UncertWeb Processing Service: Making Models Easier to Access on the Web

摘要

Models are central tools for modern scientists and decision makers, and there are many existing frameworks to support their creation, execution and composition. Many frameworks are based on proprietary interfaces, and do not lend themselves to the integration of models from diverse disciplines. Web-based systems, or systems based on web services, such as Taverna and Kepler, allow the composition of models based on standard web service technologies. At the same time the Open Geospatial Consortium has been developing their own service stack, which includes the Web Processing Service, designed to facilitate execution of geospatial processing - including complex environmental models. The current Open Geospatial Consortium service stack employs Extensible Markup Language as a default data exchange standard, and widely-used encodings such as JavaScript Object Notation can often only be used when incorporated with Extensible Markup Language. Similarly, no successful engagement has been seen of the Web Processing Service standard with the well-supported technologies of Simple Object Access Protocol and Web Services Description Language. In this article we propose a pure Simple Object Access Protocol/Web Services Description Language processing service, which addresses some of the issues with the Web Processing Service specification and brings us closer to achieving a degree of interoperability between geospatial models, thus realizing the vision of a useful 'model web'.