Designing Service Architectures for Distributed Geoprocessing: Challenges and Future Directions

TLDR

The study investigates the feasibility of using Spatial Data Infrastructure services as a foundation for distributed, service‑oriented geoprocessing. The authors built a prototype application that employs Web Feature Services, Web Map Services, a Gazetteer Service, a Catalogue Service, and Geoprocessing Services to assess fire‑damage areas from land‑cover data, and they describe its distributed architecture and implementation details. They conclude that OGC specifications support service‑oriented geographic architectures, but question the scalability of Web Feature Services for large geoprocessing datasets and call for further research.

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we study the feasibility of using services offered by a Spatial Data Infrastructure as a basis for distributed service oriented geoprocessing. By developing a prototype we demonstrate that a Spatial Data Infrastructure facilitates rapid development of applications that solve typical problems for an existing risk management application. The prototype provides users with a distributed application that enables the assessment of fire damage areas based on land cover data in a given area. The services involved in the application include: Web Feature Services, Web Map Services, a Gazetteer Service, a Catalogue Service, and Geoprocessing Services. We present the architecture of the application and describe details about implementation‐specific issues. We conclude that current OGC specifications provide a sound basis for developing service oriented architectures for geographic applications; however, in particular for geoprocessing applications, we question the feasibility of the use of Web Feature Services as data sources for larger amounts of data and call for further research in this direction.