A SOA-Based System for Territory Monitoring

Next is a presentation of the complete system architecture, followed by a discussion of the details of the various services. Amongst these services, management and simulation of tactical planning, management of data and streaming video, the system also presents a service for the annotation of the interested spatial objects. Annotation deploys the web services (Alonso, Casati, Kuno, & Machiraju, 2004) exported by OpenStreetMap (OpenStreetMap) with the purpose to exploit the on-line information sources continuously updated by the social networks communities.

Operational Delivery of Customized Earth Observation Data Using Web Coverage Service

Global long term Earth Observation (EO) provides valuable information about the land, ocean, and atmosphere of the Earth. EO data are often archived in specialized data systems managed by the data collector’s system. For the data to be fully utilized, one of the most important aspects is to adopt technologies that will enable users to easily find and obtain needed data in a form that can be readily used with little or no manipulation. Many efforts have been made in this direction but few, if any, data providers can deliver on-demand and operational data to users in customized form. Geospatial Web Service has been considered a promising solution to this problem. This chapter discusses the potential for operational and scalable delivery of on-demand personalized EO data using the interoperable Web Coverage Service (WCS) developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

Geospatial Service Composition in Grid Environments

This chapter presents a workflow enactment system that maintains the robustness of centralized control (using service orchestration), but is enhanced by distributed components called “proxy services” that can communicate with each other to allow for efficient coupling between parallel tasks and avoiding of unnecessary data transfers (using service choreography).

Managing Granularity in Design and Implementation of Geospatial Web Services

Granularity is often ignored when designing geospatial Web services. Choices relating to granularity affect service interfaces, data storage and organization, and XML format design. This chapter highlights the importance of analyzing usage and performance requirements when deciding on granularity choices in the design of geospatial Web services. Often, instead of making design decisions based on these requirements, geospatial services are implemented using default, commonly used techniques which may reduce performance, increase complexity, or fail to fully meet user needs. This chapter discusses the importance of granularity in designing and implementing geospatial Web services and provides common examples that highlight the different approaches to granularity which are available.

Implementing Geospatial Web Services for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is concerned with the provision of hardware, infrastructure, software and data as services on the internet. A key attraction of cloud computing is that the infrastructure from which services are offered is able to scale upwards automatically as the load on the services increases. This chapter examines the potential for offering capabilities of the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS) as a service within a compute cloud. GRASS is a free and open source desktop Geographic Information System (GIS). The chapter describes a prototype service that adopts the Web Processing Service (WPS) standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). A case study is presented applying the prototype in the analysis of satellite imagery. The chapter concludes that the WPS standard can facilitate the provision of geospatial capability in compute clouds.

Linked Data

A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is an information infrastructure for enhancing geospatial data sharing and access. At the moment, the service-oriented second generation of SDI is transitioning to a third generation, which is characterized by user-centric approaches. This new movement closes the gap between classical SDI and user contributed content, also known as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). Public use and acquisition of information provides additional challenges within and beyond the geospatial domain. Linked Data has been suggested recently as a possible overall solution. This notion refers to a best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting resources in the (Semantic) Web. This chapter details the Linked Data approach to SDI and suggests it as a possibility to combine SDI with VGI. Thus, a Spatial Linked Data Infrastructure could apply solutions for Linked Data to classical SDI standards. The chapter highlights different implementing strategies, gives examples, and argues for benefits, while at the same time trying to outline possible fallbacks; hopeful this contribution will enlighten a way towards a single shared information space.

The Open Geospatial Consortium and Web Services Standards

This chapter discusses the role of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) geospatial standards as a key aspect in the development, deployment, and use of Geospatial Web Services. The OGC vision for web services is the complete integration of geographic (location) and time information into the very fabric of both the internet and the web. Today, the Geospatial Web Services encompasses applications ranging from as simple as geo-tagging a photograph to mobile driving directions to sophisticated spatial data infrastructure portal applications orchestrating workflows for complex scientific modeling applications. In all of these applications, location and usually time are required information elements. In many of these applications, standards are the “glue” that allow the easy and seamless integration of location and time in applications - whether simple mass market or integration into enterprise workflows. These standards may be very lightweight, such as GeoRSS, or more sophisticated such as the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) and Geography Markup Language (GML).

Semantic Web Enabled Intelligent Geoprocessing Service Chaining

In a service-oriented environment, large volumes of geospatial data and diverse geoprocessing functions are accessible as services. An intelligent mechanism is required to facilitate discovery and integration of geospatial data and services so as to enable semi-automated or automated geospatial knowledge discovery. This chapter addresses key research issues for Semantic Web enabled intelligent geoprocessing service chaining. A set of applicable solutions are described, including a common data and service environment, semantic descriptions of geoprocessing services, and a general process for intelligent generation of geoprocessing workflow. Some use cases illustrate the applicability of such solutions. A proof-of-concept prototype system is implemented and some use cases help to demonstrate the applicability of the current approach.

Ontological and Semantic Technologies for Geospatial Portals

A geospatial portal is a repository of distributed geospatial data, tools and services, and supports the publishing, management, search, use and sharing of the resources. Geospatial portals have been developed as clearinghouses, metadata portals, data warehousing, and recently geospatial portals incorporated the Service Oriented Architecture and distributed computing to make service-oriented portals. In addition to software and computational challenges, ontology and semantics play an increasingly important role in geospatial portals due to the demand of interoperability. The interoperation and communication of data, tools and services become critical when heterogeneous resources are consolidated and exchanged on geospatial portals. This chapter provides an updated overview of geospatial portals followed by detailed discussion on how the ontological and semantic technologies are incorporated into geospatial portals. Three recent research and practice of geospatial portals are briefly introduced as the case studies of service-oriented portals.

VISION

Over the past years, many research projects and initiatives have provided heterogeneous building blocks for the so called Semantic Geospatial Web. The number of proposed architectures and developed components impede a definition of the state of the art, comparisons of existing solutions, and the identification of open research challenges. This chapter provides the missing generic specification of central building blocks. Focusing on service based solutions; VISION (VIsionary Semantic service Infrastructure with ONtologies) is introduced as a means to depict required components at a generalized level. The VISION architecture highlights the most important services for the Semantic Geospatial Web and brings structure to the numerous past and present partial solutions. Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) is introduced as a central concept for encapsulating environmental models. This has great potential to be a major part of future information infrastructures. The German-funded GDI-GRID project serves illustrating examples for MaaS and arising interoperability challenges. This paper will focus on VISION, and compare it with two other recent research projects and conclude by identifying major areas for future research on Semantic Geospatial Web Services and supporting infrastructures.