Detailed services in a spatial data infrastructure from the computation viewpoint

Abstract

The Commission on Geospatial Data Standards of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) is working on defining formal models and technical characteristics of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). The Commission has already presented models of the Enterprise and Information Viewpoints from the ISO Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) standard. For the Enterprise Viewpoint, the authors identified six actors or stakeholders (Policy Maker, Producer, Provider, Broker, Value Added Reseller and End User) and six core components for an SDI (Policies, Connectivity, Technology, Processing Tools, Metadata and Products). For the Information Viewpoint, the authors identified seven classes, with Product (Services or Data) at the centre and the others being Policy, Product Specification, Metadata, Catalogue, Information and Knowledge. The Commission has also modelled an SDI from the Computation Viewpoint, which describes how the different services of an SDI fit together. The interactions between these high-level services have been modelled using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) Component Diagrams. The authors present here these SDI services in greater detail. They have identified six broad groupings of services: Registry Services, Data Services, Processing Services, Application Services, Portrayal Services and Management Services. They have also identified generalised services that cut across the activities in an SDI. They have modelled these service components in more detail, looking at both the detailed services that are performed within each of these components, and the roles played by these components in the different phases of establishing and using an SDI. The matrix of these detailed services is too large for inclusion in this conference presentation, but will be published elsewhere. This presentation focuses on the roles of service components in an SDI, which the authors consider for each of the seven phases of the development and use of an SDI: Initiation, Creation and Management, Locate, Access, Processing, Evaluation and Liaison. the authors present a table summarising the specific services provided by each service component for each phase and describe the services in more detail.