GEOTOPOS – Supporting Geomatics Engineering Education with a knowledge database of Geosciences-based digital content

Abstract:- Today’s advances in digital information and communication technologies, especially in areas such as the World Wide Web accessibility and Web-mediated learning environments, provide a wide variety of means to support and empower the teaching, learning and training experiences of both the teachers and the learners in all levels of educational needs. At the Department of Surveying Engineering of the National technical University of Athens, we are facing this challenge by developing GEOTOPOS, a repository of Geosciences-based digital resources, which are systematically organized for easy access, efficient search and intelligent navigation through the Web. GEOTOPOS would essentially evolve into a Digital Library for Earth System Education that will eventually support teaching and learning about the Earth as a system in general and Geomatics Engineering in particular. This paper addresses key concepts and the architecture characteristics of GEOTOPOS, with emphasis on the models necessary to represent geosciences-based knowledge, which is accessed in most cases in terms of geographic content and relationships that, in turn, are creating special challenges and opportunities for networked information systems like the GEOTOPOS. It describes implementation details for the various components of GEOTOPOS, as well as discusses briefly both the lessons learned so far, and the future directions of our efforts