Geographic Digital Content Components

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Geographic Digital Content Components

• André Santanchè
• Advisor Dr. Claudia Bauzer Medeiros
• Database Group
• Unicamp - Brazil

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Summary

• Goal
• Reuse and Interoperability
• Digital Content Component
• Previous Work
• Digital Content Component Model
• Geo Component
• Project with Digital Content Components
• Concluding Remarks

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Overview

• Goal Support reuse of GIS Projects
• GIS Project A collection of related data pieces
  (e.g., maps, graphs or tables), composed and
  processed in a specific sequence by software
  components.

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Reuse and Interoperability

• Reuse and interoperability are closely related
  dimensions, since the increase in
  interoperability expands the opportunities to
  reuse.
• Current approaches
• open standards for GIS data representation
• open standards for GIS process interoperability.

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GIS data representation

• GeoTIFF based on the popular TIFF format
  embeds georeferencing capabilities in the image
  file.
• ESRI Shapefile format is a standard for vector
  data.

polygonal shapes in a map
attribute values
shapes
Index of shapes
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GIS process interoperability

• Open GIS Consortium (OGC) defines
• Geography Markup Language (GML) XML based
  language to enable data interoperability.
• OGC Web Services (OWS) architecture that uses
  Web Services technology to enable inter-process
  interoperability.
• Interoperability promotes a component-based
  software development approach.

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Problem

• If a user wants to share an entire project he
  could face two problems
• How to enable systematic access the same
  collection of components used to develop it?
• How to represent the relationship between
  different kinds of data objects, managed by
  distinct specialized software components?

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Our Proposal

• A glue to integrate reuse and interoperability
  standards in an unified project. It involves
• a homogeneous model to represent any piece of GIS
  data and software component è Digital Content
  Component.
• a mechanism to connect Digital Content Components
  in a project.

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Digital Content Component

• Can encapsulate any kind of digital data program
  code, raster data, vectorial images, tables, etc.
• Based in a previous project Anima.

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Previous ProjectAnima
Magic House is an authoring tool for building
educational applications based on composition of
software components.
Anima Framework
A framework used by Magic House.
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Previous ProjectAnima
Uses Web standards (XML, XSL, RDF and OWL) to
allow the interoperability of educational
applications.
Anima Framework
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Extensions of Anima

• Digital content component extend benefits of
  packaging, deployment and composition to any kind
  of digital content.
• Component management allow proper storage,
  search and retrieval of components.

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Digital Content ComponentProduction/Use Cycle
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Inside Geo Component
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Inside Geo Component
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WOODSS

• Workflow based Decision Support System developed
  at UNICAMP for environmental planning, now being
  used in agriculture planning.

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Pedological Zoning for Coffee Crop
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Concluding Remarks

• This project presents a solution for data and
  program code reuse to face the proliferation of
  geographic data formats and software tools.
• The main contribution is a homogeneous model to
  deal with software components and data objects in
  the geo-information processing domain.
• The work combines two previous experiences Anima
  and WOODSS.

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AnimaProduction/Use Cycle
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Categories of Components

• We differentiate between two kinds of component
• process components
• passive components.

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Process Components

• Encapsulates any kind of process description
  (sequences of instructions or plans) that can be
  executed by a computer.

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Passive Components

• Contain data that can be used by a process
  component.

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Combining and Composing Components

• Components can be combined into more complex
  components.
• This can be done repeatedly/recursively.

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Componentizing WOODSSsecond approach
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Componentizing WOODSSfirst approach
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Using Components Example

• In Content Engineering, the single-sourcing
  practice is usual, where the same source can be
  presented on many output formats.