The Territorial Information System of the Lombardia Region, in Italy, is responsible for the creation, distribution and updating of the principal databases for general use. The definition "general use" sets such databases at the "base" of all databases for a specialized use, that each General Direction develops within its own competences. The users of the Region needed to aggregate and publish the entire regional territorial information, making it available both to axpert and non-expert users.

The system, thus, was designed with two different interfaces. A "basic navigation and consultation" mode, for those users that needs a very simple consultation to "see the territory", without advanced cartography tools. An advanced consultation interface, enabling the use as a geographical "base" for users involved with specialized applications.

The diffusion of the two main raster databases (Technical Regional Map and digital colour orthophoto) presented a technical problem due to the big dimension of the data. A remarkable number of high resolution images (beyond 800) brought the whole structure of the data beyond 100 Gigabyte.

Planetek Italia has developed a Web system for the General Direction of Territory and Urbanism of the Lombardy Region, based on Cart@net, to give on-line access to the whole raster and vector database of the organization. The website is available at the address www.cartografia.regione.lombardia.it.

The technology adopted for the distribution of the images, optimised for the web, allows the visualization of images via a common browser, therefore allowing a capillary diffusion without the need for acquisition of specialized software for the single users, neither the need for specific staff training. The software ER Mapper has been used to process the data. Image Web Server is the product that allows the distribution of images via Internet to common web browsers, and, using a free plug-in, to ESRI`s ArcView.