Integrating GIScience Application Through Mashup

An increasingly rich array of geographic information, such as real-time sensor data, public web pages, social media data, and dynamic maps, are available over the Internet tobe integrated by multiple geographic information science (GIScience) applications that were not possible in the past. The conventional tightly coupled development approach is not suitable to integrate such widely distributed and dynamic data sources. The strictly standards-compliant interoperability, across all distributed geospatial information services, is inadequate; and it is not practical to satisfy the massive needs forvalue-added GIScience application integration from users and developers. Mashup has begun to play a major role in integrating applications. This chapter systematically examines the scientific and technical importance of mashup and illustrates how it enables the development of value-added GIScience applications. The Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) Advanced Emergency GIS (AEGIS)is used to demonstrate a mashup approach. AEGIS provides a Web-based visualization and decision-support tool to monitor emergencies, track victims and emergency-response personnel, and evaluate factors that impact emergency response. AEGIS achieves near-real-time map-based integration of data from more than a dozen disparate sources, including hospital locations and emergency room diversion status, highway traffic and incidents, location and availability of air ambulances and rescue airships, status of mobile telemedicine vehicles, and weather conditions, all with different data formats and update frequencies. AEGIS demonstrates the use of mashup as an effective means to achieve interoperability, and highlights the new conceptualization of geographic information as dynamic, distributed, and diverse.