Towards Collaborative Spatial Decision Support in a Web-Based Environment

Abstract

Spatial decision-making in a distributed environment involves access to data and models from heterogeneous sources and repositories to compose disparate services into a meaningful integration. This is especially true in environmental planning which requires collaborative decision-making where complex interacting agents with conflicting goals need to work in a distributed environment. This paper identifies research issues on spatial decision-making in the context of distributed geo-spatial data warehouse. Emphasis is being put on the access to model description to ensure model and data interoperability in a distributed environment. We illustrate a Web based Spatial Decision Support System GEO-ELCA (Exploratory Land use Change Assessment), which is designed to assess the hydrological impact of land use changes. The system allows explorative evaluation of pollution scenarios in response to user’s decision to change land use from one category to another.