ISPRS, Vol.34, Part 2W2, “Dynamic and Multi-Dimensional GIS”, Bangkok, May 23-25, 2001 
BUILDING DISTRIBUTED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR OCEAN TRANSPORTATION (GIS-OT) 
Shaopeng SUN 1 Guangru LI 2 Depeng ZHAO 3 
1 Nautical Science and Technology Institute 
Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China, 116026 
Tel:86-411-4729297 
E-mail: sun_sp@usa.net 
2 Nautical Science and Technology Institute 
Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China, 116026 
Tel:86-411-4729297 
E-mail: creatlgr@sina.com 
3 Nautical Science and Technology Institute 
Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China, 116026 
Tel:86-411-4729297 
KEY WORDS: GIS-OT, Distributed, Data sharing, Real-time 
ABSTRACT 
With the development of world economy, ocean transportation is becoming heavier and more important than before. Its data’s mass, 
real-time, multiple and distributed features make us very difficult to deal with them. The development of Internet and Distributed 
Computing make it possible and convenient to process mass and distributed ocean transportation data. Most of ocean transportation data 
are spatial-temporal in nature, so integration of GIS and transportation technology is the powerful solution to resolve sophisticated ocean 
transportation. This paper researches into how to build the distributed GIS-OT. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
With the development of world economy, transportation has 
become heavier than before. In ocean transportation, it needs 
more real-time, mass and multiple ocean transportation data 
along with the increase of ship numbers, improvement of ship 
speed and diversification of cargo. Therefore, it becomes more 
complicated to process ocean transportation information. In order 
to manage the intricate ocean transportation information, many 
departments in different places and different fields build their own 
computing and data model to resolve problems in their own 
applications. But most of these models are fragmented, multiple 
and incompatible. Data is redundant and often conflicting data 
acquisition efforts. They cannot coordinate to manage ocean 
transportation information in whole. Ocean transportation can be 
looked as a large network, it links distributed department of the 
whole world both geographically and socially. Therefore, we need 
new approach to deal with such complicated ocean transportation 
network. In recent years, the development of the two key 
technologies (Internet and GIS) brings forward the new approach 
to storage, issue, share and analyze ocean transportation 
information. 
2. FEATURES OF INTERNET-BASED DISTRIBUTED 
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR OCEAN 
TRANSPORTATION (GIS-OT) 
Ocean transportation information have their special features, we 
cannot adopt normal data model to describe them. But most of 
them are spatial-temporal in nature, e.g. traffic volumes, 
congestion, incidents, sea route, etc. GIS is a new technology to 
integrate, analyze and display spatial-temporal information. 
Therefore, GIS is the power tool to deal with ocean transportation 
information. But traditional GIS is largely utilized in a workstation 
environment, where data are accessed locally, stored in their own 
data model and used by their own computing model. Currently, 
many advanced ocean transportation applications require the 
ability to handle spatial data dynamically and in real-time, and 
these data in many cases need to be assembled from different 
source. Internet provides convenient approach to transmit, issue 
and share ocean transportation geographic information in 
different places and different fields. Therefore, the emerging of 
distributed geographic information system combining Internet and 
GIS provides a new approach to access, share and disseminate 
ocean transportation information. The reformation brought by the 
Internet-based GIS-OT mainly described as follows: 
2.1 Sharing And Interoperation Of Ocean Transportation 
Geographic Information 
In brief, ocean transportation geographic information can be 
simply classified into two parts: static ocean geographic 
environment information and dynamic ocean transportation 
information. Ocean geographic environment information includes 
coastline, isobaths, reef, etc. They describe detail about 
geographic information and attributes of ocean which ships 
voyage on. The information was seldom changed and maintained 
by some departments of government. Ocean transportation 
information can be farther classified into unitary information (sea 
route, ocean traffic volumes, incidents, etc) and personal 
information (every ship’s geographic, historic track, velocity, etc.). 
Personal ocean transportation information was maintained by 
every ship. Unitary ocean transportation information was 
maintained by ship company and some other marine 
management and monitoring departments and was partly formed 
by all ship’s transportation information. 
Whether ocean geographic environment information or ocean 
transportation information, they all have different data providers 
and data receivers, such as seaway survey department, ocean 
transportation monitoring and management department, ship 
companies, ECDIS producing companies, etc. Differences mainly 
focus on three aspects: First, different data providers provide 
different data model and different spatial accuracy. Second, 
different data users have different definitions and demands of the 
same transportation objects. Third, different applications require 
different levels of details in spatial data representation. 
IHO-S57 is the international standard of ECDIS transmission, and 
most ECDIS producing companies and research communities 
support this standard now, therefore, we can create a sharing 
model based on this standard to resolve the sharing of ocean 
geographic environment information. But the sharing of dynamic 
ocean transportation information should be resolved by another 
approach. In our research project, we adopt a basic