Peer-Reviewed Articles
641 Towards GIS-enabled Virtual Public Meeting Space for Public Participation
Songnian Li, Xincheng Guo, Xiaohong Ma, and Zheng Chang
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The by-laws of many municipalities and local governments
require certain level of public participation in their planning, decision-making processes. One of the common practices in Canada or elsewhere around the world is to hold
public meetings, during which the proposed developments
are explained and discussed, and public opinions are collected. The problems associated with existing practices are
threefold: insufficient access to the information required for
public input, lack of effective means of participation other
than attending public meetings, and difficulties in explaining spatial concepts during the debate. Using the municipal
environmental assessment (EA) process as the application
context, this paper presents our effort on developing an
integrated online GIS-enabled virtual public meeting space.
The system provides a new way of engaging the public and
addressing their concerns by facilitating information access,
understanding of planning study, and proactive participation in public meetings and in overall municipal class
EA process.
651 Sensible Field Computing: Evaluating the Use of
Mobile GIS Methods in Scientific Fieldwork
Alfred J. Wagtendonk and Richard A.M. De Jeu
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Traditional analogue field methods are increasingly becoming a limiting factor in the workflow of computerized research
projects. At the same time, the potential of mobile GIS and
other mobile computing methods to support better and more
efficient scientific data collection is widely acknowledged.
There seems, however, to be little scientific proof for the
added value and successful continuation of these methods
beyond the pilot stage. In particular, the diversity and
unique mobility characteristics of fieldwork pose specific
difficulties for the design, implementation, and support of
these methods. This paper offers a simple ex ante/ex post
evaluation framework to help researchers in estimating the
added value of a mobile computing method. The application
of this framework is exemplified with an archaeological case
study and demonstrates that its use can result in a more
comprehensive view of the potential and actual benefits of
applying specific mobile computing methods in scientific
fieldwork.
663 Pattern Matching for Heterogeneous Geodata Sources Using Attributed Relational Graph and Probabilistic
Relaxation
Shanzhen Yi, Cheng Wang, and Bo Huang
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Information retrieval and intelligent search among heterogeneous data sources still continue to be challenging tasks.
In this study, an attributed relational graph was employed
to model the semantic information of heterogeneous geodata
sources. Based on the attributed relational graphs, probabilistic
relaxation was employed for pattern matching between different
data sources. The initial probability and compatibility coefficients were calculated based on the combined evidence from
semi-structured geodata sources and the characteristics of
discrete and categorical variables. Experiments on automatic
pattern matching were carried out and the results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach in element
mapping between heterogeneous data sources.
671 A WebGIS for Spatial Data Processing, Analysis, and Distribution for the MER 2003 Mission
Rongxing Li, Kaichang Di, Jue Wang, Xutong Niu,
Sanchit Agarwal, Evgenia Brodyagina, Erik Oberg, and
Ju Won Hwangbo
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During the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) 2003 mission,
the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been sending
immense amounts of valuable imagery and data to Earth,
enabling scientists and engineers to find evidence of water
on Mars and to conduct exciting Mars research. This paper
presents the results of efforts made at the Mapping and
GIS Laboratory of The Ohio State University (OSU) for the
development and application of a web-based GIS, the OSU
Mars WEBGIS, to support rover localization (i.e., position
determination) and topographic mapping activities of the
mission. Global and local spatial information and map
products of the two landing sites are provided through the
WEBGIS. The products include mosaics, orthophotos and digital
terrain models (DTMs) derived from orbital and rover images;
ground information is supplied as traverse maps, traverse
profiles and 3D coordinates, slope maps, and energy index
maps; analysis tools are also developed for effective visualization and exploration of the spatial information and products.
The system has been successfully applied to the 2003 MER
mission and has the potential for future Mars landed missions
such as the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission.
681 A Network-centric Modeling Approach for Infrastructure Interdependency
Rifaat Abdalla, C. Vincent Tao, Qiuming Cheng,
and Jonathan Li
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This paper discusses the process of designing a spatial“knowledgebase” for infrastructure interdependency. Infrastructure interdependency is a new field of research that
deals with interrelationships between critical infrastructure
sectors in disaster management. The design and implementation of a spatial knowledgebase that mimics interrelationships between selected critical infrastructure sectors are
conducted. This paper contributes to the field of disaster
and emergency management by using a network-centric
modeling approach and by implementing an infrastructure
interdependency knowledgebase in a WEBGIS environment for
effective decision-making process, using the historical
scenario of Hurricane Hazel, the well-known hurricane in
Canadian history that struck Toronto on 15 October 1954.
691 The Emerging Concepts and Applications of the Spatial Web Portal
Phil Yang, John Evans, Marge Cole, Nadine Alameh,
Steve Marley, and Myra Bambacus
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Geospatial metadata, data, and services have been widely
collected, developed and deployed in recent years. This
flourishing of geospatial resources also added to the problem of geospatial heterogeneity. Interoperability research
and implementation are needed for advancement in potential solutions to integrate and interoperate these widely
dispersed geospatial resources. We propose the Spatial Web
Portal architecture to integrate and interoperate geospatial
resources. The architecture leverages web-based computing,
spatial web services, and web fragments to integrate geospatial metadata, data, analysis, and presentation, through
distributed portlets: (1) Spatial web services are adopted to
interoperate geospatial components. (2) Web portals are
adopted to integrate web pages from web fragments generated by portlets. (3) W3C recommendations are adopted to
provide access to remote portlets delegating geospatial
components. (4) Java community specifications are adopted
to facilitate the development and distribution of portlets.
NASA’s Earth Science Gateway (ESG) is designed and developed as an example to test the proposed architecture in
sharing earth observations, simulations, and other geospatial
resources. The proposed architecture and example system
provide (a) a tested mechanism for interoperating geospatial
resources at different levels, (b) an environment to test
new interoperable concepts, and (c) a platform to support
heterogeneous-geospatial-resource based applications of
national and global significance, such as the Global Earth
Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) applications.
699 Towards a Geospatial Catalogue Federation Service
Yuqi Bai, Liping Di, Aijun Chen, Yang Liu, and Yaxing Wei
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As geospatial catalogues are becoming accessible online
through public query interfaces, a federation to fulfill
distributed and integrated metadata discovery needs to be
built. This study investigates the feasibility of federating
three distinct geospatial catalogue services: the NASA Earth
Observing System (EOS) ClearingHOuse (ECHO), the George
Mason University (GMU) OpenGIS Catalogue Service for
Web (CSW), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Earth
System Grid (ESG) Simulation Data Catalogue. Challenges
and problems in dealing with the metadata conceptual
models, query languages, and communication protocols are
analyzed. Proposed federation strategies and the operational
federation system are introduced. Our results show that
protocol adaptation, query dispatching, query criteria
translation, and query results integration are the four main
challenges in building a catalogue federation. A mediator
wrapper based approach can be adopted to build a federation service. The OpenGIS Catalogue Service specification
can be used to define the internal communication protocols
between the federation service and the affiliated catalogue
services, and between the federation service and its clients.
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709 Web-based Geological Hazard Monitoring in the Three Gorges Area of China
Ruiqing Niu, Liangpei Zhang, Zhenfeng Shao,
and Qimin Cheng
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Many different types of geological hazards have seriously
hindered sustainable development of society and its economy. It is critical to pay greater attention to effective
geological hazard investigations, monitoring, early warning,
mitigation, and prevention through advanced technologies
of the Internet, Geographic Information Systems (GIS),
Global Positioning System (GPS), and Remote Sensing (RS).
In this paper, an information system to monitor geological
hazards is designed and implemented on the basis of
a WEBGIS platform and a large volume of multi-source
remotely sensed data; its network structure and architecture are designed and presented. Detail is provided on the
key technologies and function modules. Then, a concrete
system implementation is introduced using a typical
instance, namely, the geological hazard monitoring of the
Three Gorges Reservoir Engineering Areas, followed by
conclusions and directions for future work. The focus of
our work is its provision of a highly efficient means of real-time geological hazard body monitoring. In addition,
information WEB publishing, geological hazard assessment
and decision-making for a geological department are also
important targets.