A new methodology to automate the transformation of GIS models in an iterative development process

Abstract

In the majority of research today in areas such as evaluation of flood risks, management of organic waste as it applies to plants, and mapping ecological conditions of rivers, scientific advances are often aimed toward the development of new software or the modification of existing software. One of the particulars for software developed for agricultural or environmental fields is that this software manages geographic information. The amount of geographic information has greatly increased over the past 20 years. Geographic Information Systems (GISs) have been designed to store this information and use it to calculate indicators and to create maps to facilitate the presentation and the appropriation of the information. Often, the development of these GISs is a long and very hard process. Since the early 1970 s, in order to help project managers, software development processes have been designed and applied. These development processes have also been used for GIS developments. In this chapter, the authors present a new methodology to realize GIS more easily and more interactively. This methodology is based on model transformations, a concept introduced by the Object Management Group (OMG) in its approach called model driven architecture (MDA). When software is developed, models are often used to improve the communication between users, stakeholders, and designers. The changes of a model can be seen as a process where each action (capture of user concepts, modification of concepts, removal of concepts, etc.) transforms the model. In the MDA approach, the OMG recommends automation of these actions using model transformations. The authors have developed a complete set of model transformations that enable one to ensure the evolution of a GIS model from the analysis phase to the implementation phase.