IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMPREHENSIVE AND EFFECTIVE GEOPROCESSING WORKFLOW ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Many projects and research efforts implement geo-information (GI) workflows, ranging from very basic ones to complicated software processing chains. The creation of these workflows normally needs considerable expertise and sharing them is often hampered by undocumented and non-interoperable geoprocessing implementations. We believe that the visual representation of workflows can help in the creation, sharing and understanding of software processing of geodata. In our efforts we aim at bridging abstract and concrete workflow representations for the sake of easing the creation and sharing of simple geoprocessing logic within and across projects. We have implemented a first version of our workflow approach in one of our current projects. MARIS, the Mara Rangeland Information System, is being developed in the Mau Mara Serengeti SustainableWater Initiative (MaMaSe). It is a web client that uses the Integrated Land and Water Information System (ILWIS), our open source Remote Sensing and GIS software. It aims to integrate historic, near real time and near future forecast of rainfall, biomass, carrying capacity and livestock market information for the sustainable management of rangelands by conservancies in the Maasai Mara in Kenya. More importantly it aims to show results of a carrying capacity model implemented in a comprehensive geoprocessing workflow. In this paper we briefly describe our software and show the workflow implementation strategy and discuss the innovative aspects of our approach as well as our project evaluation and the opportunities for further grounding of our software development.