Telegeoprocessing: the integration of remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS) and telecommunication

This paper aims to bring together most of the key issues involved in research in novel systems in telegeoprocessing. Telegeoprocessing can be defined as a new discipline based on real-time spatial databases updated regularly by means of telecommunications systems in order to support problem solving and decision-making at any time and any place. It involves the integration of remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS) and telecommunications. Telegeoprocessing can be categorized as WebGIS (an integration of Internet and GIS), Mobile Geoprocessing (Wireless Mappingan integration of mobile computing and GIS) and TeleGIS (an integration of GIS and other telecommunication techniques). This paper presents a comprehensive introduction to the problems encountered in telegeoprocessing engineering and the major technologies and standards related to designing an integrated, fully functional telegeoprocessing system based on the latest multimedia and telecommunication technologies. Overall attention will be given to systems based on remote sensing and GPS and all other technologies for sending data from sensors to GIS systems by means of multimedia telecommunications. Finally, we describe our pilot telegeoprocessing programme, which is currently being carried out in the Laboratory of Remote Sensing Information Sciences, Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Science, China.