Exploiting semantics of web services for geospatial data fusion

Abstract

Using today's GIS tools, users without programming expertise are unable to fully exploit the growing amount of geospatial data becoming available because today's tools limit them to displaying data as layers for a region on a map. Fusing the data in more complex ways requires the ability to invoke processing algorithms and to combine the data these algorithms produce in sophisticated ways. Our approach, implemented in a tool called Karma, encapsulates these algorithms as Web services described using semantic models that not only specify the data types for the inputs and outputs, but also specify the relationships between them. Karma semi-automatically builds these models from sample data and then uses these models to provide an easy to use interface that lets users seamlessly implement workflows that combine and process the data in sophisticated ways.