Efficient environment monitoring has become a major concern for society to guarantee sustainable ... more Efficient environment monitoring has become a major concern for society to guarantee sustainable development. For instance, forest fire detection and analysis is important to provide early warning systems and identify impact. In this environmental context, availability of up-to-date information is very important for reducing damages caused. Environmental applications are deployed on top of Geospatial Information Infrastructures (GIIs) to manage information pertaining to our environment. Such infrastructures are traditionally top-down infrastructures that do not consider user participation. This provokes a bottleneck in content publication and therefore a lack of content availability. On the contrary mainstream IT systems and in particular the emerging Web 2.0 Services allow active user participation that is becoming a massive source of dynamic geospatial resources. In this paper, we present a web service, that implements a standard interface, offers a unique entry point for spatial data discovery, both in GII services and web 2.0 services. We introduce a prototype as proof of concept in a forest fire scenario, where we illustrate how to leverage scientific data and web 2.0 content.
International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management, 2014
Recent distributed computing trends advocate the use of Representational State Transfer (REST) to... more Recent distributed computing trends advocate the use of Representational State Transfer (REST) to alleviate the inherent complexity of the Web services standards in building service-oriented web applications. In this paper we focus on the particular case of geospatial services interfaced by the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) specification in order to assess whether WPS-based geospatial services can be viewed from the architectural principles exposed in REST. Our concluding remarks suggest that the adoption of REST principles, to specially harness the built-in mechanisms of the HTTP application protocol, may be beneficial in scenarios where ad hoc composition of geoprocessing services are required, common for most non-expert users of geospatial information infrastructures.
2007 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2007
Geospatial web services within a Spatial Data Infrastructure framework enable discovery of, and a... more Geospatial web services within a Spatial Data Infrastructure framework enable discovery of, and access to, geospatial information and services as well as data visualization. Earth Observation data-based applications pose a challenge for these infrastructures due to their consumption of huge volumes of data. Spatial Data Infrastructures promote the processing of data in situ rather than downloading them for local processing, and therefore novel methods are needed for scientists to process EO data in a distributed way. We describe an approach to facilitate EO data exploitation via distributed geoprocessing services, and we use as a concrete use case a scenario for predicting runoff in Alpine river basins. We show a methodology for wrapping geoprocesses in standardized containers, and an API platform for accessing and combining collections of these service containers.
Full data coverage of urban environments is crucial to monitor the status of the area to detect, ... more Full data coverage of urban environments is crucial to monitor the status of the area to detect, for instance, trends and detrimental environmental changes. Collecting observations related to environmental factors such as noise pollution in urban environments through classical approaches implies the deployment of Sensor Networks. The cost of deployment and maintenance of such infrastructure might be relatively high for local and regional governments. On the other hand recent mass-market mobile devices such as smartphones are full of sensors. For instance, it is possible to perform measurements of noise through its microphone. Therefore they become low-cost measuring devices that many citizens have in their pocket. In this paper we present an approach for gathering noise pollution data by using mobile applications. The applications are designed following gamification techniques to encourage users to participate using their personal smartphones. In this way the users are involved in taking and sharing noise pollution measurements in their cities that other stakeholders can use in their analysis and decision making processes.
Information systems built using standards-based distributed services have become the default comp... more Information systems built using standards-based distributed services have become the default computing paradigm adopted by the geospatial community for building information infrastructures also known as Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). Government mandates such as the INSPIRE European Directive recommend standards for sharing resources (e.g., data and processes) with the goal of improving environmental (and related) decision making. Although SDIs present benefits to data providers in terms of data sharing and management, most geospatial infrastructures have been built following a top-down approach in which official providers (most commonly mapping agencies) are permitted to deploy and maintain resources. Because the mechanisms to deploy resources in these infrastructures are technologically complex, there has been limited participation from users, resulting in a scarcity of deployed resources. To address these limitations, we present a distributed architecture based on INSPIRE principles and extended with a Service Framework component. This component improves ad hoc integration and deployment of geospatial data resources within geospatial information infrastructures. The Service Framework addresses the need to improve the availability of geospatial data resources by providing mechanisms to assist users in wrapping resources to generate INSPIRE-based services.
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright
XML and XML Schema are used in the geospatial domain for the definition of standards that enhance... more XML and XML Schema are used in the geospatial domain for the definition of standards that enhance the interoperability between producers and consumers of spatial data. The size and complexity of these geospatial standards and their associated schemas have been growing with time reaching levels of complexity that make it difficult to build systems based on them in a timely and cost-effective manner. The problem of producing XML processing code based on large schemas has been traditionally solved by using XML data binding generators. Unfortunately, this solution is not always effective when code is generated for resource-constrained devices, such as mobile phones. Large and complex schemas often result in the production of code with a large size and a complicated structure that might not fit the device limitations. In this article we present Instance-based XML data binding, an approach to produce more compact application-specific XML processing code for geospatial applications targeted to mobile devices. The approach tries to reduce the size and complexity of the generated code by using information about how schemas are used by individual applications. Our experimental results suggest a significant simplification of XML
Recent trends in information technology show that citizens are increasingly willing to share info... more Recent trends in information technology show that citizens are increasingly willing to share information using tools provided by Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing platforms to describe events that may have social impact. This is fuelled by the proliferation of location-aware devices such as smartphones and tablets; users are able to share information in these crowdsourcing platforms directly from the field at real time, augmenting this information with its location. Afterwards, to retrieve this information, users must deal with the different search mechanisms provided by the each Web 2.0 services. This paper explores how to improve on the interoperability of Web 2.0 services by providing a single service as a unique entry to search over several Web 2.0 services in a single step. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of the Open Geospatial Consortium's Open Search Geospatial and Time specification as an interface for a service that searches and retrieves information available in crowdsourcing services. We present how this information is valuable in complementing other authoritative information by providing an alternative, contemporary source. We demonstrate the intrinsic interoperability of the system showing the integration of crowd-sourced data in different scenarios.
Efficient environment monitoring has become a major concern for society to guarantee sustainable ... more Efficient environment monitoring has become a major concern for society to guarantee sustainable development. For instance, forest fire detection and analysis is important to provide early warning systems and identify impact. In this environmental context, availability of up-to-date information is very important for reducing damages caused. Environmental applications are deployed on top of Geospatial Information Infrastructures (GIIs) to manage information pertaining to our environment. Such infrastructures are traditionally top-down infrastructures that do not consider user participation. This provokes a bottleneck in content publication and therefore a lack of content availability. On the contrary mainstream IT systems and in particular the emerging Web 2.0 Services allow active user participation that is becoming a massive source of dynamic geospatial resources. In this paper, we present a web service, that implements a standard interface, offers a unique entry point for spatial data discovery, both in GII services and web 2.0 services. We introduce a prototype as proof of concept in a forest fire scenario, where we illustrate how to leverage scientific data and web 2.0 content.
International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management, 2014
Recent distributed computing trends advocate the use of Representational State Transfer (REST) to... more Recent distributed computing trends advocate the use of Representational State Transfer (REST) to alleviate the inherent complexity of the Web services standards in building service-oriented web applications. In this paper we focus on the particular case of geospatial services interfaced by the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) specification in order to assess whether WPS-based geospatial services can be viewed from the architectural principles exposed in REST. Our concluding remarks suggest that the adoption of REST principles, to specially harness the built-in mechanisms of the HTTP application protocol, may be beneficial in scenarios where ad hoc composition of geoprocessing services are required, common for most non-expert users of geospatial information infrastructures.
2007 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2007
Geospatial web services within a Spatial Data Infrastructure framework enable discovery of, and a... more Geospatial web services within a Spatial Data Infrastructure framework enable discovery of, and access to, geospatial information and services as well as data visualization. Earth Observation data-based applications pose a challenge for these infrastructures due to their consumption of huge volumes of data. Spatial Data Infrastructures promote the processing of data in situ rather than downloading them for local processing, and therefore novel methods are needed for scientists to process EO data in a distributed way. We describe an approach to facilitate EO data exploitation via distributed geoprocessing services, and we use as a concrete use case a scenario for predicting runoff in Alpine river basins. We show a methodology for wrapping geoprocesses in standardized containers, and an API platform for accessing and combining collections of these service containers.
Full data coverage of urban environments is crucial to monitor the status of the area to detect, ... more Full data coverage of urban environments is crucial to monitor the status of the area to detect, for instance, trends and detrimental environmental changes. Collecting observations related to environmental factors such as noise pollution in urban environments through classical approaches implies the deployment of Sensor Networks. The cost of deployment and maintenance of such infrastructure might be relatively high for local and regional governments. On the other hand recent mass-market mobile devices such as smartphones are full of sensors. For instance, it is possible to perform measurements of noise through its microphone. Therefore they become low-cost measuring devices that many citizens have in their pocket. In this paper we present an approach for gathering noise pollution data by using mobile applications. The applications are designed following gamification techniques to encourage users to participate using their personal smartphones. In this way the users are involved in taking and sharing noise pollution measurements in their cities that other stakeholders can use in their analysis and decision making processes.
Information systems built using standards-based distributed services have become the default comp... more Information systems built using standards-based distributed services have become the default computing paradigm adopted by the geospatial community for building information infrastructures also known as Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). Government mandates such as the INSPIRE European Directive recommend standards for sharing resources (e.g., data and processes) with the goal of improving environmental (and related) decision making. Although SDIs present benefits to data providers in terms of data sharing and management, most geospatial infrastructures have been built following a top-down approach in which official providers (most commonly mapping agencies) are permitted to deploy and maintain resources. Because the mechanisms to deploy resources in these infrastructures are technologically complex, there has been limited participation from users, resulting in a scarcity of deployed resources. To address these limitations, we present a distributed architecture based on INSPIRE principles and extended with a Service Framework component. This component improves ad hoc integration and deployment of geospatial data resources within geospatial information infrastructures. The Service Framework addresses the need to improve the availability of geospatial data resources by providing mechanisms to assist users in wrapping resources to generate INSPIRE-based services.
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright
XML and XML Schema are used in the geospatial domain for the definition of standards that enhance... more XML and XML Schema are used in the geospatial domain for the definition of standards that enhance the interoperability between producers and consumers of spatial data. The size and complexity of these geospatial standards and their associated schemas have been growing with time reaching levels of complexity that make it difficult to build systems based on them in a timely and cost-effective manner. The problem of producing XML processing code based on large schemas has been traditionally solved by using XML data binding generators. Unfortunately, this solution is not always effective when code is generated for resource-constrained devices, such as mobile phones. Large and complex schemas often result in the production of code with a large size and a complicated structure that might not fit the device limitations. In this article we present Instance-based XML data binding, an approach to produce more compact application-specific XML processing code for geospatial applications targeted to mobile devices. The approach tries to reduce the size and complexity of the generated code by using information about how schemas are used by individual applications. Our experimental results suggest a significant simplification of XML
Recent trends in information technology show that citizens are increasingly willing to share info... more Recent trends in information technology show that citizens are increasingly willing to share information using tools provided by Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing platforms to describe events that may have social impact. This is fuelled by the proliferation of location-aware devices such as smartphones and tablets; users are able to share information in these crowdsourcing platforms directly from the field at real time, augmenting this information with its location. Afterwards, to retrieve this information, users must deal with the different search mechanisms provided by the each Web 2.0 services. This paper explores how to improve on the interoperability of Web 2.0 services by providing a single service as a unique entry to search over several Web 2.0 services in a single step. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of the Open Geospatial Consortium's Open Search Geospatial and Time specification as an interface for a service that searches and retrieves information available in crowdsourcing services. We present how this information is valuable in complementing other authoritative information by providing an alternative, contemporary source. We demonstrate the intrinsic interoperability of the system showing the integration of crowd-sourced data in different scenarios.
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Papers by Laura Díaz