\begin{abstract}
The proliferate of the WWW allows computer users to have instance access to
large quantity of information. Some of these information, such as weather
data, population density, etc, is correlated by their geographic relationship.
We intents to provide tools to help laying out the geographically related
information.  Two different, image-based and VRML-based, systems are developed.
The image-based systems harness the computational power of parallel computer for
rendering and delivers the result as a sequence of images.  Our research
investigates the issues, such as data distribution, load-balancing and
communication, related to
parallel rendering.  Our experience of computer graphics that acquired from
the implementation of the image-based system is applied to develop the
VRML-based alternative, which uses a Web standard to deliver the information.
The VRML-based system stores the terrain data in a commercial database, so
that the user can dynamically select a interested region.
Because of the severe rendering capability limitation on a typical web
client, a real-time wavelet terrain model optimization algorithm is developed
and implemented. This optimization algorithm reduces the complexity of the
terrain model, while retains the distinguish terrain features.  As a result,
a quality of the presentation can be maintained even on less capable clients.
With a comparison of the two systems, this thesis concludes only a hybrid system
can efficient utilize the computational resource to provide a high quality
rendering of the terrain data.
\end{abstract}
