- Geoportal
A geoportal is a type of
web portal used to find and accessgeographic information (geospatial information) and associated geographic services (display, editing, analysis, etc.) via theInternet . Geoportals are important for effective use ofgeographic information systems (GIS) and a key element ofSpatial Data Infrastructure (SDI).Geographic information providers, including government agencies and commercial sources, use geoportals to publish descriptions (
geospatial metadata ) of their geographic information. Geographic information consumers, professional or casual, use geoportals to search and access the information they need. Thus geoportals serve an increasingly important role in the sharing of geographic information and can avoid duplicated efforts, inconsistencies, delays, confusion, and wasted resources.Background
The United States National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), started in 1994 (see
OMB Circular A-16 ), is considered the earliest geoportal concept. The U.S. Federal Geospatial Data Committee (FGDC) coordinated development of the NSDI Clearinghouse Network, the first large geoportal. It has many distributed catalogs that can be searched via a client interface.First released in 2003, the
Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) geoportal was developed as part of a U.S.e-government initiative. Unlike the NSDI Clearinghouse Network, GOS was built around a centralized metadata catalog database, with an architecture that links users to data providers through a Web-based geoportal. The user of GOS may employ a simple Web browser (thin client) or may interface directly with a GIS (thick client).More recently, there has been has been a proliferation of geoportals for sharing of geographic information based on region or theme. Examples include the INSPIRE, or Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community geoportal, the
NatCarb geoportal, which provides geographic information concerning carbon sequestration in the United States, andUNSDI , the United Nations Spatial Data Infrastructure.Links
National and International Geoportals
* [http://www.geonorge.no GeoNorge (Norway)]
* [http://www.geodata.gov Geospatial One-Stop (USA)]
* [http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/geoPortal12/index.html Go-Geo! (UK)]
* [http://eu-geoportal.jrc.it/gos Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE)]
* [http://gisserver.nic.in/nsdiportal India NSDI Portal]
* [http://www.fgdc.gov/dataandservices NSDI Clearinghouse Network (USA)]
* [http://www.pcn.minambiente.it Portale Cartografico Nazionale (Italy)]
* [http://www.geonetwork.nl UNSDI Netherlands GeoNetwork portal (Netherlands)]State and Province Geoportals
* [http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov GeoStor (Arkansas, USA)]
* [http://gis.ca.gov CaSIL, California Spatial Information Library, USA]
* [http://rgis.unm.edu New Mexico Resource GIS, USA]Theme Geoportals
*Conservation Geoportal , external link: [http://www.conservationmaps.org Conservation GeoPortal]
* [http://www.natcarb.org NatCarb, National Carbon Sequestration Geoportal, USA]References
Goodchild, M.F., P. Fu, and P.M. Rich. 2007. Geographic information sharing: the case of the Geospatial One-Stop portal. "Annals of the Association of American Geographers" 97(2):250-266.
Maguire, D.J., and P.A. Longley. 2005. The emergence of geoportals and their role in spatial data infrastructures. "Computers, Environment and Urban Systems" 29: 3-14.
Tang, W. and Selwood, J. 2005. "Spatial Portals: Gateways to Spatial Information". ESRI Press, Redlands, CA.
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