A framework for designing and implementing the user interface of a geographic digital library

Abstract

Geographic data are useful for a large set of applications, such as urban planning and environmental control. These data are, however, very expensive to acquire and maintain. Moreover, their use is often restricted due to a lack of dissemination mechanisms. Digital libraries are a good approach for increasing data availability and therefore reducing costs, since they provide efficient storage and access to large volumes of data. One major drawback to this approach is that it creates the necessity of providing facilities for a large and heterogeneous community of users to search and interact with these geographic libraries. We present a solution to this problem, based on a framework that allows the design and construction of customizable user interfaces for applications based on Geographic Digital Libraries (GDL). This framework relies on two main concepts: a geographic user interface architecture and a geographic digital library model.