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Integrating semantic web technologies and geospatial catalog services for geospatial information discovery and processing in cyberinfrastructure

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Abstract

A geospatial catalogue service provides a network-based meta-information repository and interface for advertising and discovering shared geospatial data and services. Descriptive information (i.e., metadata) for geospatial data and services is structured and organized in catalogue services. The approaches currently available for searching and using that information are often inadequate. Semantic Web technologies show promise for better discovery methods by exploiting the underlying semantics. Such development needs special attention from the Cyberinfrastructure perspective, so that the traditional focus on discovery of and access to geospatial data can be expanded to support the increased demand for processing of geospatial information and discovery of knowledge. Semantic descriptions for geospatial data, services, and geoprocessing service chains are structured, organized, and registered through extending elements in the ebXML Registry Information Model (ebRIM) of a geospatial catalogue service, which follows the interface specifications of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalogue Services for the Web (CSW). The process models for geoprocessing service chains, as a type of geospatial knowledge, are captured, registered, and discoverable. Semantics-enhanced discovery for geospatial data, services/service chains, and process models is described. Semantic search middleware that can support virtual data product materialization is developed for the geospatial catalogue service. The creation of such a semantics-enhanced geospatial catalogue service is important in meeting the demands for geospatial information discovery and analysis in Cyberinfrastructure.

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Notes

  1. Hereafter, service, if not specified, means Web service.

  2. Thereafter, in the context of this paper we use the term “geoprocessing workflow” and “geoprocessing service chain” interchangeably.

  3. Online services are available at http://geobrain.laits.gmu.edu/

  4. http://jena.sourceforge.net

  5. http://www.mindswap.org/2004/owl-s/api/

  6. http://jena.sourceforge.net/inference/index.html

  7. All Web services, ontologies and related resources for this case are available at http://www.laits.gmu.edu/geo/nga/landslidecase.html

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the four anonymous reviewers, and to Dr. Barry Schlesinger for their detailed comments that helped improve the quality of the paper. This work was funded fully or partially by U.S. NGA NURI program (HM1582-04-1-2021), Project 40801153 supported by NSFC, 863 Program of China (2007AA120501, 2007AA12Z214), LIESMARS and SKLSE (Wuhan University) Special Research Funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, China, 430079

    Peng Yue & Jianya Gong

  2. Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems (CSISS), George Mason University, 6301 Ivy Lane, Suite 620, Greenbelt, MD, 20770, USA

    Liping Di

  3. Department of Mathematics, Hubei University of Education, Nanhuan Road 1, Wuhan, Hubei, China, 430205

    Lianlian He

  4. Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 37831-6407, USA

    Yaxing Wei

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  1. Peng Yue
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Correspondence to Peng Yue.

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Yue, P., Gong, J., Di, L. et al. Integrating semantic web technologies and geospatial catalog services for geospatial information discovery and processing in cyberinfrastructure. Geoinformatica 15, 273–303 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10707-009-0096-1

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