Web Processing Services for Forestry and Environmental Applications

Abstract

Nowadays spatial processing on the web is becoming a requirement for more and more web applications. The use of processes helps to find solutions to a wide range of spatial problems and extends the common functionality of Web GIS. There are many open source technologies that can be implemented in each component of a Web GIS application. Forestry and environmental problems, with their strong territorial implications, are especially suitable to be analyzed applying these technologies. In order to create an application with spatial processes, we propose a framework with a layered service-based architecture. It is layered because its structure is divided in a set of functional layers: the user layer (geoportal or client), the service layer (inside the server) and the data layer (spatial database). The access and processing of spatial data is accomplished through adequate service standards of OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium): Web Map Services (WMS), Web Feature Services (WFS), Web Coverage Services (WCS) and Web Processing Services (WPS). We implement a complete forestry – related application from scratch that offers access, visualization, querying and processing of spatial data and an active user interaction. The key of the application is WPS. Additionally, other processing solutions (like making queries with the spatial database) are discussed. In brief, this work presents an overview of the current technology and possible solutions for integrating spatial processes on the web and proposes some guidelines to implement them in a fully working system.