Geospatial Web Services

Abstract

As Web service technologies mature in recent years, a growing number of geospatial Web services designed to interoperate spatial information over the network have emerged. Geospatial Web services are changing the way in which spatial information systems and applications are designed, developed and deployed. This chapter introduces all aspects of geospatial Web services from service-oriented architecture to service implementation. It covers the life cycle of geospatial Web services in terms of geospatial interoperable standards, including publish, discovery, invocation and orchestration. To make geospatial Web services more intelligent, semantic issues about geospatial data and services are discussed here. Furthermore, the applications of standard-compliant geospatial Web service are also reviewed.