Building Service Oriented Applications on top of a Spatial Data Infrastructure - A Forest Fire Assessment Example

Abstract

In this paper we study the feasibility of using services offered by a Spatial Data Infrastructure as the basis for distributed service oriented geoprocessing. By developing a prototype we demonstrate that a Spatial Data Infrastructure facilitates rapid development of applications that solve real problems. 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, and Gazetteer Service, Catalogue Service, and Geoprocessing services. We present the architecture of the application and describe details about implementations specific issues. We conclude that the 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.