Gulf of Mexico – BP Oilspill tracking application
Last weekend, I’ve created a web application, that monitors the BP oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico.
http://giswhat.be/oilspill2010/oilspill.html
The application is completely based on HTML & JavaScipt, JQuery and OpenLayers to be precise. The data is comming from 2 different ArcGIS Server REST Services, located in 2 different locations, and not by me (so don’t blame me for the bad performance). If you look at the source, you’ll find the links.
Some technical stuff: I’m using 2 different types of layers, first I’m using a WMS Service, hosted by ESRI’s ArcGIS Server, and for a second layer, I’m using the REST API of ArcGIS Server. But instead of using it with the ESRI JavaScript library, I’m using the OpenLayers implementation, and it’s actually working flawless! Good job of the OpenLayers dudes. When I was creating the application, I’ve noticed that the REST service is actually a bit faster than the WMS service. Perhaps they were caching the REST calls, and not the WMS calls (which, if I recall correctly, is not possible inside AGS)
There are different layers available, one with the current situation, and 2 with forecast information. The last one is with information from BP on it.
Hope you enjoy it! 
Hey Wouter!
This is actually very interesting. I’m forwarding you here to a paper I wrote for an ethics class on how to maybe solve the gulf leak with an open source alike model.
You can read it on my site :
http://www.nickveenhof.be/blog/call-action-using-open-source-initiatives-stop-leak-gulf