Diploma Thesis Ulrich Mann

Dynamische Erzeugung von Diagrammen aus standardisierten Geodatendiensten

Abstract

Spatial data infrastructures (SDI) have been subject to a widening dispersion in the last decade, through the development of standards for the exchange of geodata. The open descriptions of service interfaces, developed by the OGC, a consortium from research institutions and private sector companies, alter interoperability in SDI. Until now, OGC-conform geoservices are mainly utilised for the recording, management, processing and visualisation of geodata.

Through the ongoing emergence of spatial data services there is a rise in the availability of geodata. At the same time, the trend of the generation of ever increasing amounts of data, e. g. by scientific simulation (Unwin et al., 2006), continues. By this, the need for capabilities to effectively explore and analyse geodata is growing. Complex relations in huge data need to be determined and relevant information extracted. Techniques, which are capable of this, are being described extensively by Visual Analytics. This field of research engages in the development of tools and techniques for automated analysis and interactive visualisation of huge and complex data (Keim et al., 2008).

Current web-based applications for the exploration and analysis are usually established as Client-Server approaches, working on a tightly coupled data storage (see subsection 3.3). With the growing capabilities of SDI, there is an increasing interest in offering functionality for data analysis. The combination of widely used analysis techniques and well-established standards for the treatment of geodata may offer the possibility of working interactively on ad hoc integrated data. This will allow insights into large amounts of complex data, understand natural interrelations and derive knowledge for spatial decision support by the use of state-of-the-art technologies.

In this paper, the capabilities of the OGC WMS GetFeatureInfo operation for the analysis of spatio-temporal geodata in a SDI are investigated. The main focus is on dynamic generation of diagrams by the use of distributed WMS as a data storage. After the review of basics in data modelling and SDI-standards, relevant aspects of data analysis and visualisation of diagrams are treated. The compilation of a task taxonomy aids in the determination of realisable spatio-temporal analysis tasks by use of the GetFeatureInfo operation. In the following, conceptual design of a multi-layered system architecture to accomplish data analysis on distributed datasets, is carried out. In response to one of the main issues, a GML-schema is developed to ensure consistent and OGC-conform data exchange among the system components. To verify the feasibility of integration of diagram-based analysis in a SDI, a system prototype is developed to explore ECHAM5 climate model data.