Development of an open source-based spatial data infrastructure

A pilot regional Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) has recently been developed for the Heraklion Prefecture in Crete, Greece, using Geographic Free and Open Source Software (GeoFOSS). This SDI is compatible with the geospatial standards and specifications introduced by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and it distributes the geospatial content on the web through widely accepted services (e.g., WMS, WFS, WCS and CSW). This paper presents the architecture, the components and the functionality of the Heraklion SDI. Specifically, it focuses on the map server, along with the services that provide accessibility to the data repositories, the spatial database server, the metadata and data catalog, the visualization tools and the web-client interface.