An Overview of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Data Exchange

Data exchange, sometimes referred to as data interchange, is critical to make full use of the complex but valuable data from geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering projects. Data exchange is not only about preserving data between source and target databases but also about building up meaningful data sets during projects. The paper identifies four major approaches for exchanging geotechnical and geoenvironmental data, namely the relational, XML, GIS/GML, and metadata approaches. It describes at a high level their main characteristics and differences and ponders on their respective advantages and disadvantages.