MECOSIG adapted to the design of distributed GIS

For more than ten years MECOSIG has been used as a method for GIS design and implementation in various national and international projects achieved in our laboratory. During a decade, the method has been progressively improved and extended without modification of its basic principles. However the emergence of distributed GIS, implying several organizations capable to play various roles, requires the reappraisal of the methodology. New concerns are identified and a collection of new tools must be deployed. Taking the most of various recent researches completed for public authorities in Belgium, this paper presents some significant adaptations of the original MECOSIG method in order to cope with a distributed GIS environment.