What is Geoprocessing Services?

When you place your order in the restaurant, you make a simple request to the waiter, who takes it to the kitchen, and through a simple or complex process the meal is prepared. You are not interested in how to prepare the meal but in the final result, that is, the satisfaction you receive from its taste

In the same way, geo-processing services are services that accept a request, process it in a simple or complex way with the help of geographical information and produce a result. Geo-processing is the geographic data management process.

What needs are covered by the Geoprocessing Services

Geoprocessing services give an immediate answer to any spatial query, from the simplest:

• where from do my customers come from?
• where is Aristotelous 6 Street, Cholargos?
• is there any pharmacy on duty near Aristotelous 6, Cholargos ?
• which is the best route from my home to Syntagma Square?

to the most complex:

• which are the best places for setting up health centers to cover most of the population within a half an hour from the health center?
• how will I organize my distributor fleet to deliver my orders in the shortest possible time?
• which customer is best served by which store?

It is important to note that the result of the services does not necessarily have to be displayed on a map, it may be a number or a text. For example, you might be interested in counting your customers’ number within 5 minutes of your store, or receiving a text message if a fleet vehicle deviates from its route.

Which are the Geoprocessing Services?

In order to answer the above questions, a different service needs to be activated each time. The service usually gets its name from the result it generates or the problem it solves. There are several dozens of such services, but the main ones, which cover almost all of the questions, are the following:

• Address Search (Geocoding) & Points of Interest (POI) Finder: fill in a free text the verbal of the address or the point of interest and find out their location on the map. Massively geocode a number of addresses
• Get an address from its geographical coordinates (Reverse Geocoding): Use the Reverse Geocoding function and find the address that corresponds to specific geographic coordinates
• Routing: Find the best route (time or distance) between two or more points using a combination of parameters (first and last point retention, toll avoidance, pedestrian or car use)
• Calculation of service (or coverage) areas: A service area is a polygon defined by the roads that are accessible from or to a point, based on some time or mileage. For example, the 5-minute point service area includes all roads being less than or equal to five minutes time distance from that point. Determine your store service areas by creating geographic polygons for each store or for your entire network of stores
• Vehicle routing problem: figure out how a number of orders will be delivered from one or more warehouses to a given number of customers (points) from a particular fleet of vehicles and drivers traveling on a road network in the optimal way, i.e. minimizing the operating routes’ costs of that fleet. The optimal way may alternatively be the calculation of the minimum delivery time or minimum distance traveled
• Closest facility: Find the “cost” of the route between incidents and facilities and discover the distance between them. For example, in the event of a fire, find out which fire station is closest to the point of fire and how to get there. Determine how many installations you want to consider and if the direction of the route is from or towards them
• Location allocation: considering facilities providing goods or services and a number of demand points, the goal of location-allocation is to locate the location of the facilities to serve the demand points in the most efficient way. Examples of location-allocation are the distribution of stores in supply depots or the identification of the bases of the ΕΚΑΒ ambulances to serve the largest geographic area in the shortest possible time
• Public Transportation: use a combination of public transport (including ferry services) to reach your destination
• Cartographic background: view Terra’s detailed cartographic background directly to your app

See in detail each service’s use and operation of here (“link σε PowerPoint presentation”).

How can you get Geoprocessing Services?

Geo-processing services are the building blocks of Terra’s geographic applications and should you wish they can become the building blocks of your applications the spatial dimension. Terra offers all the above services and can develop new ones to meet your own exclusive needs. Given that you are interested in the results, not the way it is calculated, Terra offers geo-processing services in the following ways:

• through the “Terra GIS API” for immediate use by your applications
• through “Terra GeoServices”  for use by ESRI’s ArcMap software
• through custom made WebGIS applications
• through Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products

But if you wish, Terra can offer you geographic data and GIS software, as well as its know-how to create your own services.

What is the benefit of Terra’s Geo-Processing Services?

Using the Terra geo-processing services, you benefit from the following:

• use ready-made and tested services by a number of customers, developed by our experienced technical staff
• use Terra’s geographical bases, the best in Greece in terms of size, accuracy and information without having to consider purchasing costs
• you are charged a low annual subscription cost allowing you to use the services for as long as you need them
• they play anytime, anyplace