Building and applying geographical information system Grids

We discuss the development and application of Web Service-based Geographical Information System Grids. Following the WS-I+ approach of building Grids on Web Service standards, we have developed Data Grid components for archival and real-time data, map generating services that can be used to build user interfaces, information services for storing both stateless and stateful metadata, and service orchestration and management tools. Our goal is to support dynamically assembled Grid service collections that combine both Geographical Information System services with more traditional Grid capabilities such as file transfer and remote code execution. We are applying these tools to problems in earthquake modeling and forecasting, but we are attempting to build general purpose tools by using and extending appropriate standards.