Web processing service integrated with mobile application to identify suitable grain storage facility location Vinod Kumar Sharma 1,3 • Vijaya Banu 1 • K. Chandrasekar 1 • Bimal K. Bhattacharya 2 • M. V. R. Sesha Sai 1 • V. Bhanumurthy 1 Received: 24 November 2016 / Revised: 31 January 2017 / Accepted: 1 February 2017 Ó Korean Spatial Information Society 2017 Abstract Heavy rains causing a flood like situation affect the grains stored in godowns. To save the grains from floods, they have to be transferred to safer places. Histor- ical flood layers derived using the remote sensing data can be helpful in determining the safe place for transferring the grains from the flood affected godowns. Analyzing of satellite data for determining the safer locations needs specialized skills and GIS software’s. To overcome this, a web based information system, capable of organizing, hosting, and sharing of the flood layers and other spatial datasets as open geospatial consortium compatible web processing services is needed. For transferring the grains, the management must have the existing stock information of the flood affected godown as well as stock information of the godown where the grains are planned to be shifted. Mobile application, capable of reporting the stock infor- mation along with the godown location and ground pho- tographs can be an efficient solution to do so. This paper presents work on web processing services integrated with mobile application using open source technologies to identify suitable grain godowns location. Keywords Flood Á GIS Á Open geospatial standards (OGC) Á Mobile applications 1 Introduction Agricultural products are usually stored in grain huts or grain storage facilities like godowns etc., depending on the quantity of grains. The grain storage facilities are usually present in a group or cluster situated at various geographic sites across the country. Grains are stored in godowns by individual farmers, cooperative societies or by a govern- ment for different purposes. Farmers and cooperative societies store grains for gaining profit, whereas the gov- ernment stores the grains for overcoming emergency situ- ation, which may arise in the future. Although maximum care has been taken by the government in storing the grains, sometimes it may happen that a natural disaster may affect the grains stored in godowns and warehouses. To save the grains from floods, available godowns locations have to be analyzed, if they are prone to floods. If a god- own is prone to floods then which are the nearest godown where the grains can be shifted at the time of emergency? Do the nearest godowns have the facility and space to accommodate the shifted grains? Where should the gov- ernment plan the future construction of new godowns and warehouses? To answer these questions, there must be a spatial database containing information about the existing godowns with location coordinates, storage capacity, facilities available, contact information and much more. Also, it needs a historical spatial database having infor- mation about the past flood events and its extent. To ana- lyze the current scenarios, there must be a facility to integrate the current flood inundation map (derived using the satellite data or other relevant sources) in the decision making process. Use of standard GIS software’s for ana- lyzing and decision making restricts the usage, as the software requires license and GIS skills to operate. There must be a user friendly information system, using which & Vinod Kumar Sharma vinod_sharma@nrsc.gov.in; vinodjamdagni@gmail.com 1 Remote Sensing Application Area, National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO, Hyderabad, Telangana, India 2 Space Applications Centre, ISRO, Ahmadabad, Gujarat, India 3 Disaster Management Support Group, National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Balanagar, Hyderabad 500037, India 123 Spat. Inf. Res. DOI 10.1007/s41324-017-0085-7