Preliminary study of a cluster-based open-source parallel GIS based on the GRASS GIS

Abstract In response to the problem of how to give geographic information system (GIS) high-performance capabilities for certain specific GIS applications, a new GIS research direction, parallel GIS processing, has emerged. However, traditional research has focused mostly on implementing typical GIS parallel algorithms, with little discussion of how to parallelize an entire GIS package on clusters based on theory. Therefore, the authors have chosen the geographic resources analysis support system (GRASS) GIS as the object of their research and have put forward the concept of a cluster-based open-source parallel GIS (cluster-based OP-GIS) as a tool to support Digital Earth construction. The related theory includes not only the parallel computing mode, architecture, and software framework of such a system, but also various parallelization patterns. From experiments on the prototype system, it can be concluded that the parallel system has better efficiency and performance than the conventional system on certain selected modules.

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