Use of NWGISS to Implement a Data Node in China’s Spatial Information Grid

Geospatial data are those that can be associated with location information on the Earth. Because of their importance, both public and private organizations have collected considerable geospatial data (King 1999, King et al. 2003, McDonald and Di 2003). Such data is the dominant form in volume. It has been widely used in many fields of applications. China has accumulated large-scale, heterogeneous spatial resources, among them, continuing to establish a fundamental spatial database, spatial data processing and application software, spatial facilities, and instruments (Guo et al. 2004). Consistent access and sharing of spatial information are generally considered to be challenging problems due to the volume and complexity of processing heterogeneous and distributed data. Technology for extensive GIS application is needed to implement effective access and sharing of the large amount of isomerous and distributed spatial data. Many approaches have been applied to implementing sharing and integration of spatial information, Grid technology, OpenGIS and Web services are the three most important (Tang and Jing 2004). The Grid technique, first proposed by Ian Foster et al. (2001), is a flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions, and resources. It has been a rising research field in recent years (Shao and Li 2005). There have been some studies on integrating grid technology with spatial information applications. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) started research in 2001 (Tang and Jing 2004) on a prototype system to share satellite data and spatial information in global areas. In China, the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) first proposed SIG as a system, to integrate grid technology with spatial information applications. It conducted original and fundamental research on SIG architecture. Beginning in