Provenance Information in Geodata Infrastructures

When it comes to usability evaluation of geodata information about its provenance or lineage are vital. Nevertheless, in practice the corresponding metadata elements are often neglected. Even if available, the tabular or listed metadata representations in current metadata catalogue user interfaces do not sufficiently support the users browsing and comparing metadata. This chapter proposes an interactive application for data provenance visualization called MetaViz. As a foundation for the MetaViz design the chapter provides a detailed analysis on modeling aspects, available standards and specifications for data provenance and presents possible design and implementation choices. A scientific geodata infrastructure that supports researchers sharing results of numerical simulations of different environmental phenomena serves as the underlying use case.