| The transfer of information from paper based to electronic forms raises questions about how this information might be most easily and reliably found and accessed in a vast network of interconnected computers. This thesis examines specifically how spatial (geographic) information might be handled in such a network. It first examines the current state of spatial data cataloging. It then looks at how spatial resources (in the forms of archived data sets, active databases, analytical software, and automated services) might be arranged in the National Information Infrastructure by developing limited scenarios of spatial resource interactions.; Five possible paradigms (based on trends in current electronic access mechanisms) to catalog these scenarios are compared. Service protocols, conceptual models for developing intelligent computer to computer exchanges, were found to be the most pragmatic choice of possible cataloging paradigms. Two examples of spatial resource service protocols are developed and presented. |
