Workflow technology for geo-processing: the missing link

Nowadays GIS users have at their disposal an unprecedented amount of spatial information, thanks to the growing acquisition capacity of the applied survey techniques and instruments, and to the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures and OGC Standards for sharing distributed spatial data. In this context there is the need for new GIS applications that cross the boundary of a single organization and are flexible enough to adapt to the environmental changes. This paper evaluates the applicability of the emerging workflow technology for developing new GIS distributed applications that combine automatic services and human interactions, and are able to deal with large amount of spatial data during long-running processing tasks. Moreover, the limits of this technology when applied to the geographical context are highlighted and some possible solutions to these limitations are proposed.