ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: This chapter should be viewed as an overview of the web services standards work of the Open Geospatial Consortium with a special focus on the role of geospatial standards in the evolution and the future of the geospatial web. The geospatial web paradigm suggests the complete integration of geographic (location) and time information into the very fabric of both the internet and the web. Today, the geospatial web encompasses applications ranging from as simple as geo-tagging a photograph to mobile driving directions to sophisticated spatial data infrastructure portal applications orchestrating complex workflows for complex scientific modeling applications. In all of these applications, location and usually time are required information elements. In most of these applications, standards are the glue that enables the easy and seamless integration of location and time. These standards may be very lightweight, such as GeoRSS, or more sophisticated and rich in functionality such as the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS).
