Open map List

[WB] Web-based GI

This knowledge area is about Web Based Geographic Information management aspects and therefore it was given the name "Web Based GI" or "WBG" in short. It is implied by this name that the differentiating factor for this KA is the "Web". One must then be able to answer the questions like "What functions do we delegate to the Web?" or "how WBGI is different from the traditional GI?" Sticking to the functions of a GIS, which are inserting (adding), storing, manipulating, analysing and presenting the data, there is not a single system for effecting all these tasks anymore but the Web itself. For instance, there is no single database and its known-to-its users-definition, anymore but many different stores and many different definitions. Similarly, many different manipulation, analysis and presentation options compared with the options offered by a single or limited number of systems of traditional GI. In general, Web provides the means of leveraging distributed "resources" like data, information, or software. It is a "collaboration medium". A collaboration that enables rapid production or decision making. A collaboration that certainly introduces new dimensions to traditional GI handling. This is the justification of proposing this KA in addition to the KAs of the original BoK. For the mentioned collaboration to happen, data or any other type of a resource have to accessible on the Web. This means that it should have a Web "address" and a "definition" that is understandable either by "human" or "machine". "Machine understandable definitions" refers to the dimension of "semantics" and "ontologies" which are also included under this KA. When one talks about publishing resources then "catalogue services" and more importantly "discovery" dimension comes into the scene. On the other hand, "Linked Data (LOD)" and "Open Data", highly popular recent trends and two of the above mentioned dimensions of Web GI have also been covered under this KA. Like the other dimensions of Web GI, both LD and OD aspects must be known to GI communities with differing degrees of expertise. The concepts of "interoperability" and "Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)", hot topics of GI communities for many years, have been thought to be dealt with under this KA as well with the justification that "Web GI" is a much broader concept than SDI, This is by the fact that SDI refers to a much narrower content and context of "collaboration" then Web GI. Therefore, Geospatial data interoperability and some of the related concepts which were classified under KA, "Geospatial data in the original BoK were moved under KA11 with the updated context. Another issue is the coverage of Spatial Analysis (SA), data manipulation aspects of GI by KA11. The SA aspects are covered by other KAs like "Geocomputation" and "Analytical methods". If the analysis operations, in an undertaking, would be handled by web services this is already covered by "data processing" web services, application development unit and Web services composition under that unit. The important thing is to have the knowledge about a specific analysis operation; Employing it as a web service would require no more knowledge than using any other web service. SA is covered by KA11 in as much as it should have been.