A Javascript GIS Platform Based on Invocable Geospatial Web Services

Abstract

Semantic Web technologies are being increasingly adopted by the geospatial community during last decade through the utilization of open standards for expressing and serving geospatial data. This was also dramatically assisted by the ever-increasing access and usage of geographic mapping and location-based services via smart devices in people’s daily activities. In this paper, we explore the developmental framework of a pure JavaScript client-side GIS platform exclusively based on invocable geospatial Web services. We also extend JavaScript utilization on the server side by deploying a node server acting as a bridge between open source WPS libraries and popular geoprocessing engines. The vehicle for such an exploration is a cross platform Web browser capable of interpreting JavaScript commands to achieve interaction with geospatial providers. The tool is a generic Web interface providing capabilities of acquiring spatial datasets, composing layouts and applying geospatial processes. In an ideal form the end-user will have to identify those services, which satisfy a geo-related need and put them in the appropriate row. The final output may act as a potential collector of freely available geospatial web services. Its server-side components may exploit geospatial processing suppliers composing that way a light-weight fully transparent open Web GIS platform.

Keywords

• open source GIS
• geospatial Web services
• geospatial Web semantics
• Web GIS
• Node.js
• JavaScript
• OGC services