Abstract
Grid computing for resources sharing and distributed computing has been researched widely in the past. As for distributed spatial datasets, the current centralized administrative scheme may become the system performance bottleneck. This paper presents a distributed cooperative grid computing technology to facilitate complex spatial applications by collaboration among distributed spatial resources. A hierarchical spatial index and communication protocol has been designed for the collaboration, which enables a dynamical choice for the best quality nodes for specified subtasks, synchronized execution, and compensation for a failure to execute a subtask. Also, we present an approach for dynamic resource allocation and distributed transaction mechanics to ensure consistency.