Interoperability in Geospatial Information Systems

Abstract

Geospatial information systems (GIS) are an important sector of the information industry, as well as an essential component of the information technology infrastructure (Lo & Yeung, 2002). They are a type of computerized information system specifically designed and used to solve geospatial problems, those which are related to locations on the surface of the earth (Longley, Goodchild, Maguire, & Rhind, 2001). The extent of usefulness of GIS has been proven across many diverse applications in many disciplines. They have long been used in traditional application settings, such as land management and natural resources, and have recently become an important element in emerging applications, for example, in ubiquitous mobile computing environments.