Geoweb
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The Geospatial Web (Pronunciation: 'gēō-spãy-shee-ăl wěb', Grammatical Function: adjective noun) or Geoweb is a relatively new term that implies the merging of geographical (location-based) information with the abstract information that currently dominates the Internet. This would create an environment where one could search for things based on location instead of by keyword only – e.g. “What is Here?”.
The concept of a Geospatial Web may have first been introduced by Dr. Charles Herring in his US DoD paper, An Architecture of Cyberspace: Spatialization of the Internet, 1994, U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (40°8′58.9″N 88°16′22.7″W / 40.149694°N 88.272972°W). Dr. Herring proposed that the problem of defining the physical domain in a computer or cyber-infrastructure, providing real time and appropriate fidelity, required a cyber-spatial reference or index combining both Internet Addressing and Hierarchical Spatial Addressing. As such, the Geoweb would be characterized by the self synchronization of network addressing, time and location. The Geoweb would allow location to be used to self organize all geospatially referenced data available through the Internet.[citation needed]
The interest in a Geoweb has been advanced by new technologies, concepts and products. Virtual globes such as Google Earth and NASA World Wind as well as mapping websites such as Google Maps, Live Search Maps and Yahoo Maps have been major factors in raising awareness towards the importance of geography and location as a means to index information. The increase in advanced web development methods such as Ajax are providing inspiration to move GIS (Geographical Information Systems) into the web.
Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) has emerged as an academic community interested in technical aspects of helping people find information about places. In order to make information accessible from geographically oriented applications, coordinate metadata must be created via some form of geocoding or geoparsing process. After obtaining geographic coordinates, they must be indexed in useful ways that allow people to interact with the non-geographic nature of the content, e.g. viewing photographs or keyword searching.
[edit] See also
- Digital Earth
- Search engine
- Geospatial Content Management System (GeoCMS)
- Geographic Information Retrieval
- Geocoding and Geoparsing
