Semantic typing of linked geoprocessing workflows

In Geographic Information Systems (GIS), geoprocessing workflows allow analysts to organize their methods on spatial data in complex chains. We propose a method for expressing workflows as linked data, and for semi-automatically enriching them with semantics on the level of their operations and datasets. Linked workflows can be easily published on the Web and queried for types of inputs, results, or tools. Thus, GIS analysts can reuse their workflows in a modular way, selecting, adapting, and recommending resources based on compatible semantic types. Our typing approach starts from minimal annotations of workflow operations with classes of GIS tools, and then propagates data types and implicit semantic structures through the workflow using an OWL typing scheme and SPARQL rules by backtracking over GIS operations. The method is implemented in Python and is evaluated on two real-world geoprocessing workflows, generated with Esri's ArcGIS. To illustrate the potential applications of our typing method, we formulate and execute competency questions over these workflows.     

基于GIS的银行管理系统

为了提高银行服务质量和其竞争力,可以利用GIS提供广泛的地理查询功能,辅助决策功能和客户服务功能。以营业系统的各种营业业务网点及相关资源为主要内容,建立营业网点GIS查询系统,将有以下的特点:通过GIS技术为客户提供更方便、更快捷的咨询、业务受理服务;把银行的营业网点、分理处、ATM机、自助等各种资源通过GIS技术有机地联系起来,并通过电子地图展现出来,为银行各个部门的自身业务管理以及领导的综合决策提供可靠的GIS信息基础。     

基于SuperMap iServer的福建省统计信息系统设计

福建省统计信息系统是基于地理空间信息框架和WebGIS下的一种统计数据直观表达与可视化的发布方式,结合了目前主流的RIA技术,以SuperMap iServer作为GIS应用服务器,采用SuperMap iClient for Flex作为网络客户端GIS开发平台,在Flex Builder平台进行二次开发,设计出一个既具有良好的用户交互界面,操作简单的福建省统计信息系统,实现了统计数据的Web发布、查询、专题图可视化等,系统的建设可为社会经济信息的分析利用以及政府辅助决策提供参考。     

The Potential of Maps APIs for Internet GIS Applications

Since the launching of Maps Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in 2005, many web developers, including geographers and non‐geographers, applauded the freely adaptable tools and used them to spawn numerous Internet applications. The success of the Maps APIs is largely attributable to its no‐cost policy, the availability of global data coverage, dynamic navigation, query capability, and ease of implementation. Despite its versatility in dynamic exploration of geographic data online, the existing Maps APIs lack Geographic Information System (GIS) functionalities compared to other Internet Mapping Services. The goal of this research was to review the potential of the Maps APIs for Internet GIS applications. This research employed the Google Maps API and developed a web prototype that disseminates spatial information of urban sprawl in Mundy Township, Michigan. The results revealed that both vector and raster data could be effectively represented by using the Maps API. Moreover, the Geographic Markup Language (GML) approach illustrated great potential for developing Internet GIS solutions around open specifications. This research suggested several potential solutions to expand the spectrum of GIS operations of the Maps APIs by incorporating the XML‐related technology and extending the JavaScript library.     

Recent Literature

Development of a temporal geographic information system (GIS) and spatio-temporal data modeling are key to incorporating time into geographic information science. This paper describes how to design and develop temporal GIS that will work with spatio-temporal data represented in various data models, and it introduces a prototype temporal GIS with a case study. In temporal GIS, the integration of multiple spatio-temporal representations is based on common spatial and temporal reference systems. In other words, a map window of temporal GIS visualizes spatio-temporal data valid at the same time within one spatial area. To achieve such visualization, separate data editing and query modules are required for each spatio-temporal data model (STDM). In the temporal query interface, after a user specifies a time, the system automatically hires correspondent modules to retrieve spatio-temporal data valid at that time. Besides temporal queries common to all STDMs, each module may provide additional temporal query capabilities specific to that STDM. In the case study, I implement a prototype temporal GIS for three STDMs. The examples of query and visualization, which use three datasets (census data, land use/land cover, and elevation data) demonstrate the prototype temporal GIS can integrate multiple temporal representations.     

建立面向区域农业可持续发展的空间决策支持系统的方法探讨

在解决诸如工业选址的空间问题时，空间决策支持系统避免了流行的商用ＧＩＳ软件在空间信息的分析评价，时空分布，预测和模拟以及决策等模型分析功能的不足，该文提出了建立ＳＤＳＳ的两种基本途径；一是利用现有ＧＩＳ与分析决策模型进行集成联结生成ＳＤＳＳ；另一种途径是自行开发具有空间数据管理和分析决策模型的一体化ＳＤＳＳ。     

Deeply integrating Linked Data with Geographic Information Systems

The realization that knowledge often forms a densely interconnected graph has fueled the development of graph databases, Web‐scale knowledge graphs and query languages for them, novel visualization and query paradigms, as well as new machine learning methods tailored to graphs as data structures. One such example is the densely connected and global Linked Data cloud that contains billions of statements about numerous domains, including life science and geography. While Linked Data has found its way into everyday applications such as search engines and question answering systems, there is a growing disconnect between the classical ways in which Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are still used today and the open‐ended, exploratory approaches used to retrieve and consume data from knowledge graphs such as Linked Data. In this work, we conceptualize and prototypically implement a Linked Data connector framework as a set of toolboxes for Esri's ArcGIS to close this gap and enable the retrieval, integration, and analysis of Linked Data from within GIS. We discuss how to connect to Linked Data endpoints, how to use ontologies to probe data and derive appropriate GIS representations on the fly, how to make use of reasoning, how to derive data that are ready for spatial analysis out of RDF triples, and, most importantly, how to utilize the link structure of Linked Data to enable analysis. The proposed Linked Data connector framework can also be regarded as the first step toward a guided geographic question answering system over geographic knowledge graphs.     

Uses of online geoprocessing technology in analyses and case studies: a systematic analysis of literature

Interpreting spatial data to derive information is a core task in the field of Geographic Information Science and Technology. A logical step following the collection of data in online repositories is to provide geoprocessing technology for analysing data online. Online geoprocessing technology can be employed for providing a specified set of tools in a theme-specific platform, documenting a model or workflow and making it widely available, automating recurring tasks or offering simple tools to a large user group. This systematic analysis of literature evaluates how much available online geoprocessing tools are being used for answering questions in specific application contexts. An initial set of articles is derived from a keyword-based search in the database Scopus. This set of articles is manually filtered to identify applications of online geoprocessing tools. The analysis of application-related articles shows that virtually all applications require further development of tools. Experts outside the spatial information science field are still underrepresented regarding the use of this technology. The required adaptation of technology for user tasks is identified as major barrier for the wide use of online geoprocessing. Further research needs to assess user tasks and how online geoprocessing can provide the required functions in a user-oriented manner.     

基于ArcGIS Flex API的工厂基础地理信息共享服务系统设计

分析传统B/S模式下WebGIS应用存在的问题,提出一种新型基于ArcGIS Flex API技术构建的WebGIS开发框架.采用该框架开发的工厂基础地理信息共享服务系统相对传统WebGIS系统具有可灵活扩展、交互能力强、运行效率高、表现力丰富、用户体验好的特点.根据工厂基础地理信息管理的需求,系统成功实现了图文一体化...     

Modeling and Communicating the Conceptual Intent of Geo‐Analytical Tasks for Human‐GIS Interaction

One of the fundamental issues of geographical information science is to design GIS interfaces and functionalities in a way that is easy to understand, teach, and use. Unfortunately, current geographical information systems (including ArcGIS) remains very difficult to use as spatial analysis tools, because they organize and expose functionalities according to GIS data structures and processing algorithms. As a result, GIS interfaces are conceptually confusing, cognitively complex, and semantically disconnected from the way human reason about spatial analytical activities. In this article, we propose an approach that structures GIS analytical functions based on the notion of “analytical intent”. We describe an experiment that replaces ArcGIS desktop interface with a conversational interface, to enable mixed‐initiative user‐system interactions at the level of analytical intentions. We initially focus on the subset of GIS functions that are relevant to “finding what's inside” as described by Mitchell, but the general principles apply to other types of spatial analysis. This work demonstrates the feasibility of delegating some spatial thinking tasks to computational agents, and also raises future research questions that are key to building a better theory of spatial thinking with GIS.     

基于ArcGIS Engine的景区地理信息系统研究与实现

随着旅游经济持续火热,开发景区查询系统的必要性日益突显;当游客游览时应用该系统可以很方便地查询景区相关信息,景区管理者的工作效率也会提高。地理信息系统(GIS)具有强大的空间信息管理、空间信息分析、空间信息查询及三维影像显示等功能,成为旅游信息化的首选平台。本文根据GIS的思想,以C#和Arc GIS Engine为工具,结合景区信息的特征,对开发的景区查询系统进行了深入探讨。     

空间查询语言规范GML—QL的研究

广泛运用Web和分布式地理信息系统(WGIS/DGIS)有利于共享的空间数据库组织之间和用户通过互连网进行数据交换。不过,这些系统和应用软件的互操作性仍然是一个不能解决的问题,直到最近出版的地理标记语言(GML)标准的出现,这一问题才得到了解决。GML是一个新的实施规范并提供中立的框架为定义地理空间应用模式和对象的可扩展标记语言(XML)的文档。XML迅速成为一个事实上的标准电子数据交换之间的Web应用程序,然而,传统的数据库查询语言,在其目前的形式下并不适合直接查询和更新XML库。由W3C提出的XQuery查询语言为XML提供了强大的查询功能,但它缺乏支持空间查询,本文主要研究具有空间查询的语言GML-QL。     

Loose programming of GIS workflows with geo‐analytical concepts

Loose programming enables analysts to program with concepts instead of procedural code. Data transformations are left underspecified, leaving out procedural details and exploiting knowledge about the applicability of functions to data types. To synthesize workflows of high quality for a geo‐analytical task, the semantic type system needs to reflect knowledge of geographic information systems (GIS) at a level that is deep enough to capture geo‐analytical concepts and intentions, yet shallow enough to generalize over GIS implementations. Recently, core concepts of spatial information and related geo‐analytical concepts were proposed as a way to add the required abstraction level to current geodata models. The core concept data types (CCD) ontology is a semantic type system that can be used to constrain GIS functions for workflow synthesis. However, to date, it is unknown what gain in precision and workflow quality can be expected. In this article we synthesize workflows by annotating GIS tools with these types, specifying a range of common analytical tasks taken from an urban livability scenario. We measure the quality of automatically synthesized workflows against a benchmark generated from common data types. Results show that CCD concepts significantly improve the precision of workflow synthesis.     

Developing a Virtual Reality User Interface (VRUI) for Geographic Information Retrieval on the Internet

The exponential growth of the World Wide Web provides the potential for greatly enhanced dissemination of global data-sets and information. However, the concurrent rise in data supply also means that new tools are required for information retrieval beyond the conventional graphical user-interface (GUI). This paper reviews the development of web-based GIS functionality and demonstrates how the multi-dimensional capabilities of VR tools can bring enhanced data exploration and visualisation onto the Internet by providing a more powerful 3D user-interface to identify and query data-sets. One key to the development of such interactive tools is the link between the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) and the JAVA platform, which together allow dynamic 3D content to be accessed through a web browser. Exploration of large diverse data-sets is demonstrated by a prototype system allowing the integration of terrain-based geoscience data-sets for scientific visualisation and education. The current limitations of the technology are discussed and further suggestions are made to improve the information content of the Internet.     

九十年代GIS软件系统设计的思考

ＧＩＳ应用领域的拓宽与计算技术的进步，对ＧＩＳ的系统设计不断提出新的挑战。本文站在发展角度，讨论了矢－栅一体化的概念，数据结构的功能设计，ＳＱＬ语言局限性，面向对象技术的应用，ＧＩＳ全局检索以及ＧＩＳ智能化等问题，作者认为采用面向对象技术实现多数据类型的混合操作，是ＧＩＳ登越决策应用阶段的技术关键。     

Integrating spatial data analysis functionalities in a GIS environment: Spatial Analysis using ArcGIS Engine and R (SAAR)

Spatial data analysis (SDA) tools to efficiently handle and explore spatial data have become readily available. Although these SDA tools have their own strengths and purposes, they suffer from limited support in terms of a development environment offering easy customization and high extensibility, a strength of open source software. This article presents a standalone software package for SDA in a geographic information system (GIS) environment, called Spatial Analysis using ArcGIS Engine and R (SAAR), which provides an integrated GIS and SDA environment. A set of SDA tools in SAAR utilizes functions in R using R.NET, while other tools were developed in .NET independent of R. SAAR provides an efficient working environment for both general and advanced GIS users. For general GIS users with limited programming skills, SAAR furnishes advanced SDA tools in a popular ArcGIS environment with graphical user interfaces. For advanced GIS users, SAAR offers an extensible GIS platform to help them customize and implement SDA functions with relatively little development effort. This article demonstrates some functionalities of SAAR using census data for Texas counties.     

基于Web 2.0的GIS模型共享平台研究

本文提出了基于Web 2.0建立GIS模型共享平台的设想,以期建立一个能够让用户创造模型和组织数据的GIS模型共享平台,并基于模型共享平台建立原型系统。借鉴了Web 2.0的数据自组织形式,按标签分类的方式让用户参与元数据组织,以适应各个领域用户的需求。同时为改变以往被动等待用户查询信息的方式,原型系统按RSS标准主动发布有价值信息,用户可以在第一时间获知系统更新。原型系统功能用网络服务封装,并提供客户端程序,提高了系统适用范围。原型系统的建立,证实了构建基于Web 2.0的GIS模型共享平台的价值和可行性。     

基于WebGL的三维GIS应用研究

随着网络通信、三维建模和地理信息等各项技术的进步,基于Web的三维GIS应用需求越来越广泛。本文融合了Html5、JavaScript、WebGL、MongoDB和倾斜摄影建模等技术,利用这些技术的优势,实现了基于Web的三维GIS应用,为Web三维GIS应用提供了新的实现方式,使得三维数据更具有时效性,三维数据实现跨平台浏览,用户体验更好。     

网络地理信息系统的应用和开发——以长春市地图查询信息系统为例

网络地理信息系统是地理信息系统和网络技术相结合的产物。它借助于网络方便快捷的手段和地理信息系统自身特有的分析功能,使人们能够更加有效地管理和利用广泛分布于因特网上的信息和数据。本文以"长春市地图查询信息系统"为例,对网络地理信息系统的性能作出了具体展示。