Geospatial Web Services for Distributed Processing: Applications and Scenarios

2 Relevant Concepts For Distributed Geoprocessing

Geoprocesses are real-world processes that are modeled in computer systems to simulate and analyze real-world phenomena. For this chapter geoprocessing is defined as the application of a model representing a real-world geoprocess. As a result, geoprocessing is the transformation of geodata to geoinformation. The definitions of geodata and geoinformation are closely related to the definitions of data and information besides their specific geospatial focus. Geodata and geoinformation describe geospatial phenomena at different levels of abstraction. The terms data and information are not clearly defined in literature. This chapter follows the definitions of Ackoff (1989) and Chen et al. (2009). Ackoff (1989) defines data as a set of symbols and information as data which is processed to answer specific questions. Chen et al. (2009) applied these definitions to the computational domain by defining data as computational representations of models and attributes of real world or simulated entities (i.e. geospatial phenomena). Whereas information is data which have meaning attached and is thereby understandable by computational systems or human users.