MalaGIS

Sharing GIS Technologies, Resources and News.

When working on marine GIS projects, we often need to find public data — nearshore bathymetry and topography, ocean current and wave forecasts, satellite remote sensing imagery, in-situ observations from marine stations... In the past, such data were scattered across various maritime institutions, making them time-consuming and laborious to locate, with inconsistent formats. On World Ocean Day 2026 (June 8), the Ministry of Natural Resources released the "Second Batch of Open and Shared Marine Data Catalog", and the data products listed have been simultaneously made available on the National Marine Big Data Service Platform (Ocean Cloud). Today, we recommend this easy-to-use national-level marine data download platform.

About the National Marine Big Data Service Platform (Ocean Cloud)

The National Marine Big Data Service Platform, also known as Ocean Cloud, is a national-level online marine data service platform organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and constructed and operated by the National Marine Data and Information Service. Its official website is:

https://oceancloud.nmdis.org.cn/home

First launched on World Ocean Day (June 8, 2024), the platform is China's first national-level marine big data service platform. It integrates multi-source data resources including the national global ocean stereoscopic observation network, maritime departments, and research institutes, providing one-stop services such as data search, online preview, free download, on-request access, online computation and analysis, and product customization. The data originates from national marine observation surveys and operational production systems. The data are clearly categorized, covering everything from nearshore observations to global ocean hydrography, meteorology, bathymetry, and satellite remote sensing, basically meeting the needs of common marine GIS projects.

Platform data are continuously updated. The "Second Batch of Open and Shared Marine Data Catalog" released on June 8 adds, on the basis of the first batch's 37 products, updated 2024–2025 China marine observation standard datasets, integrated global ocean hydro-meteorological and bathymetric/topographic datasets, and ten new global ocean 3D temperature-salinity, current, wave, air temperature, and pressure fusion datasets, as well as seven global ocean hydro-meteorological statistical analysis products. According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, since the release of the first catalog in 2024, the platform has provided data services to over one hundred users more than 600,000 times, totaling over 100 TB and more than 600 million records — a substantial volume.

Read More >>

Recently, while (pretending to) study seriously by watching short videos, I often came across information about Xiaomi Maps. A popular speculation is that Xiaomi's nationwide road testing of the Yu9 is not just for vehicle validation but also for data collection. It sounded quite plausible. So I decided to verify it. Due to my limited connections and possible product confidentiality, I could not obtain substantial inside information. However, I have organized the publicly available information I could find.

PS: Additional information is welcome.

Read More >>

In early June 2026, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) officially released the OGC Features and Geometries JSON standard, commonly known as JSON-FG, as document number 21-045r1, version 1.0.0. After a quick review of the OGC standard details, the gist is that it addresses some capability gaps in GeoJSON, further expands GeoJSON's application scenarios, unifies specifications, and reduces private attributes. If you work with WebGIS, OGC APIs, or vector data exchange tools, you can follow along to understand what JSON-FG adds and assess whether your existing projects need to support it.

Read More >>

GeoServer is an open-source map server under OSGeo, playing a core role in WebGIS systems for spatial data publishing and OGC standard services. Whether it is classic services like WMS, WFS, WCS, or integration with data sources such as PostGIS, Shapefile, and GeoTIFF, GeoServer remains a common choice in many domestic government, land, emergency, and other industry projects.

Read More >>

QGIS is one of the most widely used open-source desktop GIS applications globally. Vector editing, spatial analysis, cartographic output, the Processing toolchain, and 3D views are all high-frequency capabilities in daily production. On May 29, 2026, the QGIS project released two maintenance versions on the same day: 4.0.3 and 3.44.11, targeting the new QGIS 4 mainline and the 3.44 long-term support branch respectively. Based on the commit history in the GitHub Releases, this article summarizes the key updates. Both versions focus on stability fixes and experience polishing, making them suitable for teams running production projects to evaluate upgrades.

Read More >>

CesiumJS is one of the core engines for 3D earth and 3D map development on the web. It is widely used in photorealistic 3D, oblique photography, BIM, and other scenarios, and serves as the "standard client" for the 3D Tiles ecosystem. On June 1, 2026, the Cesium team released CesiumJS 1.142, focusing on large-scale data rendering performance, the integration of vector tiles with 3D Tiles, and improvements to the low-level BufferPrimitive rendering capabilities. Here is an introduction based on the official Releases.

Read More >>

From May 27 to 29, the 24th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 16th Beijing Municipal People's Congress was held. At the meeting, the Beijing Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation Regulations (Draft) (hereinafter referred to as the "Draft Regulations") was submitted for deliberation. The draft consists of 8 chapters and 66 articles, and intends to replace the Beijing Surveying and Mapping Regulations enacted in 2003 through an "abolish the old and establish the new" approach.

Read More >>

When working on digital twins, unified city dashboards, campus inspections, or drone survey result displays, you often need to show city white models (untextured 3D buildings). Traditional GIS data processing workflows usually involve assembling models in desktop software and then importing them into an engine, which comes with significant debugging and collaboration overhead. If you could quickly select an area in the browser, turn buildings and roads into a rotatable 3D scene, and even directly export common 3D formats for other systems, it would greatly simplify many GIS and web visualization scenarios.

In recent years, web-based 3D technology stacks have become increasingly mature, and more projects are bridging open map data with front-end rendering. I recently came across a very popular project, cartesiancs/map3d, which can generate urban 3D white models from OSM data with one click and export them in GLB format. Let me introduce it today.

Read More >>

On May 9, the 2026 Forbes China Economic Forum was held at Sias University in Zhengzhou. In an interview, Zheng Qiang, a Distinguished Professor at Zhejiang University, stated that he does not agree with the concept that “Chinese college graduates are facing employment difficulties.” He said, “It’s not that they can’t find jobs, but that satisfying jobs are truly hard to find.” He advised college students to “complain less and not be too picky. How about starting with a low salary and getting a high salary later?”

After watching the video, I was a bit speechless. Reflecting on some trivial matters from my own work experience over the past few years, I’m writing this article to analyze, from the GIS industry perspective I have observed, the question: “How about starting with a low salary and getting a high salary later?”

Read More >>

Peers in the GIS industry usually spend their days tracking technology releases and tenders. Every now and then, we hear news about a company going public. Has anyone else ever wondered, like I have, exactly which companies in our field are publicly listed? How big is the market‑cap gap between them? Are any of them worth a closer look? Today I’ve lined up some familiar names, grouped into platform software, remote sensing applications, surveying engineering, automotive & location intelligence, plus a few overseas heavyweights — hopefully a useful reference for anyone who needs it.

A note from the editor: The share prices come from public market data and media reports. The rough sizes are mostly calculated by multiplying the stock price by the total number of shares, with RMB figures converted at approximate exchange rates. Many of these companies straddle several sectors; I’ve only focused on the part that is closely tied to geospatial technology. This is purely industry information exchange and should not be taken as investment advice.

Read More >>