Editorial Introduction: Special Issue on Grids and Geospatial Information Systems

Grids and Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) are both based on distributed service architectures and have complementary capabilities. GIS systems provide a comprehensive set of services for managing maps, geospatial data sets, and geospatial information that can be applied to areas ranging from access to scientific data by researchers to disaster planning and emergency management. The data and information focus of GIS is being augmented with the computational and virtual organization capabilities of Grid computing by many projects, including the contributors to this special issue. This editorial introduction serves as an overview of the issues discussed at the GIS Grid Workshop in the Open Grid Forum and the follow?]on papers of this special issue.