Research and implementation of a universal workflow model to evaluate the soil fertility based on OGC Web Service

A method based on workflow technology and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specification is proposed to establish a universal workflow conceptual model in the network environment. In this paper, the soil fertility evaluation conceptual model was developed as an evaluation method of soil fertility by analyzing the GIS-based fertility evaluation method and extracting the dynamic variable to verify the feasibility model. This validation process involves determining the instantiation of the conceptual model. The proposed conceptual model achieved the following goals. All data acquisition and processing functions were packaged into an OGC-compliant service model; these service models were organized into a processing chain in a certain order on the workflow platform by Petri-Net; the fertility evaluation was realized on the workflow platform by calling the processing chain. Results showed that processing functions and data can be shared in the network environment, and the network workflow model can be realized by the workflow technology. The successful implementation of fertility evaluation proved the feasibility of the network-based universal workflow conceptual model. In addition, the flexibility of our modeling method is demonstrated by reconstructing the workflow model.