urbSAT: from spatial SQL to urban indicators

This paper proposes both a tool for indicator production and a language with spatial operators in order to narrow the border between severals expert (urban manager and scientist). In the spirit of Spatial Data Infrastructure, the aim is to promote best practices and guidelines around geosciences, not only on sharing data, as focused currently, but also on sharing spatial processing method that are used to build knowledges. Beyond the strict field set of practices, themes and business logics, we aim to set up and deploy a common language and the corresponding framework. Those will provide all researchers the ability to produce complex indicators using knowledge of several different disciplines (geography, sociology, climatology, urban structure, ecology... ). We present the urbSAT (urban Spatial Analysis Tool) that includes a workflow and a set of spatial operators that are integrated into a graphical GIS layer named OrbisGIS. To demonstrate the capabilities of urbSAT two indicators are presented.