Building Spatial Information Systems Based on Geospatial Web Services

People are more willing to use visual experience to help their routine work nowadays. The great success of Google map has raised user expectations about geovisualization. In this paper, we presented a Web-based architecture for integrating geospatial Web services with Pictometryreg imagery flown by Pictometry International Corporation (Inc.). Pictometryreg imagery enables us to view the land surface of interest with very high spatial resolution images from different angles (oblique or ortho image). By integrating Pictometry image service and other geospatial Web services under the proposed architecture, we developed two spatial information systems (SIS), Detroit public school facilities and land management information system (DPS-FLMIS) and Detroit facility and city engineering management system (Detroit FCEMS), which could be used by end users to facilitate their routine work by taking the advantage of both the online interactive map manipulation and the high resolution images extracted from Pictometry image warehouse. The architecture, characterized by its flexibility and powerfulness in terms of building new SISs, integrates different geospatial Web services and can also be applied in many other fields, which makes it possible to reuse the available resources of spatial information services.