IMPLEMENTING SCALABLE GEOWEB APPLICATIONS USING CLOUD AND INTERNET COMPUTING SEYED EMAD MOUSAVI March 2014 TECHNICAL REPORT NO. 291 IMPLEMENTING SCALABLE GEOWEB APPLICATIONS USING CLOUD AND INTERNET COMPUTING Seyed Emad Mousavi Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering University of New Brunswick P.O. Box 4400 Fredericton, N.B. Canada E3B 5A3 March 2014 © Seyed Emad Mousavi, 2014 PREFACE This technical report is a reproduction of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering in the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, March 2014. The research was supervised by Dr. Yun Zhang, and funding was provided by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council ‒ Canada Research Chair Program. As with any copyrighted material, permission to reprint or quote extensively from this report must be received from the author. The citation to this work should appear as follows: Mousavi, Seyed Emad (2014). Implementing Scalable Geoweb Applications Using Cloud and Internet Computing. M.Sc.E. thesis, Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, Technical Report No. 291, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, 110 pp. ABSTRACT New advancements in technology such as the rise of social networks have led to more geospatial data being produced every day. The current issue with the large volume of geospatial data is to store and process it because of the scalability of the data. In this thesis, two computing implementations, cloud computing and Internet computing, are studied and evaluated for their capability in storing, processing and visualizing large volumes of geospatial data. For the cloud computing implementation, the different concepts of cloud computing have been analysed according to their applications, models and services. Moreover, a case study using cloud computing platforms has also been implemented for storing and processing geotagged tweets retrieved for a national recreational park in Vancouver, BC. For the Internet computing platform, the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Processing Service has been investigated as a framework for sharing geospatial data and processing it over Internet. A raster calculation algorithm in Web Processing Service platforms has also been implemented on 2 scenes of Landsat satellite imagery to evaluate WPS’ capabilities in handling large volume of data. Results of this research suggest that internet computing can be used to handle geospatial data processing but, when dealing with large volumes of data, this study proves that Internet computing and current Geospatial Information Systems are not suitable to be used and cloud computing platform can be utilized to handle large volumes of geospatial data. ii DEDICATION To: Samira With Love iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a pleasure to acknowledge and thank the people whom without this thesis would not be possible: I am highly grateful to my supervisor Dr.Yun Zhang for his important support throughout this work. His understanding, encouraging and personal guidance have provided a good basis for the present thesis. It is difficult to overstate my gratitude to my supervisor Dr.Monica Wachowicz, with her enthusiasm and her inspiration throughout my research period, she provided encouragement, sound advice, good teaching, great feedback, and lots of good ideas. I would have been lost without her. David Fraser, Sylvia Whitaker, Lorry Hunt and Amir Abouhamze who were always available when needed and have always kindly offered their assistance. I am grateful for the open source tools and projects used in this research. I am deeply indebted to my parents, without whom I would not be standing where I am, they taught me to pursue my dreams, they taught me not to give up, they taught me to live, they taught me to love, they are the greatest teachers of my life. And last but not the least; I would like to thank my lovely wife, Samira. She lost a lot due to my thesis but she always gave me hope when there were none, without her understanding and encouragement, this thesis would not be possible. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. x LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... xi LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................... xiii Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................ 1 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Research Background..................................................................................... 2 1.2 Research Challenges ...................................................................................... 4 1.3 Research Objectives ....................................................................................... 6 1.4 Methodology .................................................................................................. 7 1.5 Overview of the Chapters............................................................................... 8 Chapter 2 .......................................................................................................................... 14 2 A Comparative Study of Web Processing Service Implementations for Raster Calculation ....................................................................................................................... 14 Abstract ............................................................................................................................ 14 v 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 15 2.2 Definition of WPS ........................................................................................ 16 2.2.1 Processes of WPS ......................................................................................... 18 2.2.2 WPS Operations ........................................................................................... 18 2.2.3 Data Types in WPS ...................................................................................... 20 2.2.4 Advantages of WPS ..................................................................................... 20 2.3 WPS Implementations .................................................................................. 24 2.3.1 52°North Project .......................................................................................... 24 2.3.1.1 Features of 52°North ........................................................................... 24 2.3.1.2 52°North Architecture ........................................................................ 25 2.3.1.3 Raster Calculations in 52°North ......................................................... 27 2.3.2 ZOO Project ................................................................................................. 27 2.3.2.1 Raster Calculations in ZOO ................................................................ 29 2.3.3 Deegree Project ............................................................................................ 29 2.3.3.1 Deegree Architecture .......................................................................... 30 2.3.3.2 Raster Calculation in Deegree ............................................................ 31 2.3.4 PyWPS Project ............................................................................................. 32 2.3.4.1 PyWPS Architecture ........................................................................... 32 vi 2.3.4.2 PyWPS Raster Calculations ................................................................ 33 2.3.5 Geoserver ..................................................................................................... 33 2.3.5.1 WPS Processes in Geoserver .............................................................. 34 2.3.5.2 Process Chaining in Geoserver ........................................................... 35 2.3.5.3 Raster Data in GeoServer ................................................................... 36 2.3.5.4 Raster Calculation in Geoserver ......................................................... 37 2.4 Comparative Study ....................................................................................... 39 2.5 Conclusions .................................................................................................. 43 Chapter 3 .......................................................................................................................... 48 3 A Comprehensive Overview of Cloud Computing in GIS ....................................... 48 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 49 3.2 Definition of Cloud Computing ..................................................................