Automatic generation of an adaptive WebGIS

Abstract

With the continuous increase in the availability of WebGIS platforms and on-line spatial data, information overload within the spatial domain is becoming a critical issue. In order to address this and assist users to understand and manage the large amount of geospatial data available to them, techniques to personalise this content are being introduced in WebGIS applications. By monitoring users as they interact with map data, inferences can be made regarding their preferences and interests by generating a user profile that can be exploited to adapt content. However, to date, the development of adaptive WebGIS solutions is a difficult task as the practitioner has to deal with many different and non-trivial technologies. To address this issue, in this paper we propose an approach to automatically generate WebGIS applications able to recommend content to users and adapt the interface of a web-based spatial map. The approach is based on an extension of WebML (Web Modeling Language) and the supporting tool WebRatio. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.