Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure and Geoprocessing Web—A Review of Commonalities and Differences of E-Science Approaches

• Published in: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information Vol. 2; no. 3; pp. 749 - 765
• Main Author: Hofer, Barbara
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2013
• Subjects: Data storage; e-Science; geoprocessing web; geospatial cyberinfrastructure
• ISSN: 2220-9964; 2220-9964
• DOI: 10.3390/ijgi2030749

Online geoprocessing gains momentum through increased online data repositories, web service infrastructures, online modeling capabilities and the required online computational resources. Advantages of online geoprocessing include reuse of data and services, extended collaboration possibilities among scientists, and efficiency thanks to distributed computing facilities. In the field of Geographic Information Science (GIScience), two recent approaches exist that have the goal of supporting science in online environments: the geospatial cyberinfrastructure and the geoprocessing web. Due to its historical development, the geospatial cyberinfrastructure has strengths related to the technologies required for data storage and processing. The geoprocessing web focuses on providing components for model development and sharing. These components shall allow expert users to develop, execute and document geoprocessing workflows in online environments. Despite this difference in the emphasis of the two approaches, the objectives, concepts and technologies they use overlap. This paper provides a review of the definitions and representative implementations of the two approaches. The provided overview clarifies which aspects of e-Science are highlighted in approaches differentiated in the geographic information domain. The discussion of the two approaches leads to the conclusion that synergies in research on e-Science environments shall be extended. Full-fledged e-Science environments will require the integration of approaches with different strengths.