SOC & SOA in Ecological Niche Modelling and Agribusiness: Discussion and Case Studies
Fabiana Soares Santana, António Mauro Saraiva · 2009
Sustainable development demands the conservation of biodiversity while requires maintaining or increasing economic development. To study the biodiversity so as to obtain adequate approaches for sustainable development is a great challenge. There is much information supplied by several sources which must be treated and integrated before supporting any decision. The nature of the problem, however, requires systems with strong integration skills. Thus, biodiversity research communities are not completely integrated to each other and this lack must be treated by IT systems. SOC, Service-Oriented Computing, and their respective architectural paradigm, SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture, are recommended for such problems. This paper discusses the application of SOA & SOC in ecological niche modelling and precision agriculture systems. In order to clarify the discussion, case studies are presented for both problems, including a SOA-based solution and a SOC implementation for the specific process. This modelling technique is highly important for biodiversity studies because it allows mapping species distribution based on simple information, such as species occurrence points and environmental data. From the computing viewpoint, it requires many data from different providers, so case studies are very illustrative. Results presented here are important not only for biodiversity systems but they may be extended to agribusiness, as shown in the work. In addition, other systems with similar requirements may use this paper as a reference to develop their own solutions applying SOC & SOA concepts.