Publishers, reviewers and crowdsourced WFS

Publishers and Reviewers using Gaia to "Geo-Synch" ArcGIS and CubeWerx WFS-T

We're working on a few projects now that help spatial data infrastructures (SDI) tap the energy of crowdsourcing - and help data production and update at local levels, where data sources can be maintained by people that know them best.

The basic operations for this kind of "GeoSynchronization" are pretty simple - updates to a geospatial layer are published by one data source, reviewed by another and followed by others. When you organize OGC WFS, geoRSS feeds and something like CarbonCloud on Azure Cloud for the task you get three roles in the federation:

Publisher - Makes changes to layers. Generates feature changes, submits them for review via a Change Feed. Changes include adding, deleting or updating features in layers. When a change is accepted or rejected Publisher is notified via a Resolution Feed. There can be many Publishers for a layer or different layers.

Reviewer - Approves changes submitted by Publishers, subscribed to a Change Feed. When a Reviewer receives a change to a layer, they can then use an application to review and 'accept' or 'reject'. GeoSynchronization Services (GSS) can then apply accepted changes to any registered OGC WFS in the federation. Reviewers serve as the "sanity check" in the network.

Follower - Can use standard RSS reader to get updates on any device. When changes to layers are accepted GSS announces them to Followers via the Replication Feed. A Follower subscribed to these event notifications will receive appropriate updates in the form of RSS or GeoRSS entries.