On Quality of Service and Geo-service Compositions

Geographic information services (geo-services) are gaining popularity as an efficient and costeffective framework for integrating geo-information systems, within and between enterprises, to enhance enterprise business processes. Geo-services can be chained dynamically to create customised geo-information and value-added services and therefore offer a business opportunity for disparate partners to collaborate and address the needs of consumers in the marketplace. Nonetheless, commercial exploitation of geo-service technology demands a computing platform that facilitates chaining of geo-services taking into account user requirements, both functional and quality of service (QoS), and that is capable of handling changes in the marketplace. We call such a platform a geo-service infrastructure. A geo-service infrastructure enables geo-services possibly offered by different enterprises and with potentially different capabilities to be discovered, composed and executed to obtain customized information and value-added services suited to user needs. In this paper we prescribe a geo-service infrastructure and define how it facilitates QoS-aware chaining of geo-services. We identify the basic components of the infrastructure and define their main functions. We also elaborate on the design principles upon which the infrastructure is based and explore how the infrastructure can be realized.