Date of Graduation

12-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Geography (MS)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Geosciences

Advisor/Mentor

Tullis, Jason A.

Committee Member

Cothren, Jackson D.

Second Committee Member

Shi, Xuan

Keywords

Social sciences; Geographic information systems; Geospatial workflows

Abstract

At first glance the Astronomer by Vermeer, Tutankhamun’s burial mask, and a geospatial workflow may appear to have nothing in common. However, a commonality exists; each of these items can have a record of provenance detailing their history. Provenance is a record that shows who did what to an object, where this happened, and how and why these actions took place. In relation to the geospatial domain, provenance can be used to track and analyze the changes data has undergone in a workflow, and can facilitate scientific reproducibility. Collecting provenance from geospatial workflows and finding effective ways to use this provenance is an important application. When using geospatial data in a workflow it is important to determine if the data and workflow used are trustworthy. This study examines whether provenance can be collected from a geospatial workflow. Each workflow examined is a use case for a specific type of geospatial problem. In addition to this, the collected provenance is then used to determine workflow trust and content trust for each of the workflows examined in this study. The results of this study determined that provenance can be collected from a geospatial workflow in such a way as to be of use to additional applications, such as provenance interchange. From this collected provenance, content trust and workflow trust can be estimated. The simple workflow had a content trust value of .83 (trustworthy) and a workflow trust value of .44 (untrustworthy). Two additional workflows were examined for content trust and workflow trust. The methods used to calculate content trust and workflow trust could also be expanded to other types of geospatial data and workflows. Future research could include complete automation of the provenance collection and trust calculations, as well as examining additional techniques for deciding trust in relation to workflows.

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