Geospatial Web Services in environmental planning

As more and more mapping resources are becoming available, the Web is becoming a confluence of collaborative interactions, negotiations and planning platforms. The integration of Web services with geographic information systems (GIS) has triggered a new wave of interest for using the Web to compose dynamic mapping services for environmental planning. Web services could offer a framework for service integration and composition for collaborative environmental modeling. By wrapping geo-processing services of interoperable standards of XML and SOAP, we demonstrate a prototype implementation of environmental decision support systems GEO- ELCA (exploratory land use change analysis) where Web service-enabled middleware adds core functionality to a Web mapping service. The system demonstrates how geo-processing services can be integrated with environmental simulation models using OGC (Open GIS Consortium) compliant connectors that support WMS (Web mapping service) and WPS (Web processing services).