A Task Ontology Driven Approach for Live Geoprocessing in a Service-Oriented Environment

In a service-oriented environment, Web geoprocessing services can provide geoprocessing functions for a variety of applications including Sensor Web. Connecting Sensor Web and geoprocessing services together shows great potentail to support live geoprocessing using real-time data inputs. This article proposes a task ontology driven approach to live geoprocessing. The task in the ontology contains five aspects: task type, task priority, task constraints, task model, and task process. The use of the task ontology in driving live geoprocessing includes the following steps: (1) Task model generation, which generates a concrete process model to fulfill user demands; (2) Process model instantiation, which transforms the process model into an executable workflow; (3) Workflow execution: the workflow engine executes the workflow to generate value-added data products using Sensor Web data as inputs. The approach not only helps create semantically correct connections between Sensor Web and Web geoprocessing services, but also provides sharable problem solving knowledge using process models. A prototype system, which leverages Web 2.0, Sensor Web, Semantic Web, and geoprocessing services, is developed to demonstrate the applicability of the approach.