Summary
The main objective of the work was to find and use advanced visualization tools for creating a dynamic interactive web map of the railway network development in the Czech Republic. For this purpose, data on the location of Czech railway lines from 1827 to 2022 were collected and compiled. Later on, a web map called Railway Network Development in the Czech Republic was designed and is published on the thesis websites.
The first step was to research the development of the railway network and available data sources to create a geodatabase of the railway network development. The periods of development were described and the most important changes in these periods were presented. This description was then also used in the final web map. Furthermore, the technologies for visualisation of spatio-temporal data in the form of a dynamic interactive web map were compared. The most important finding of this step was the technology that was subsequently used in the creation of the final map. This technology is the Leaflet JavaScript library.
The practical part of the thesis was divided into two parts. The first part involved the creation of a geodatabase of the evolution of the railway network from 1827 to 2022. This creation was carried out in ArcGIS Pro. For the geometry of the existing lines, railway line data from the spatial database Data50 from the ČÚZK was used. This data was modified and supplemented with the observed time attributes. In addition, lines that have already been extinct, including relocations with more than 200 metres deviation from the original location, were digitalised, mainly from book sources. The geometry of some aband sections was taken from the OpenStreetMap database. The resulting database was exported to Shapefile, Esri Geodatabase, JSON and GeoJSON formats and is freely downloadable here.
In the second part, a dynamic interactive web map of the Railway Network Development in the Czech Republic was created. The map was built on Leaflet technology. The map allows the display of individual years and based on the displayed year, additional content is displayed in the form of informative text, which is divided into six periods (chapters) and alerts the user to interesting changes in the map by a link. The user can also view all railway attributes by clicking on the rail. The source code of the web map is suitably commented, while the text of the thesis server as documentation of the procedure.
Finally, a website about the diploma thesis was created, which contains the created data and a web map Development of the railway network in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, an A2 format was designed presenting the key aspects of the thesis.