| dc.description.abstract | The use of geospatial workflow management systems to assist users with the composition of often complex GIS workflows is not without precedent. However, even where these management systems are used, users are still required to have an intricate knowledge of the geospatial domain, specific GIS tools and functions that these workflows are made up of as well as the particular software environment that the workflow is being constructed in; limiting the user group of these management systems to GIS experts and those which have become familiar with the software being used and, therefore, limiting the accessibility of the GIS domain and the meaningful answering of geospatial questions in a range of contexts. A promising solution to these limitations is the automatic synthesis of workflows making use of semantic technologies to support this process. However, the range of software environments available for carrying out geospatial analysis means that workflows created or synthesised for one environment are currently not easily translated into another environment without further knowledge of the particularities of each; presenting another challenge to the accessibility of the GIS field and the production of meaningful spatial analysis. Building on the body of work available for GIS workflow synthesis, the main research objective of this thesis is to present a novel approach to GIS workflow translation supported by the formalisation of domain knowledge using semantic technologies where GIS workflows are translated between two GIS software environments, ArcGIS and QGIS. Workflows are generated in and translated between each environment by the translation mechanism based on five predefined geo-analytical questions where expert generated examples of the workflows answering these questions are used as the basis of the quality and similarity assessments of the workflows translated as part of this research. The research presented herein highlights the promising capacity of the translation mechanism developed through this project to produce workflows with both a reasonable level of quality and to translate workflows with a reasonable level of similarity in order to answer the spatial questions posed. | |
