Web-based Geoprocessing with
Open Source Software – a 52° North
perspective
Dr. Theodor Foerster,
Bastian Schaeffer & Bastian Baranski
OSGIS UK, 22 June 2010

What is SWSL?
Sensor Web & Web-based Geoprocessing

What is 52° North?
• Platform for innovation
– Open Source (GNU GPL / dual license)
– Non-profit
• 52° North Communities
– Sensor Web, Security, ILWIS, Geostatistics,
Semantics & Geoprocessing

Geoprocessing Community
• Geoprocessing in SDIs
– From geodata to geoinformation
• 52° North Web Processing Service
• Current research
– Process integration
– Grid Computing
– Cloud Computing
– Client applications

Where it all started…

Community Facts
• 4+ years experience
• International contributors
• Active mailing list
• 150+ mailing list subscribers
• 15+ SVN branches
– Workflow
– Legacy integration
–…
• 52° North WPS [as de-facto standard]
− OWS testbeds & EU projects
• www.52north.org/wps

Process integration
• Sextante (www.sextantegis.com)
– 220+ processes out-of-the-box
– Raster & vector capabilities
– Fully automated integration
• Others
– ILWIS (prototypically)
– ArcGIS (in latest version, rc4)
• 200+ native processes
• Python scripts

Grid Computing
• scales processing load on distributed
nodes (split & merge)
Unicore & Globus Toolkit (in progress)

Cloud Computing
… is popular

Characteristics
• Scalability - the cloud scales the deployed applications
automatically on-demand.
• On Demand - Resources are consumed in an on-
demand fashion; metered services
• Efficiency - Cloud Computing enables IT companies to
increase utilization rates of their existing hardware
significantly.
• Outtasking - Cloud users do not need to operate their
own large-scale computational infrastructure anymore. Fixed
costs can be transformed into variable costs.

Performance tests

Hybrid Cloud (Motivation)
120.000 €
80.000 €
Requests
40.000 €
20.000 €
Time

Hybrid Cloud (Use Case)
WPS Public Cloud
WPS WPS WPS
Public Cloud
Load
Balancer
WMS WMS
Private Cloud
Hybrid
Cloud
WMS WMS WFS WFS WPS

Client applications
• JUMP
• uDig
• gvSig
• OpenLayers

WPS OpenLayers
Browser-based configuration & execution

Conclusion
• Geoprocessing in SDIs enables
geoinformation on the web
• Process integration
– Sustainability & robustness
• Grid/Cloud Computing
– On-demand & availability
• Client applications
– Accessing these concepts

Questions
Thank you!
Dr. Theodor Foerster
theodor.foerster@uni-muenster.de
Institute for Geoinformatics http://ifgi.uni-muenster.de
SWSL: http://swsl.uni-muenster.de
Geoprocessing community: http://52north.org/wps