Multi-agent framework for service-oriented geospatial computing

Geospatial computing today is highly manual requiring large amounts of human capital. The systems used for processing were designed for stand-alone environments, are inappropriate for modern distributed, heterogeneous network environments as Internet due to their closed architecture, and their lack of interoperability, reusability, and flexibility. The need of an intelligent architecture that can operate in complicated mapping situations and new/unknown environments is becoming manifest. Intelligent agent is the rational entity with big granularity, high-intelligence and autonomy characteristics, and Multi-agent system (MAS) is composed of a number of agents capable of communicating, coordinating, cooperating and even competing with each other, It provides a new approach to implement large-scale, distributed, self-adaptable and complicated software system. In this paper, a multi-agent framework is presented to facilitate constructing intelligent distributed service-oriented geospatial computing, which had been partly applied in a real project successfully.