Web-Based geospatial resource sharing through geopw

Abstract

As Web-related technologies have matured in recent years, an increasing amount of geospatial resources (e.g. geospatial services, workflows, and geospatial data) are available in the distributed Web environment. Consequently, effective and efficient sharing and management of geospatial resources on the Web are necessary for better utilizing these resources for education and scientific research. This matches the vision of Geoprocessing Web, which emphasizes the sharing and access of geoprocessing utilities from the perspectives of communication, collaboration, and participation. Previous work on GeoPW has provided a large number of geoprocessing services over the Web. In this paper, GeoPW goes further to offer a Web platform for sharing geospatial resources. The paper presents the design, implementation, and functions of the platform, which offers a user-friendly environment for publication, discovery, and communication of geospatial data, services, and workflows.