At this year´s AGILE conference in Avignon France, we presented our recent work to improve performance and scalability of Web Services through streaming-based approaches for Live Geoinformation (see also our research agenda). The resulting implementation will be available through 52°North´s Geoprocessing Community, very soon.
Abstract. To realize live geoinformation, which is about providing information as soon as it is available, new approaches for instant geoprocessing and efficient resource utilization are required. Currently, such geoprocessing on the web is handled sequentially instead. This article describes a new approach by processing geodata streams and thereby enabling a continuous processing for improved resource utilization rates. In particular, this work applies HTTP Live Streaming for the example of standardized geoprocessing services. The approach is evaluated for processing large volume datasets of OpenStreetMap data. The presented implementation is based on Free and Open Source software.
Full reference of the article:
Foerster, T., Baranski, B., & Borsutzky, H. (2012). Live Geoinformation with Standardized Geoprocessing Services. In J. Gensel, D. Josselin, & D. Vandenbroucke (Eds.), Bridging the Geographic Information Sciences (pp. 99–118). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/index/10.1007/978-3-642-29063-3_6
52°North has been chosen as a mentoring organization for this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC)!
They are now seeking for students who would like to work on a project with 52°North code between May and August. Applicants can submit their own project ideas or apply for a proposed idea, see the ideas page. The ideas list currently contains several projects who could be mentored by (former) members of SWSL, such as the Linked Open Data GeoViewer, a SOS Administrator, or On demand transformation of OpenStreetMap data.
If you are interested in writing code for software developed by the Sensor Web, Geoprocessing and other communities, please have a look at http://52north.org/gsoc. Student application opens on March 26 at 19:00 UTC.
This summer, flip bits not burgers with 52°North!
Any questions? Please contact Daniel Nüst (d.nuest@52north.org), start a discussion on one of the community mailing lists, or join #52north on freenode.
We would like to invite you to participate in a survey on motivations and obstacles to contribute geographic information to OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world.
This survey consists of up to eighteen questions and will take approximately five to (less than) ten minutes to complete. Participation in this survey is voluntary and anonymous.
We would like to encourage you to spread the word about the survey and to send the survey link to your peers. Anyone can participate, no background knowledge about OpenStreetMap is required. The study is part of a diploma thesis at the Institute for Geoinformatics of the University of Münster, Germany. To take the survey, click the link below:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WXBZ7LB
The same survey is also available in german:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSHWJ3M
Thank you in advance for your participation Dominik Wilmsen
Posted in research, Thesis |
Springer finally released an overview article on web-based geoprocessing from SWSL members and former colleagues as part of the book “Geospatial Free and Open Source Software in the 21st Century“. Although the article has been submitted some while ago, it still presents some up-to-date approaches to tackle scalability, legacy system integration and workflows.
The full reference of the article is:
Schaeffer, B., Baranski, B., Foerster, T., & Brauner, J. (2012).
A Service-Oriented Framework for Real-Time and Distributed Geoprocessing. In E. Bocher & M. Neteler (Eds.), Geospatial Free and Open Source Software in the 21st Century (pp. 3–20). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
With increasing availability of network bandwidth, server side processing capacity and advancements regarding the stand-ardization of Web Service technologies, it becomes feasible to process geodata over the Web. As a result, web-based geoin-formation is generated, which supports in particular spatial decision making. However, existing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) mainly address data retrieval and portrayal, but to provide web-based geoinformation through SDIs web-based geo-processing is required. This was the starting point to develop a framework which integrates existing desktop Geographical Information System functionality in SDIs. Moreover, an approach will be introduced to improve complex and large-scale geoprocesses in two dimensions: On the vertical scale, by significantly increasing the performance of single processes by means of Grid Computing technology and by improving other Quality of Service aspects. On the horizontal scale, by chain-ing this highly efficient processing services in order to automate these business processes. The relevance of this work will be demonstrated in a real-world scenario focusing on air quality assessment based on real-time data with the help of open source components.
By Miffy | November 28, 2011
Recently the EU funded project „GENeric European Sustainable Information Space for Environment”, short GENESIS, ended. The final review took place in November in Brussels. In the project, a generic service based system for environmental and public health monitoring was developed. It consists of multiple processing services, different data storage services, means for workflow design and execution as well as a flexible and easy to use and customize web based user interface.
All web services are based on standards defined by standardization bodies such as the OGC, ISO, OASIS and W3C. However, the project work did not only focus on the implementation of and interaction with these web services but also in the development and improvement of the standards themselves.
The SWSL team was involved in two main areas of the GENESIS project: As leader of the “New technology assessment” sup-project we were responsible for the research oriented work. Besides the overall administration of the sup-project we contributed to various topics such as sensor discovery, humans and the sensor web as well as event processing and push-based communication.
The second work area for SWSL was the implementation of several web services. Especially as the leader of the new technology assessment, we had an important role in the transfer of the new technologies to the implementation.
More information on the GENESIS project can be found on the GENESIS web site: http://www.genesis-fp7.eu/
