VISION

Abstract

Over the past years, many research projects and initiatives have provided heterogeneous building blocks for the so called Semantic Geospatial Web. The number of proposed architectures and developed components impede a definition of the state of the art, comparisons of existing solutions, and the identification of open research challenges. This chapter provides the missing generic specification of central building blocks. Focusing on service based solutions; VISION (VIsionary Semantic service Infrastructure with ONtologies) is introduced as a means to depict required components at a generalized level. The VISION architecture highlights the most important services for the Semantic Geospatial Web and brings structure to the numerous past and present partial solutions. Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) is introduced as a central concept for encapsulating environmental models. This has great potential to be a major part of future information infrastructures. The German-funded GDI-GRID project serves illustrating examples for MaaS and arising interoperability challenges. This paper will focus on VISION, and compare it with two other recent research projects and conclude by identifying major areas for future research on Semantic Geospatial Web Services and supporting infrastructures.