An RM-ODP enterprise view for spatial data infrastructures

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Abstract

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) are large, open, distributed and standards-based information systems which intend to facilitate and promote the use of spatial data and spatial services on the Internet. Spatial data describe information tied with locations on Earth, while spatial services allow to manipulate spatial data following a Service Oriented Architecture. This paper proposes to model SDIs as federations of autonomous communities following the enterprise language of the ITU-T and ISO/IEC ‘Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing’ (RM-ODP), and the recently approved ‘Use of UML for ODP Systems Specifications’ (UML4ODP). The enterprise language of the RM-ODP provides a conceptual foundation to address several aspects of SDIs not previously considered from a systems architecture point of view. The use of UML4ODP provides a modeling language to facilitate the exchange of knowledge about SDI, and it is an opportunity to try this recent standard for a class of large and complex systems.

Highlights

►Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) can be modeled as federations of communities. ►Current research on SDIs has almost not considered the systems point of view. ►The ISO RM-ODP standard concepts can be used to model SDIs in a formal way. ►The UML4ODP standard does not have explicit support for RM-ODP federations. ►The UML4ODP standard adds further complexity to the RM-ODP.

Introduction

The importance of spatial data to support decision-making and management has been cited as critical in important United Nations (UN) events such as the 1992 Rio Summit, the special session of the UN General Assembly to appraise the implementation of the Agenda 21 in 1997, or the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2003 [1]. Spatial, or geographic, data describe information tied to some locations on Earth's surface or to zones adjacent to it.

In the last decade of the 20th century, the use of spatial data was limited due to its high prices and the use of closed and monolithic systems. To improve that situation, the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) was proposed as a means to facilitate the discovery, access and use of spatial information. According to the ‘SDI cookbook’, ‘the term ‘Spatial Data Infrastructure’ (SDI) is often used to denote the relevant base collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the availability of and access to spatial data' ([1], p. 8). Other relevant definitions for the term SDI are cited in [2], but in general these definitions share common objectives and similar components, which have been similarly categorized by different authors: from the people, policies and agreements, standards and technologies proposed in [3] to the framework composed of data, people, institutional frameworks, technology and standards in [4, p. 22–23]. SDIs are complex systems, and under this point of view have been considered Systems of Systems [5] and Complex Adaptive Systems [6]. Nowadays, SDIs are being developed in many countries and are accepted as an essential infrastructure in modern societies ([7], p. xiii).

Another important characteristic that has been considered for SDIs, is that they may be components of other SDIs. Rajabifard et al. [8] propose a hierarchy of SDIs, from the corporate to the global level, and point out some relationships among these levels. Masser [9] suggests that this hierarchical composition is one of the research challenges provided by SDIs. The already approved Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) directive aims to build a European SDI based on the SDIs of the Member States [10].

Some aspects of the software architecture of SDIs have already been analyzed: ANZLIC [11] describes a technical architecture, services, service providers and data storage facilities, for the Internet Framework of the Australian SDI Distribution Network. Bernard et al. [12] present an architectural view of the European SDI geoportal and associated services. GeoConnections [13] describes the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure Architecture following the ISO RM-ODP information, engineering and computational viewpoints. Béjar et al. [14] have proposed an architectural style, roughly correspondent to the ISO RM-ODP engineering viewpoint, for the software components of an SDI.

Although SDIs include many different components, software architecture techniques have been mainly used to model their technical aspects. Nevertheless, some software architecture methods allow to address the non-technical components of systems too: RM-ODP provides the concepts and tools to address non-technical components of complex distributed systems, like SDIs, under the so-called enterprise viewpoint. The RM-ODP is being considered for the United Nations SDI technical governance framework, although this project is still in the design phase, and there are not many details yet [15]. It is also being used for the architecture implementation pilot of the Group on Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS), which objectives are related to those of an SDI [16].

Hjelmager et al. [17] have proposed an initial model for SDIs under the RM-ODP enterprise viewpoint (and also under the information viewpoint). Besides other differences, our paper improves their enterprise model in several aspects:

  • We take into consideration the relationships among different SDIs and among the organizations participating in them.

  • We relate policies with the interactions affected by them, consider explicitly enterprise object types and artifact role types and describe processes in UML.

  • We use the recently approved ISO/IEC International Standard that establishes the use of UML to express the RM-ODP concepts [18].

In this paper, an approach to model some of the technical and non-technical components of an SDI using an architectural viewpoint is proposed. This approach allows to model SDIs as federations of autonomous organizations, where technical and non-technical components interact, under the guidelines and constraints of several policies, to achieve certain objectives. The RM-ODP enterprise language provides a set of well-defined concepts used to create an enterprise view on a system. This viewpoint addresses its purpose, expected behavior and policies. There is also a standardized way to express these concepts as diagrams in the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and several proposals to formalize them if needed [19], [20].

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents a brief introduction to the ISO RM-ODP and its enterprise language. This is followed by the main part of the paper, Section 3, where the elements of an architecture to model SDIs following the enterprise language of the ISO RM-ODP are described. Finally, in Section 4, some conclusions and further work are described.

Section snippets

The enterprise language of the RM-ODP

The ISO Open Distributed Processing Reference Model (RM-ODP) provides an architectural framework to model complex environments where heterogenous information resources are distributed among different interconnected organizational domains [[21], [22], [23], [24]].

The RM-ODP allows to specify an Open Distributed Processing (ODP) system in terms of different, but interrelated, viewpoint specifications. A viewpoint on a system is an abstraction of that system addressing a particular set of

SDIs in the enterprise language of the RM-ODP

As described in Section 2, the RM-ODP provides the necessary concepts and rules to specify distributed information systems under five different viewpoints. In the next subsections we develop an approach to facilitate the modeling of SDIs from the enterprise viewpoint of the RM-ODP.

Conclusions

This paper has presented an architectural view for SDIs, which allows to describe them as federations of communities in terms of the enterprise language of the ISO RM-ODP. The language chosen to express this view has been UML4ODP. This approach provides a systematic, graphical and formalizable technique to model SDIs, and a way to facilitate the exchange of knowledge about them among different stakeholders. Designers and researchers may apply this view to produce an enterprise specification to

Acknowledgments

This work has been partially funded by the Spanish government through the projects ‘España Virtual’ (ref. CENIT 2008-1030) and TIN2009-10971, the Government of Aragón through the project PI075/08, the Spain National Geographic Institute (IGN) and GeoSpatiumLab S.L. The authors have also to acknowledge Akira Tanaka and Antonio Vallecillo who, by blog, e-mail and telephone, helped us to understand some points in the RM-ODP and UML4ODP standards (of course, any mistake in this paper regarding

Rubén Béjar holds MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Zaragoza (Spain). He has been a professor there since 2002, in the Computer Science and Systems Engineering department. He has co-authored dozens of papers on standards-based geographic information systems and spatial data infrastructures, and has been a main researcher in more than twenty public and privately funded R&D projects. He has lectured in several Spanish universities, taken part in the development of ISO

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    Rubén Béjar holds MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Zaragoza (Spain). He has been a professor there since 2002, in the Computer Science and Systems Engineering department. He has co-authored dozens of papers on standards-based geographic information systems and spatial data infrastructures, and has been a main researcher in more than twenty public and privately funded R&D projects. He has lectured in several Spanish universities, taken part in the development of ISO standards and contributed to the development of land cover data models for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

    Pedro R. Muro-Medrano holds MS and PhD degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of Zaragoza (Spain). He has worked in the private industry and has held different visiting research positions at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Maryland and NIH. Presently he is full professor of Computer Science at the University of Zaragoza and head of the Advanced Information Systems Laboratory. He is member of the Technical Standardization Committee AEN/CTN148 and member of the Special Committee on Spatial Data Infrastructures of the Geographic High Council of Spain.

    Javier Nogueras-Iso holds MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Zaragoza. After working for the Economic and Social Committee of the European Communities (Brussels) in 1998, he started his research at the Advanced Information Systems Laboratory of the University of Zaragoza. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at that University. He completed in 2005 a postdoctoral stay at the Joint Research Centre (Institute of Environment and Sustainability, Italy). His research interests are focused on Spatial Data Infrastructures and Geographic Information Retrieval, being co-author of numerous publications, and having collaborated in multiple R+D projects.

    F. Javier Zarazaga-Soria holds a MS degree in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and PhD degree from the University of Zaragoza. He did his master's thesis at the Road Safety Engineering Laboratory (University of Middlesex, London). In September 1994, he started collaborating with the Advanced Information Systems Group. He has been a professor at the University of Zaragoza since November 1996. His research interests are focused on Knowledge Management in the context of Spatial Data Infrastructures, being co-author of numerous publications, and having collaborated in multiple R+D projects.

    Miguel Ángel Latre holds a MS degree in Computing from the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain) since October 1999. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering at the same university. He is working with the Advanced Information Systems Lab (IAAA) where he has been involved in several R&D projects related with the software engineering aspects of Geographic Information Science and its application to the area of the Environment.

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