Even the most advanced centralized storage system can not host all the GIS data for a state or provincial district alone. And no single CPU can process all the numbers in a reasonable time frame, not to mention any analysis or decision support activity. Therefore, GIS data are distributed among different geographical locations, and GIS applications are run on different machines. Collaborative GIS models are developed to enable data sharing and collaboration via the Internet that connects many computers in the world together. Many issues arise with a model operating in such a vast computer network.
Some issues are social in nature, others are technical.
This paper intends to provide an in-depth overview of these issues. This paper will also present a prototype of collaborative GIS in the ecosystem management system, and how the ecosystem management system uses this collaborative GIS model to achieve better environmental management decision support. The paper will discuss the component, architecture, and case study of such a collaborative GIS based ecosystem management system.