine the arcpy mapping module:
Arcpy.mapping is a Python scripting module that is part of the ArcPy site package. It gets installed with ArcGIS for Desktop and is available to all licenses. It was designed primarily to manipulate the contents of existing map documents (.mxd) and layer files (.lyr).
and also Data Driven Pages:
Data Driven Pages allow you to quickly and easily create a series of layout pages from a single map document. A feature layer, or index layer, divides the map into sections based on each index feature in the layer and generates one page per index feature.
QGIS is evolving quite rapidly, but it certainly has the core components for automated map production: its map and print composition formats are stored in XML, map composition can be done programmatically via python (e.g. this question) with PyQGIS map compositon.
QGIS now has a Mapbook plugin: Are there any tools / plugins to develop mapbooks using QGIS?