TOOLS FOR THE HARMONIZATION OF THE GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SOURCES IN SPATIAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURES

R. Boros, E. Micietova

Comenius University, Department of Cartography, GIS and Remote Sensing, Bratislava, Slovakia

boros@fns.uniba.sk, eva.micietova@fns.uniba.sk

 

Spatial information structures are now gradually built at global, international and national levels. Their functionality depends on standardization, harmonization and integration of geographic information sources. Geographic information along with rules of access, use, sharing and with co-ordination tools represent the basic elements of spatial information infrastructures. Their implementation represents a coordinated environment where information service – integration, publication, discovery, access, visualization and processing of the integrated information - flow between providers of geo-spatial data and their users in the open environment of Internet.

Plenty of spatial (location, time) and geographic (location, theme, time) information are collected with different methods, different semantics, quality and actuality, mostly by using remote sensing. To utilize these data and partial geographic information, they must be standardized, harmonized, integrated and finally converted into knowledge and solutions for spatial management of social, economic, regional and natural land system.

Using of spatial data and geographic information require building of interoperable geographic information sources and at the same time research and development of methods for distribution and integration of these information sources to spatial informational infrastructure.

The aim of this paper is to present standards of the geographic information as the harmonization platform including the methodology involved in harmonization of geographic information sources developed and implemented at the national level in the Slovak Republic. It contains harmonization of the geographic information description, content, quality and data models. The paper presents the metainformation catalogue, services involved with the search of geographic information, and map services associated with integration of the distributed geographic information. The main stress is put on analysis, proposal, implementation and verification of the tools for distribution and integration of geographic information sources on the base of web map service and web feature service specifications.