Adding temporal data enhancements to the advanced spatial data infrastructure platform

Abstract

Users of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) increasingly require provision to data holdings beyond the traditional static raster, map or vector based data sets within their organisations. The modern GIS practitioner and Spatial Data Scientist are required to work with data that not only has a spatial component but also a temporal component. The traditional SDI has been well suited for providing capabilities relating to governance, discovery, exploration, access and basic collation of static data sets. Across the world, Geonode is emerging as a framework for building spatial data infrastructures as it covers all of these aspects of traditional SDI. However, there is an increasing need for the capabilities of Geonode to be extended to data sets with a temporal component. Geonode is an Open Source Platform that was originally developed by the World Bank in collaboration with OpenGeo in response to the World Bank's need for an SDI on which to build a disaster management platform for reducing risk in Central America. Geonode has since been adopted in Europe and America as well as South Africa, with a growing user base. Similar to other open source programs, a number of enhancements have since been developed. Based on the realisation that more and more scientists are using and acquiring geospatial data, and the importance of time series in geospatial research, we have developed enhancements to the Geonode platform that enable the handling of temporal data. These tools enable the user to discover, explore, visualise and access temporal data. This paper begins with a discussion of the traditional and current SDI practices, in terms of governance, discovery, exploration, access, and collation of data. We review the Geonode platform and discuss its suitability and compliance with the requirements of a Spatial Data Infrastructure. Methods used for developing the enhancements to Geonode are discussed. The results of the project are presented and challenges and further work in this project are discussed.