Geospatial Service Platform Research Articles

A service-oriented collaborative approach to disaster decision support by integrating geospatial resources and task chain

The benefits of geospatial technologies in disaster management have reached a consensus in the international community. However, immediate integration and orchestration of the rich geospatial resources (data, algorithms, computing resources, etc.) in an emergency remain challenging due to the four gaps: encoding gap, source gap, knowledge gap, and network gap. Aiming to bridge the “resource islands”, we propose a service-oriented collaborative approach to disaster decision support by integrating geospatial resources and task chain as domain knowledge into a distributed environment. Data contributors, model contributors, GIS developers, and business experts collaboratively build a spatial decision support system (SDSS) that integrates various resources and knowledge. When disaster strikes, responders collaboratively perform emergency tasks to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time by leveraging the SDSS. The proposed approach is implemented as a Geospatial service platform for Disaster Response (GeoDR). Four joint exercises and the operation in relevant institutions in China demonstrate its capability to facilitate timely and effective responses to natural disasters.

Geospatial Service Platform for Education and Research

Abstract. We propose to advance the scientific understanding through applications of geospatial service platforms, which can help students and researchers investigate various scientific problems in a Web-based environment with online tools and services. The platform also offers capabilities for sharing data, algorithm, and problem-solving knowledge. To fulfil this goal, the paper introduces a new course, named "Geospatial Service Platform for Education and Research", to be held in the ISPRS summer school in May 2014 at Wuhan University, China. The course will share cutting-edge achievements of a geospatial service platform with students from different countries, and train them with online tools from the platform for geospatial data processing and scientific research. The content of the course includes the basic concepts of geospatial Web services, service-oriented architecture, geoprocessing modelling and chaining, and problem-solving using geospatial services. In particular, the course will offer a geospatial service platform for handson practice. There will be three kinds of exercises in the course: geoprocessing algorithm sharing through service development, geoprocessing modelling through service chaining, and online geospatial analysis using geospatial services. Students can choose one of them, depending on their interests and background. Existing geoprocessing services from OpenRS and GeoPW will be introduced. The summer course offers two service chaining tools, GeoChaining and GeoJModelBuilder, as instances to explain specifically the method for building service chains in view of different demands. After this course, students can learn how to use online service platforms for geospatial resource sharing and problem-solving.