Objective JH-11: Lonboard improvements

[batpad]

Motivation

In the past quarter, we've seen increased usage of lonboard by the communities we serve - to be able to visualize large datasets that were previously not possible to visualize on an interactive web-map. We want to continue improving the state-of-the-art in terms of in-browser rendering of cloud-native geospatial formats, and making these tools easier to use for end-users. We've had a few requests for things like map legends, layer switchers, etc. While currently possible to do with lonboard by piecing together widgets, it is not particularly easy for end-users.

Proposal

We will continue working with the community to see how lonboard integrates with other community GIS efforts. On the lonboard side, we should implement a few features that will make it more powerful / easier to use:

• Bbox selection to select features on the map and be able to use to filter features in Python
• Layer Switcher
• Lonboard extensions / plugin examples: legend, chart widgets
• Map compare / swipe
• Stretch goal: implement "tiling" in Python to be able to dynamically tile large datasets based on the user's viewport

Owners

• @batpad (Development Seed)
• @vgeorge (Development Seed)
• @kylebarron (Development Seed)

Success Criteria

• Have lonboard updated to the latest version of DeckGL
• Implement bounding box selection
• Have a few lonboard widget examples and documentation to make plugins / widgets to interact with lonboard.