In the past, desktop GIS were necessary to handle complex spatial business decisions. This lead to problems with data management, model updates and an increased cost to the organisation in hardware and (often) software maintenance. As organisations move to more cloud based solutions and provide staff with thinner client machines (chrome books etc.) it becomes harder for staff to manage more complex geospatial problems.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) developed the web processing service (WPS) standard in 2005. It provides rules for standardizing how inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services are made. The standard also defines how a client can request the execution of a process, and how the output from the process is handled. It defines an interface that facilitates the publishing of geospatial processes and clients’ discovery of and binding to those processes.

This talk will present case studies of how Astun Technology has used the OGC WPS standard, as implemented by GeoServer, to allow users of web based mapping applications to carry out advanced spatial operations and allowed them to implement complex business logic without the need for specialised hardware or software.