Best practices for publishing, retrieving, and using spatial data on the web

Article type: Research Article

Authors: van den Brink, Linda^{a; *} | Barnaghi, Payam^b | Tandy, Jeremy^c | Atemezing, Ghislain^d | Atkinson, Rob^e | Cochrane, Byron^f | Fathy, Yasmin^b | García Castro, Raúl^g | Haller, Armin^h | Harth, Andreasⁱ | Janowicz, Krzysztof^j | Kolozali, Şefki^k | van Leeuwen, Bart^l | Lefrançois, Maxime^m | Lieberman, Joshⁿ | Perego, Andrea^{o; **} | Le-Phuoc, Danh^p | Roberts, Bill^q | Taylor, Kerry^h | Troncy, Raphäel^r

Affiliations: [a] Geonovum, Barchman Wuytierslaan 10, Postbus 508, 3800 AM, Amersfoort, The Netherlands | [b] Institute for Communication Systems, University of Surrey, United Kingdom | [c] MetOffice, United Kingdom | [d] Mondeca, France | [e] Metalinkage, Australia | [f] Land Information New Zealand, New Zealand | [g] Computer Science School, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain | [h] College of Engineering & Computer Science, Australian National University, Australia | [i] Institute AIFB, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany | [j] Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA | [k] Analytical & Environmental Sciences Department, King’s College London, United Kingdom | [l] Netage, The Netherlands | [m] École des Mines de Saint-Étienne, France | [n] Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, MA, USA | [o] Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Italy | [p] Open Distributed Systems, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany | [q] Swirrl, United Kingdom | [r] Data Science Department, Eurecom, France

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: l.vandenbrink@geonovum.nl.

Note: [**] The views expressed are purely those of the author and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.

Abstract: Data owners are creating an ever richer set of information resources online, and these are being used for more and more applications. Spatial data on the Web is becoming ubiquitous and voluminous with the rapid growth of location-based services, spatial technologies, dynamic location-based data and services published by different organizations. However, the heterogeneity and the peculiarities of spatial data, such as the use of different coordinate reference systems, make it difficult for data users, Web applications, and services to discover, interpret and use the information in the large and distributed system that is the Web. To make spatial data more effectively available, this paper summarizes the work of the joint W3C/OGC Working Group on Spatial Data on the Web that identifies 14 best practices for publishing spatial data on the Web. The paper extends that work by presenting the identified challenges and rationale for selection of the recommended best practices, framed by the set of principles that guided the selection. It describes best practices that are employed to enable publishing, discovery and retrieving (querying) spatial data on the Web, and identifies some areas where a best practice has not yet emerged.

Keywords: Geographic information systems, spatial data, Web technologies, World Wide Web, W3C, Open Geospatial Consortium, OGC

DOI: 10.3233/SW-180305

Journal: Semantic Web, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 95-114, 2019