GIME: A Geotechnical Information Exchange Architecture using Web Services

Abstract

We present an information architecture using Web services for exchanging and utilizing geotechnical information, which is of critical interest to a large number of municipal, state and federal agencies as well as private enterprises involved with civil infrastructures. For example, in the case of soil liquefaction hazard assessment, insurance companies rely on the availability of geotechnical data for evaluating potential earthquake risks and consequent insurance premiums. The exchange of geotechnical information is currently hampered by a lack of a common data format and service infrastructure. We propose an infrastructure of Web services, which handles geotechnical data via an XML format. Hereafter we report on the design and some initial experiences.