Monitoring and evaluating the quality of Web Map Service resources for optimizing map composition over the internet to support decision making

Over the past 10 years, there have been great advances in the interoperability technologies in geographic information science. More than 10,000 map layers are available online today through Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specified interfaces, such as Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Web Coverage Service (WCS). These map layers are persistently serving the geospatial communities; however, our empirical study found that their potential value has not been fully exploited. Frequently, a targeted map cannot be composed because some published map servers are unavailable. This problem becomes more serious when a map is composed of several layers from different servers. These services are geographically distributed and maintained by various hosts; therefore, simply waiting for service improvement on the host side cannot solve this problem. In this paper, we proposed a new approach and developed a mechanism that allows clients to select the best map layers at run-time. The selection is based on the results of continuous monitoring and evaluation of the quality of WMSs. Based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), this approach includes quality monitoring and evaluation modules. Quality factors are taken into account during the process of registration, search, and bind. The OGC capability document is extended to include WMS quality information. Three prototype systems were developed in this study to demonstrate: (a) how WMS layers are monitored and evaluated, (b) how the subjective evaluation of WMS quality by a user is collected, and (c) how this can be a feasible method to fuse WMS resources suitable for decision making.