Metadata as a knowledge management tool: supporting intelligent agent and end user access to spatial data

Many factors have led to explosive growth in the use of geographic information system (GIs) technology to support managerial decision making. Despite their power, utility, and popularity, however, GIS require a significant amount of specialized knowledge for effective use. This paper describes a GIS-based decision support system (DSS) design approach that embeds much of this knowledge in well-structured metadata and presents it to the decision maker through an appropriate interface or software agents, thereby decreasing system learning costs and improving effectiveness. The metadata design from a spatial decision support system (SDSS) is presented along with illustrations showing how the design addresses specific knowledge management (KM) problems. The paper then discusses how the knowledge management design approach can be generalized to other SDSS, to DSS in general, and to data warehouses. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.