Using SensorML to construct a geoprocessing e-Science workflow model under a sensor web environment

Many achievements in web-based geoprocessing focus on logically chaining Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services, for example using Business Process Execution Language to orchestrate web services that are interfaced through the OGC Web Processing Service. For e-Science application in a sensor web environment, how to internally integrate the sensor system, observation, and processes (physical and non-physical) as a geoprocessing e-Science workflow model is a critical issue. The OGC Sensor Model Language offers the possibility to construct a geoprocessing e-Science workflow model in the form of observation processes. We propose a construction method for a geoprocessing e-Science workflowmodel that integrates logical and physical processes into a composite process chain for sensor observations. The three phases of geoprocessing e-Science workflow creation are abstract process chain modeling, process chain instantiation, and process chain workflow execution. An experiment on chaining-related sub-processes for deriving the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index of Hubei Province (China) was conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposed workflow model. & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.