Web-based Sharing of a Geo-processing Chain: Combination and Dissemination of Data and Services

The recent integration of the internet with geo-information systems (GIS) has evolved the concept of Internet Distributed GeoInformation Services. Numerous research and implementation studies of standards of metadata, geo-libraries, data storage and retrieval etc. are being done giving way to exchange and share of geo-information. However, very little effort has gone into making it possible to share process objects, or representations of processes of GIS use. Currently in most cases, the innovative algorithms for a certain geo-processing technique are developed for a dedicated purpose with a limited testing on the required prototype. One of the main reason of these problems is that we do not have a standard way to package geo-processes and making them available for testing [Regnauld, 2006]. If the geo-processing model itself is shared, and made understandable to the research communities, the risk of duplications and ambiguities in geo-processing can be taken care of. The model sharing would be highly useful to track the sequence of operations, exact criteria of conversion and transformation of spatial data, input/output specifications of processes, model constraints etc. Here we present a framework of a combination of geo-processing services for a dedicated application of land subsidence data visualization and interpretation. We combine different geo-data sources to correlate the local data (for example, cadaster, land use, water levels etc.) with PS-InSAR land subsidence data. An ESRI ModelBuilder tool is used to clearly describe the subsidence data classification with respect to the cadaster and height data. The geo-processing model to carry out this visualization and interpretation of PS-InSAR data is described step by step in form of a sequential model. The future vision of the research is to follow and implement the proposed standards of OGC-WPS architecture to suit our algorithms and eventually share the data and the geo-processing services.