ISPRS-Archives The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS-Archives Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci. 2194-9034 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/isprs-archives-XLI-B6-3-2016 DEVELOPING A CLOUD-BASED ONLINE GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION SHARING AND GEOPROCESSING PLATFORM TO FACILITATE COLLABORATIVE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH Yang Z. L. 1 Cao J. 1 Hu K. 1 Gui Z. P. 2 Wu H. Y. 1 You L. 3 The State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China Faculty of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan, China 17 06 2016 XLI-B6 3 7 Copyright: © 2016 Z. L. Yang et al. 2016 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLI-B6/3/2016/isprs-archives-XLI-B6-3-2016.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLI-B6/3/2016/isprs-archives-XLI-B6-3-2016.pdf

Efficient online discovering and applying geospatial information resources (GIRs) is critical in Earth Science domain as while for cross-disciplinary applications. However, to achieve it is challenging due to the heterogeneity, complexity and privacy of online GIRs. In this article, GeoSquare, a collaborative online geospatial information sharing and geoprocessing platform, was developed to tackle this problem. Specifically, (1) GIRs registration and multi-view query functions allow users to publish and discover GIRs more effectively. (2) Online geoprocessing and real-time execution status checking help users process data and conduct analysis without pre-installation of cumbersome professional tools on their own machines. (3) A service chain orchestration function enables domain experts to contribute and share their domain knowledge with community members through workflow modeling. (4) User inventory management allows registered users to collect and manage their own GIRs, monitor their execution status, and track their own geoprocessing histories. Besides, to enhance the flexibility and capacity of GeoSquare, distributed storage and cloud computing technologies are employed. To support interactive teaching and training, GeoSquare adopts the rich internet application (RIA) technology to create user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI). Results show that GeoSquare can integrate and foster collaboration between dispersed GIRs, computing resources and people. Subsequently, educators and researchers can share and exchange resources in an efficient and harmonious way.