Implementing geoportals: applications of distributed GIS
Introduction
Since the late 1990s, the geographic industry has seen increasing interest and activity in the deployment of web sites that provide access to geographic content. There are several drivers behind this activity. One is the advent of the World Wide Web and an interest by many industries to harness it to help drive growth. At the same time, the GIS industry itself has come of age. This maturation has led to a new phase of growth for the industry that focuses on dissemination of geographic knowledge and capabilities. Finally, there is an increasing recognition in business, both public and private, that geographic content and GIS capabilities add value to many business processes. Geographic portals represent an applied response to this need to disseminate geographic data and leverage the GIS community’s substantial investment in GIS capabilities and content (NRC, 1999).
Over the last six years the GIS community has become increasingly focused on the dissemination of GIS capabilities within, as well as outside of, organizations. There is recognition within the community that the web provides a new medium for participation (Longley & Batty, 2003), and its response has come in the form of software technologies that provide the capability to implement GIS in a distributed environment. To build effective, relevant technology, GIS vendors have traditionally worked with key users and partners to implement solutions that both satisfy the requirements of specific projects and foster the development of core software that supports these and other customer deployments. During the last six years the author has participated in GIS vendor–user partnerships on four major projects that have pushed the limits of GIS technology beyond the desktop architecture to distributed GIS. The experiences gained in implementing these projects point the way to using Internet technologies to disseminate GIS capabilities.
This paper reviews the four key projects, the stages of distributed GIS they represent, and the lessons that have been learned from them to date. These projects help us to see how to evolve geoportal applications into truly distributed GIS. Additionally, a definition of geoportals is presented from an industry perspective, and the GIS system components and standards needed to support portal implementations are discussed. Finally, this paper outlines a way forward for geoportals and distributed GIS, the challenges to be faced, and the rewards to be gained.
Section snippets
What is a geoportal?
A technical definition of the word “portal” is “a web site considered to be an entry point to other web locations” (http://www.dictionary.com). Append the term “geo,” and the result might be as follows. Geoportal: a web site that presents an entry point to geographic content on the web or, more simply, a web site where geographic content can be discovered.
Many web sites, however, have some association with geographic content or functions. For example, most web sites representing businesses
The technology of geoportals: distributed GIS
Prior to the advent of the Internet, GIS technology, like other software technologies, was limited to the domain of desktop, workstation and in limited cases, server-based computing platforms. The physical restrictions of these computing platforms confined GIS to only supporting the evolution of project and departmental GIS.
Distributed computing has provided the foundational standards and technology on which the Internet and distributed GIS are built. The Internet consists of information
Geoportal implementations
Four case studies are described in this section that illustrate how geoportals are being used in practice. These case studies have been chosen because they illustrate a wide range of commercial, business and government applications. The case study applications range from generating a simple map of a location to providing maps customized to user-defined criteria. They also illustrate how simple high availability mapping and query systems are built; how geographic web services may be integrated
The way forward
The GIS community has worked for many years to build distributed GIS technology that supports geoportals implementation. Most of the early focus was on the implementation of functional portals. As the need has grown for geographic communities to share their geographic content with other communities and non-GIS users, efforts have turned to multiple web services standards as well as packaging the tools needed to implement SDI portals. However, technology alone will not ensure the success of
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