Coupling OGC WPS and W3C PROV for provenance-aware geoprocessing workflows

摘要

With the advancement of cyberinfrastructure, an increasing number of geopmcessing functions are available on the Web. Scientific workflows are frequently used to orchestrate distributed services to address complex geospatial problems. In the workflow systems, geospatial data provenance is extremely valuable to evaluate data reliability and usability, also reproduce data products, especially considering the heterogeneous data and computing resources in the Web environment. W3C PROV is an expressive model for provenance information in the general domain, which is extended to support OGC WPS in describing provenance in geopmcessing workflows. A conceptual model that couples OGC WPS and W3C PROV is proposed, and the XML schema definitions of the model are also implemented. The proposed model can provide more complete provenance information, including used geospatial data and geoprocessing services, and their plans, which helps advance provenance awareness in workflow systems. Coupling OGC WPS and W3C PROV can benefit from the maturity and interoperability of the existing standards.