Emerging Spatial Information Systems and Applications

Peisheng Zhao, George Mason University, USA
Genong Yu, George Mason University, USA
Liping Di, George Mason University, USA
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As Web service technologies mature in recent years, a growing number of geospatial Web services designed to interoperate spatial information over the network have emerged. Geospatial Web services are changing the way in which spatial information systems and applications are designed, developed, and deployed. This chapter introduces all aspects of geospatial Web services from service-oriented architecture to service implementation. It covers the life cycle of geospatial Web services in terms of geospatial interoperable standards, including publish, discovery, invocation, and orchestration. To make geospatial Web services more intelligent, semantic issues about geospatial data and services are discussed here. Furthermore, the applications of standard-compliant geospatial Web services are also reviewed.
Web service technology promises standard-based information interoperability. There are many different definitions for Web services (Andersson, Greenspun, & Grumet, 2003; Booth et al., 2004; Hirsch & Just, 2003; Mateos, Zunino, & Campo, 2005; Skonnard, 2002; Vaughan-Nichols, 2002). In essence, a Web service is a modular, self-describing, and self-contained software application which is discoverable and accessible through standard interfaces over the network (Tsalgatidou & Pilioura, 2002).
The core technology associated with Web service is the standardization of data/message...