Design of application model for geospatial data clearinghouse

Abstract

Geospatial applications consist of procedures applied against a number of data sets. The task of developing geospatial applications is usually time-consuming and working in trial-and-error basis. Meanwhile, archived applications are difficult to be reused. From the GIS users viewpoint, they need to understand what it was created, what was the background logic, what data was involved in the analysis and so on. It can be made easier, much efficient and understandable if validated spatial analysis procedures and modeling solutions can be managed in a systematical way that the geospatial applications can be shared and reused. This study develops a geospatial application model for providing a logical and systematical way to describe geospatial application. The model consists of three components including application component, implementation component and spatial data component, which are organized in a tree hierarchy. To demonstrate the idea for the study, a documentation system was developed based on the application model with latest technologies such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), Document Object Model (DOM) and Java programming language.