Development and Implementation of an Extensible Interface-Based Spatiotemporal Geoprocessing and Modeling Toolbox Yang Cao, Daniel P. Ames Department of Geosciences, Idaho State University,
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This poster presents an object oriented and interface-based spatiotemporal data processing and modeling toolbox that can be extended by third parties to include complete suites of new tools through the implementation of simple interfaces. The resulting software implementation includes both a toolbox and workflow designer or “model builder” constructed using the underlying open source DotSpatial library and MapWindow desktop GIS. The unique contribution of this research and software development activity is in the creation and use of an extensibility architecture for both specific tools (through a socalled “ITool” interface) and batches of tools (through a so-called “IToolProvider” interface.) This concept is introduced to allow for seamless integration of geoprocessing tools from various sources (e.g. distinct libraries of spatiotemporal processing code) – including online sources – within a single user environment. In this way, the IToolProvider interface allows developers to wrap large existing collections of data analysis code without having to re-write it for interoperability. Additionally, developers do not need to design the user interfaces for loading, displaying or interacting with their specific tools, but rather can simply implement the provided interfaces and have their tools and tool collections appear in the toolbox alongside other tools. The demonstration software presented here is based on an implementation of the interfaces and sample tool libraries using the C# .NET programming language. This poster will include a summary of the interfaces as well as a demonstration of the system using the Whitebox Geospatial Analysis Tools (GAT) as an example case of a large number of existing tools that can be exposed to users through this new system. Vector analysis tools which are native in DotSpatial are linked to the Whitebox raster analysis tools in the model builder environment for ease of execution and consistent/repeatable use. We expect that this approach to development of spatiotemporal analysis and geoprocessing software can be extended to many areas including basic GIS analysis, hydrological and terrain analysis, or processing images and working with LiDAR data.
