Geo-Analytic Functions for UN Field Operations – UN Open GIS: Spiral 3 Geo-Analysis

This paper presents a case of developing open geospatial analysis functions and a processing toolbox as parts of UN Open GIS Spiral 3 activities. A comprehensive study focused on the use of geospatial analysis at the UN operations has been carried out, which covered various UN operations such as situational awareness, security operations, military operations, protection of civilians, epidemiological analysis, and so on. Four requirements on development of 1) primitive geospatial analysis functions, 2) processing toolbox or processing environment like WPS request builder of GeoServer, 3) model builder, and 4) management of the model builder were clarified through the study. By focusing the first and second requirements, a development architecture was proposed based on JAVA and GeoTools. The scope of implementation and its assessment were described. In addition, a use-case introduced a way of using geospatial functions developed in this research to analyse geostatistic factors that affect to occurrence of Ebola disease. Through the use-case study presented in the paper, I would like to share the experiences and lessons about the development of geospatial analysis functions, which would be used as a reference for other developments and applications.