29 CLOUD Based GIS

Dr Seema Mehra Parihar

epgp books

   

 

 

Learning Outcomes:

 

After completing this unit you will be able to :

  1. Know what is cloud computing & Cloud Based GIS?
  2. Understand essentials of Cloud GIS
  3. Identify key steps to move to Cloud GIS
  4. Comprehend advantages & disadvantages of Cloud base GIS

Figure 1: TIMELINE OF GIS

 

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

     GIS has come a long way since 1960’s. Time line of GIS (figure 1) clearly illustrates that 2000 onwards the cloud based platform is being used by the users of this geospatial system. Even after more than 17 years of the advent of cloud based GIS, only the larger applications of macro level are using this platform. But, with the scope and the sharing power of cloud based GIS, this can definitely be branded as a future of GIS. This is cause everything these days seems to be moving towards cloud. If you recollect your definition of GIS from the introductory chapter of GIS, Geographical information system is ‘CSTARD’ where “S” is storing spatial and non-spatial data. Today, GIS is all heading towards cloud because , cloud is gaining momentous in storing contacts, calendars, documents, articles, images, accounts, presentations, and everything in the cloud. Consequently, what is happening is that , many private GIS based companies and foremost vendors are developing cloud based geospatial solutions. The market is expanding and therefore to understand key aspects of “cloud GIS” is very important. In this lesson , therefore it is important to understand the concept, economics, feasibility and advantages and disadvantages of Cloud GIS. Let us learn about different aspects of this in this lecture.

 

 

 

Figure 1: Cloud & Services benefitting different Platforms (Source: CA LABS,2014)

   What is Cloud GIS?

 

Before embarking on this Cloud based emerging set of technologies, concepts, and work practices, it is important to understand that it is not a kind of settled set of services, but require new critical thinking for making decisions. At the same time what appears to be relevant today in Cloud computing including Cloud GIS is a decision towards adding cloud computing in your organization, process management, research methodology, etc.

 

Cloud computing is a concept and a phrase that has become increasingly popular. There are a number of competing definitions for what “cloud computing” entails. The best definition of cloud computing comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which consists of (i) essential characteristics; (ii) three service models, and (iii) four deployment models.

 

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, 2011) defines “Cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

 

According to NIST ,2011 “ cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics including

 

(i) On-demand self-service;

(ii) Broad network access,

(iii)  Resource pooling,

(iv) Rapid elasticity, and

(v) Measured Service);

 

three service models including

(i) Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS),

(ii)Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), and

(iii) Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS));

 

four deployment models including

(i)Private cloud,

(ii) Community cloud,

(iii) Public cloud, and

(iv)Hybrid cloud;

 

and key enabling technologies include:

(i) fast wide-area networks,

(ii) powerful, inexpensive server computers, and

(iii) high-performance virtualization for commodity hardware, Ferraiola, D., (2011).

 

Before proceeding further, “let us learn about hosted services on the internet meant for users of GIS technology or members of public who want to access maps. Services include map service, data storage and access, powerful analysis with applications, to manage assets and information. The definitions of related terms are mentioned below,

 

(https://gislounge.com/)”.

 

Cloud Status

 

This refers to the real-time view of the performance and uptime of cloud products and services, visible on a dashboard, showing status updates of cloud performance and latency.

 

Community Cloud

 

Community Cloud is a cloud deployment multi tenant model (multiple clients / organizations on a single server) on shared infrastructure; managed and secured by the participating organizations, with common or shared goals.

 

Private Cloud is a cloud deployment model where the cloud infrastructure is accessible by a single organization, for greater data control and security.

 

Public Cloud

 

Public Cloud is a cloud deployment model made available over a public network to multiple clients, with shared infrastructure and pooled physical resources.

 

Hybrid Cloud

 

The hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization combines the security of private cloud while running applications from the public cloud. The public and private cloud infrastructures operate in tandem, using an encrypted connection for communication. A hybrid cloud environment can also be a combination of two or more clouds (Private, Public or Community) connected by proprietary technology.

 

Cloud based GIS can be best understood by simplifying the cloud computing as ‘ANDSEFH’ where ‘A’ means Accessibility Borderless ; ‘N’ means Network access; ‘D’ stands for Demand self-service; ‘S’ represents Sharing & Resource pooling.; ‘E’ stands for Elasticity;and ‘F’ stands for Fixed service and there is External Hosting. This is well explained in Table 1.

 

TABLE 1: Cloud Based GIS: ‘ANDSEF’

 

Source: Modified from Ferraiola, D., (2011)

 

 

Market recognizes ‘ANDSEF’ characteristics of CLOUD GIS. & following cloud base services are present today:

     Map2Net ( http://www.map2net.com ) ArcGIS Online,)

 

GIS Cloud, MapBox,

 

Mango Map, CartoDB and MapInfo Stratus.

 

3. Why it is more difficult to move towards Cloud based GIS by GIS organizations?

 

“With GIS systems consuming and processing petabytes of data, this is challenging and unrealistic. For an organization with less than, say, 50 terabytes of data to manage, it’s easy to move everything there. This is not the case for organizations in the geospatial industry. The business value of public cloud infrastructure is desirable, but when there are such large volumes of data, it’s hard to get there.“Lift and shift” strategies to mimic on-site infrastructure in the cloud are not often viable when petabytes of data are involved, and many businesses need to keep at least some data on the premises. Luckily the utilization of public and private infrastructure does not have to be an either/or decision, Geosk, 2017(https://gislounge.com/geosk-gis-data-as-a-service-daas/)”

 

What we need to remember is that the business dynamics of public infrastructure are desirable, but with so much data to manage, it’s hard to figure out how to get there.The “hybrid cloud” approach is one option where we can have some apps running in our data center and other apps can be running in Amazon or Google.

 

4. FOUR key steps to accelerate JOURNEY to the CLOUD

 

(modified from GIS Lounge write up on Colud GIS,2017)

 

 

Step 1: Go Cloud-Native

 

Every Organization has large data and its large size is the primary inhibitor preventing movement towards the public cloud and cloud architectures in general. There are separate repositories and they may be using different applications and storing, retrieving, analyzing and even sharing in this case becomes a challenge. Newer cloud-native applications use unique interfaces whereas, “Classic” applications use older protocols to access data . , while converting everything to cloud-native format will save much time, money, and headache in the long run. This does not have to be a massive project; you can start small and progress over time to phase out last generation’s technology.

 

Step 2: Go According to Policy

 

There is a need to use policies to place data where it’s needed, across private and public cloud. As far as possible there is a need to follow policies and principle right from the start. Data management policies in the form of rules help decide where data should be placed based on the applications and users that need it – parts of your workflow behind your firewall and other parts in the public cloud. What is required are the cluster nodes in multiple geographic regions to protect and location-optimize data.

 

Step 3: Go Cloud to Cloud

 

Policies help automate and orchestrate services to your applications based on business requirements (e.g. cost, capacity, performance, and security), according to the different capabilities of your on-premise or cloud resources. This also means data is efficiently discoverable and accessible across multiple clouds – the cloud data management platform considers the differences in services provided by the different clouds and moves or copies data to the right one.

 

Step 4: Go Deep

 

Cloud-native data holds its own metadata right alongside it, not in a separate database only its own specific application can read. This also allows the user agency or individual user to perform large-scale intelligence projects. It’s fair to say agencies with big datasets use them in a more rigorous way in terms of intelligence than a commercial enterprise would – metadata is key to these functions, and key to being able to find very specific information in a large dataset.

 

5. ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES for CLOUD GIS

 

There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to cloud GIS but it looks like it is something that is here to stay and maybe worth looking at as a way to simplifying the needs of your organisation and the needs of your users. Look for a service that meets your needs, your data formats, your end users and the level of control you want. Based on Dean M Howell (2013 ) the advantages and disadvantages could be listed as follows:

 

ADVANTAGES (Dean M Howell (2013 )  :

 

1. “Data Access: Access can be via any internet connection, anytime, anywhere. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage, if you have a good internet connection it is an advantage, otherwise an act of frustration.

 

2. Distribution: With the facility of remote users – cloud GIS makes the distribution of data,analysis and systems very simple.

 

3. Data Capture: Having a cloud GIS allows data capture in real or near real time to be displayed directly onto your system. One such success story is open street maps.

 

4. E-commerce: The ability to sell data or online services to a wider audience can open up the income streams for various organisation through cloud GIS.

 

5. IT Management: The need to have dedicated GIS Administrators will be reduced as you can outsource that to the cloud GIS hosting organization”

 

 

DISADVANTAGES FOR CLOUD GIS(Dean M Howell (2013 ) :

 

1. Data Access: Access can be via any internet connection, anytime, anywhere. I see this as both an advantage and a disadvantage, if you do not have a good internet connection then it will quickly become a source of frustration for different users.

 

2. Security: Security is an important aspect of any system and therefore  cloud GIS if do not have /hosts a good security system , data has a scope to be accessed by users who should not be accessing it.

 

3. Data Volume:GIS data has always been big, taking up gigabytes on your own server. If you move to a cloud GIS solution then there is both the time to migrate the data to the host server and also for end users to access and download.

 

4. External Hosting: This can be a major concern as the cloud GIS hosting organisation may not have your best interests at heart.

 

5. Lack of Control: Another downside of cloud GIS, is the lack of control you may have over the way your data is used, displayed, manipulated and analysed. To add a new function or layer may not be as simple as just loading a new dataset onto the server.

 

6. Data Format: What formats is the cloud GIS application serving the data out in. There may be a scope to reformat the data to application.

 

 

SUMMARY

 

There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to cloud GIS but it looks like it is something that is here to stay and maybe worth looking at as a way to simplifying the needs of GIS organizations and the needs of different GIS users. Whether for functional need, budgetary alignment, or due to top-down pressure, all companies will benefit by executing parts of their workflow in the public cloud at some level. With GIS systems consuming and processing petabytes of data, this is though challenging and unrealistic, the business value of public cloud infrastructure is desirable, but when there are such large volumes of data, one come across innumerable challenges. Scope is immense and combined with benefits this will only lead to expansion of GIS FOOTPRINTS.

 

you can view video on CLOUD Based GIS

References