Interfacing business processes and spatial processes

A workflow that covers business processes and spatial processes requires a geographic information system (GIS) and an enterprise information system for capturing, representing and computing these processes. This paper first discusses how the respective information systems can capture business processes and spatial processes. It then introduces a lifecycle for integrated workflows: Pieces of workload are shared between the GIS and the enterprise information system in a sequenced manner. Here, web services are suggested to carry out the necessary communication between the two information systems. They help to overcome software architectures that separate information systems. In this paper, the workflow lifecycle is applied to the integrated use of a GIS and a customer relationship management system (CRM) in an emergency management scenario. A prototype is presented as a proof-of-concept.