Geospatial Web Service Integration and Mashups for Water Resource Applications

Water resources management is critical due to its importance for human lives. In this context, we have developed a web-based system for hydrological applications that integrates geospatial processing services and mapping mashups to provide an interactive and user-friendly geoportal interface to the configuration and execution of scientific models. The server side provides hydrological model logic through a library of distributed geospatial processing services that prepares and presents all geospatial data –satellite imagery, cartography, digital elevation models, and sensor measurements– necessary for running two popular river runoff models. The geoportal’s client side facilitates catalogue searching for appropriate geospatial data, interacts with the geoprocessing services according to the hydrological model parameters, and displays the results as a web mapping mashup using the Google Maps API and data retrieved by different geospatial web services to provide quick feedback about the status and behaviour of the hydrological model, in order to assist and improve decision making. * Corresponding author.