Paving the path to a geoscience gateway

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web processing service interface specification provides a means to perform web-based processes on distributed geodata and to produce thereby web-based geoinformation. However, the complexity of geodata often requires multiple processing steps. These complex scenarios can be addressed by chaining multiple web processing services to a geo-processing workflow. The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) as the de-facto standard will be used for these workflows. The special nature of standardised OGC web services has to be taken into account for modelling these workflows. A client is missing which allows the integration of existing OGC web services without specifying additional descriptions such as WSDL documents for all participants in BPEL workflows and thereby bridging the OGC and ‘mainstream’ IT world. This leverages the fully web-based integration of distributed OGC services and data. These facts were the starting point for this study to build a client, which is able to model and execute BPEL-based workflows and to integrate multiple standardised and web-based data and processing services. The applicability of the client for web-based information integration will be demonstrated for a real-time risk management scenario in the context of location-based services.

Abstract. The aim of a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is to make data available for the economical and societal benefit to a wide audience. A geoportal typically provides access to spatial data and associated web services in an SDI, facilitating the discovery, display, editing and analysis of data. In contrast, a spatial information infrastructure (SII) should provide access to information, i.e. data that has been processed, organized and presented so as to be useful. Thematic maps are an example of the representation of spatial information. An SII geoportal requires intelligence to orchestrate (automatically coordinate) web services that prepare, discover and present information, instead of data, to the user. We call this an intelligent geoportal. The Open Geospatial Consortium's Web Processing Service (WPS) standard provides the rules for describing the input and output of any type of spatial process. In this paper we present the results of an evaluation of two orchestration platforms: the 52° North framework and ZOO project. We evaluated the frameworks' orchestration capabilities for producing thematic maps. Results of the evaluation show that both frameworks have potential to facilitate orchestration in an intelligent geoportal, but that some functionality is still lacking; lack of semantic information and usability of the framework; these limitations creates barriers for the wide spread use of the frameworks. Before, the frameworks can be used for advance orchestration these limitations need to be addressed. The results of our evaluation of these frameworks, both with their respective strengths and weaknesses, can guide developers to choose the framework best suitable for their specific needs.

This dataset contains the results of the WPS tier and quality report presented in the thesis Automatic evaluation of geospatial data quality using web services. The thesis' main goal was to develop a web service able to evaluate the quality of geospatial datasets using the standardized interface of Web Processing Service (WPS) in a fully automatic way. WPS is an open specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) that defines an interface aiming to publish, use, discovery and binding geospatial processes. In the proposed architecture of the quality control service, the WPS tier plays the role of interface between clients and the evaluation procedures. This dataset contains the files used in the experiment to test the implementation of the WPS tier, which includes the quality reports. In order to test the WPS tier, we ran three essays, one for each service developed: (w1) topological consistency service, (w2) completeness service, and (w3) positional accuracy (planimetry) service. These services implement quality evaluation procedures described in the Brazilian standard of geospatial data quality, named CQDG (http://www.geoportal.eb.mil.br/). We tested these services using data from the matching testbed (https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2017180). These essays are summarized in Fig_Overview_of_requests.png. The first essay, named W1, checked the topological consistency service. There are four requests: w1-01 to w1-04, with their correspondent responses. The W2 essay evaluated the implementation of the completeness service. This essay has four data inputs: (1) Test: the test dataset (matching testbed S7P); (2) Reference: the reference dataset (matching testbed B7P); (3) ScaleDenominator: the scale of test dataset, used in sampling (1:25,000); and (4) SamplingStrategy: the sampling strategy to be adopted when calculating the commission and omission rates. There are six requests: w2-01 to w2-06, with their correspondent responses. The last essay for the WPS tier, named W3, evaluated the implementation of the positional accuracy (planimetry) service, which accomplishes the automatic quality procedures for positional accuracy of planimetry in the Brazilian standard. The output values are: (1) CQDG:301: the value of quality category; (2) ER90: 90% percentile of planimetric errors; and (3) RMS: root mean square (RMS) of planimetric errors. They can be combined into a quality report in ISO 19157-2 XML format. There are 33 requests: w3-01 to w3-03, w3-040 to w3-049, w3-140 to w3-149, w3-240 to w3-249, with their correspondent responses. The first three requests used the dataset S1A (see matching testbed), and the last 30 requests used 10 datasets with random disturbance with a standard displacement of 5 m (see matching testbed).

• A data service system for the selected SMAP data and its derivative data products over CONUS is developed. • All map and geoprocessing services are implemented via the OGC standard interface. • The data service system is interoperable with web and desktop clients. • Monitoring and analyzing U.S. cropland soil moisture conditions are significantly simplified. Soil moisture is an essential parameter to understand crop conditions throughout the growing season. Collecting soil moisture data by field observation is labor-intensive, especially when attempting to obtain Conterminous United States (CONUS) geographic coverage. In addition, using soil moisture for assessing current and future crop conditions is best realized by combining soil moisture estimates with concurrent observations of crop conditions. However, until recently, this capability has not been available to the public. In this paper, we present an interoperable data service application system, the Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics (Crop-CASMA) system, that facilitates the retrieval, analysis, visualization, and sharing of soil moisture data for the CONUS. This system delivers a variety of satellite remote sensing based data products that are derived from Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Level-4 data and SMAP Thermal Hydraulic disaggregation of Soil Moisture (THySM) data, as well as vegetation index data derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations. To make services interoperable and reusable, all data products are disseminated via Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) interface standards. Additionally, a suite of geoprocessing operations, such as geospatial statistics, time-series profile generation, PDF map production, and image composition, has been implemented in the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) interface standard. The implementation shows the proposed web service system can significantly simplify the mapping and quantitative analysis of soil moisture and crop condition over U.S. cropland. In addition, it is interoperable with GIS software and has been successfully integrated with web-based applications.

OGC (open geospatial consortium) has developed the implementation specifications especially WMS (Web map service) and WFS (Web feature service) which facilitate GIS data dissemination including the map image distribution for visualization and online GIS data exchange. WPS (Web processing service) is also one of the OGC specifications for processing service which allow GIS functions available on the Internet. This paper reports the implementation and development of WPS which enables user to perform geospatial processing with data requested from another WFS site. Spatial databases are used as spatial engine to carry out the geoprocessing function. Oracle spatial, PostGIS and MySQL are the spatial databases which are tested in this research. WPS request form is adapted by applying SQL statement to be used for calling function from spatial database, and also to simplify and shorten the request form. The result clearly shows the success of implementation of this concept by testing the implemented WPS with available external WFS to get new information through the spatial engine available from the desired databases.

Currently, the research work of SIG (Spatial Information Grid) technology mostly emphasizes on the spatial data sharing in grid environment, while the importance of spatial computing resources is ignored. In order to implement the sharing and cooperation of spatial computing resources in grid environment, this paper does a systematical research of the key technologies to construct Spatial Computing Node based on the WPS (Web Processing Service) specification by OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium). And a framework of Spatial Computing Node is designed according to the features of spatial computing resources. Finally, a prototype of Spatial Computing Node is implemented and the relevant verification work under the environment is completed.

Large amounts of valuable geosciences data have been collected due to the advances in digital earth technology. How to provide an efficient way through which researchers can easily retrieve desired data to facilitate data analysis and system modeling poses great challenges to the geosciences community. This paper presents a Geo-web services based system aimed to enhance geospatial data searching and visualization. The system provides an interoperable way of searching and accessing high quality geospatial data from multi-source and multi-discipline geographic data repositories through the use of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web services. It is in conformity with OGC Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) specification to play a "directory" role that permits the registry, discovery and access of geospatial information resources distributing on the Internet. Moreover, by leveraging the Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) technologies, the system enables to seamlessly assemble multiple heterogeneous data from different sources into one single user interface for visualization. Two investigations were made to demonstrate how this system has been used to improve the efficiency of searching and collecting geospatial data for a particular research.

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

Interoperability, interactivity and 3D visualization are three of the most important challenges related to Geographical Information Systems. In the last few years, research on interoperability has evolved from simple exchange of spatial data files, through the establishment of standardized spatial data repositories, to the first initiatives allowing management of semantic aspects of data. Interoperability has been mainly hampered by the need to agree on standards, and to develop appropriate tools and methods. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has proposed a number of standards with the intention of promoting interoperability through the use of open services such as Web Mapping Service (WMS), Web Processing Service (WPS), Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS). However, there are a number of open issues regarding interactivity, 3D data visualization, fault tolerance, scalability, server-independent implementation, delayed-time transactions, to name but a few, that clearly reflect the need for further study and discussion. This paper presents a service-oriented architecture in the context of interoperable Web 3D GIS applications, designed to support features such as manipulation, processing and visual analysis of geographical information.

This paper focuses on the interoperable Sensor Web and Web Processing standards defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium. Special attention will be given to the combination of Sensor Web and the Web Processing Service, which opens up new outlooks in the field of disaster management, by having near real-time sensor data flows linked on-demand to different geoprocessing services. Though in an early stage, a web-based prototype will be introduced as a proof of concept of the integration of those two concepts.

This article intends to provide an advanced traveller information system based on open geospatial consortium (OGC) standards to perform a fuzzy bi-criteria shortest-path analysis for a multimodal transportation network. To do so, chaining of OGC web services is used to resolve interoperability problems among distributed and heterogeneous resource data. First, a web feature service is assigned to each mode of transportation to gather and convert the data to a standard format, such as geographic markup language. Then, the obtained data are combined to model and construct the multimodal transportation network. Subsequently, a web processing service is designed for performing a fuzzy bi-criteria shortest-path analysis in the multimodal transportation network. Finally, the best routes between the origin–destination pair are presented on a digital map by using a web map service. In the study, among various route-selection criteria, travel time and comfort are considered. To model these criteria, the fuzzy set theory is utilized. By using fuzzy decision tables and a Tsukamoto fuzzy inference system, the desirability of the routes is calculated. The results of comparison among the four travel routes between various origin–destination pairs indicate that the proposed system could be an applicable tool for providing pre-trip information and assisting multimodal travellers under uncertain conditions.

The quite new Web Processing Service (WPS) specification of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is increasing the value of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) by offering a standard for the actual processing of spatial data. The interface is already used in a range of projects, but up to now mainly in connection with 2D spatial data. In this paper we want to demonstrate that the standard can also be applied in a 3D environment which increases the potential of such 3DSDIs. We implemented two use cases of disaster management and environmental monitoring and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of applying geoprocessing functionality in 3D. The scenarios were integrated and visualized in a Web3D Server (W3DS) viewer and demonstrate how useful it is to present the outcomes of such simulations in the third dimension.

<p>Producing and providing useful information for climate services requires vast volumes of data to come together which requires technical standards. Especially in the case of extreme climate events, where scientific methods for appropriate assessments, detection or even attribution are facing high complexity for the data processing workflows, therefore the production of climate information services requires optimal technical systems to underpinn climate services with science. These climate resilience information systems like the Climate Data Store (CDS) of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) can be enhanced when scientific workflows for extreme event detection are optimized as information production service, accordingly deployed to be usable by extreme event experts to facilitate their work through a frontend. Deployment into federated data processing systems like CDS requires that scientific methods and their algorithms be wrapped up as technical services following standards of application programming interfaces (API) and, as good practice, even FAIR principles. FAIR principles means to be <strong>Findable</strong> within federated data distribution architectures, including public catalogues of well documented scientific analytical processes. Remote storage and computation resources should be operationally <strong>Accessible</strong> to all, including low bandwidth regions and closing digital gaps to ‘Leave No One Behind’. including Data inputs, outputs, and processing API standards are the necessary conditions to ensure the system is <strong>Interoperable</strong>. And they should be built from <strong>Reusable</strong> building blocks that can be realized by modular architectures with swappable components, data provenance systems, and rich metadata.<br>Here we present challenges and preliminary prototypes for service which are based on OGC API standards for processing (https://ogcapi.ogc.org/processes/) open geospatial consortium (OGC). We are presenting blueprints on how AI-based scientific workflows can be ingested into climate resilience information systems to enhance climate services related to extreme weather and impact events. The importance of API standards will be pointed out to ensure reliable data processing in federated spatial data infrastructures. Examples will be taken from the EU H2020 Climate Intelligence (CLINT; https://climateintelligence.eu/) project, where extreme events components will be developed for C3S. Within this project, appropriate technical services will be developed as building blocks ready to deploy into digital data infrastructures like C3S but also European Science Cloud, or the DIAS. This deployment flexibility results out of the standard compliance and FAIR principles. In particular, a service employing state-of-the-art deep learning based inpainting technology to reconstruct missing climate information of global temperature patterns will be developed. This OGC-standard based web processing service (WPS) will be used as a prototype and extended in the future to other climate variables. Developments focus on heatwaves and warm nights, extreme droughts, tropical cyclones and compound and concurrent events, including their impacts, whilst the concepts are targeting generalised opportunities to transfer any kind of scientific workflow to a technical service underpinning scientific climate service. The blueprints are taking into account how to chain the data processing from data search and fetch, event index definition and detection as well as identifying the drivers responsible for the intensity of the extreme event to construct storylines guiding to the event.</p>

This data set provides Daymet output data as mosaicked gridded estimates of daily weather parameters for North America, including continuous surfaces of day length, precipitation, shortwave radiation, snow water equivalent, maximum air temperature, minimum air temperature, and water vapor pressure. The Daymet data product was derived from selected meteorological station data by interpolation and extrapolation algorithms. The data product covers the period January 1, 1980 to December 31 of the most recently processed calendar year for Canada and the United States. Data for additional calendar years will become available by June of the following year. For Mexico, data are available for the period January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2009. Data are available on a daily time step at a 1-km x 1-km spatial resolution in Lambert Conformal Conic projection with a spatial extent that covers the conterminous United States, Mexico, and Southern Canada as meteorological station density allows. Data are assembled by parameter and year with each yearly file containing a time dimension of 365 days. Data are provided in Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata convention compliant (version 1.4) netCDF file formats.

A web-based distributed system for monitoring and forecasting of the marine environment has been developed in line with INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe (INSPIRE) and Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) recommendations for a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). This system, called DISPRO, enables integration and distribution of multi-source data from satellites, aircraft, and in situ instruments, as well as results from numerical models. Geographic data and metadata are stored on a set of distributed computer nodes and retrieved and integrated by a web GIS client by means of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Server (WMS) technologies. A profile of ISO 19115 was developed for metadata handling, using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as a platform independent encoding mechanism. DISPRO has been demonstrated in six European coastal zone and ocean regions in the spring and summer of 2005. The overall positive experiences of both service providers and end users indicate that the system should be further developed into an operational GMES service.