Web 2.0 refers to what is perceived as a second generation of Web application development and Web design. Web 2.0 does not refer to any specific change in the technology of the Web, but rather the way in which developers implement websites and thus to the way in which people perceive and use the Web. Web 2.0 applications are characterized by their interactivity and user-centred design.
Web 2.0 websites behave similarly to desktop applications that are familiar to computer users. These websites do, therefore, more than just retrieve and display information. Users can exercise control over the activity by using the interactive functions provided by the site. One principle behind Web 2.0 sites is asynchronous communication between the client application and the server. As a consequence, instead of having to reload a webpage whenever there is input from the user, the Web application makes background requests and, based on the response, dynamically updates the sections of the webpage that are affected. This new way of working on the Web has been adopted by the SDI community and nowadays Web 2.0 tools are available that allow interactive use of spatial data over the Web. Incidentally most of these tools have come from the open source community. Using these tools, which are available in the form of APIs, SDI developers can build highly-interactive web applications that enable users to perform all sorts of data manipulations over the Web. All the common functions for editing, analysing and processing spatial data that are conventionally only available in desktop GIS packages are now available to users in an SDI environment.
Describe and apply the basic processes, processing, analysis and conversion in an SDI environment while combining multiple data sets from various remote sensing and other sources and explain challenges in data integration. Describe and use various methods of change detection. (Max. level 3)