Saving Lives With Geo-Spatial Web Standards : A Test Architecture for Evaluating the Possibility of Sharing Heterogeneous Data Among the Emergency Services

Abstract: The emergency services in neighboring Jämtland, Sweden and Nord-Sør Trøndelag, Norway have identified a need to share data across department, municipality and country borders. A project is started to evaluate the possibility of sharing information through a common Web Geographic Information System (GIS). The data about resources at the various departments suffers from a high level of heterogeneity, fragmentation and protocol incompatibility. The Open Geo-Spatial Consortium (OGC) issue Web standards to harmonize the processing of geo-spatial data and promote interoperability between GIS systems. A test model based on the Thin Thread Model, emulating a potential final solution, is built to evaluate the usability of these Web standards in the situation. Successful test cases including CRUD operations and relatively smooth swapping of layer modules show that using well-established standards can be beneficial. A proposed architecture extending the test model presents the idea of a centralized proxy node and a meta data catalog. The study highlights the issue of responsibility and question of which authority should maintain centralized nodes. In order to successfully implement a Web portal, the project participants must from a technical point of view investigate how to access all desired data, agree on protocols for communication and ensure that each owner of data provides an API in agreement with the protocol. The OGC Web standards are proven a good option and focal point.