The following extended abstract has been accepted at Inspire Conference 2010
Web Service Standards for Environmental Models
Authors: P. Maue, C. Stasch
Environmental models help to make assumptions about our environment, e.g. for
forecasting the next day’s weather, predicting the distribution of a forest fire, or
rendering soil maps from core samples. They have been used for decades as stand-alone
applications in a broad range of domains. The on-going implementation of the INSPIRE
directive, and initiatives like GMES or SEIS, call for a migration of such models to reusable
Web services. The idea of the Model Web envisions interoperable
computer models, embedded in a multidisciplinary network of models, data sources,
processes, and sensors. Models as Web services support flexible integration into
existing applications. For example, models can be replaced if certain parameters (such
as uncertainty of its result) do not match the applications needs. So far, domain experts
are reluctant to move their models into the Web. Open issues such as modelling the
semantics of models, explaining the uncertainty of the results, and ensuring efficient
execution of models are subject of the research projects envision, UncertWeb, and
GDI-Grid. In this paper, we discuss the rather practical question what users expect as
result from environmental models, and how to accordingly select an appropriate OGC
standard for accessing models exposed as Web service.
The full abstract can be downloaded here.
