GeoBrain-A Web Services based Geospatial Knowledge Building System

Huge volumes of geospatial data have been collected by both public and private sectors. In order for the geospatial data to be useful, information has to be extracted from the data and converted to knowledge. However, currently it is very difficult for most of users to obtain the geospatial data and to turn them into useful information and knowledge. In order for geospatial information and knowledge to become the mainstream ones so that everyone can obtain and use them at will, geospatial knowledge building systems are needed urgently to automate the path from geospatial data to information and knowledge. This paper presents GeoBrain, a prototype geospatial knowledge building system currently under development. GeoBrain is a three-tier standard-based open geospatial web service system which fully automates data discovery, access, and integration steps of the geospatial knowledge discovery process under the interoperable service framework. It also automates a range of geo-computational services at a limited number of geospatial domains and greatly facilitates the construction of complex geocomputation services and modeling. The paper discusses the geo-object and geo-tree concepts that the system is based on, the system architecture, the interoperable geospatial web service framework, and the individual components of the system. The paper also discusses the use of the system in NASA EOSDIS data environment to make peta-bytes of NASA EOS data and information, especially those in ECS data pools, easily accessible by broader user communities.