Transcript Geospatial Standards – Experiences for the UK Academic

Geospatial Standards –
Experiences for the UK
Academic Community
Workshop on Grid Middleware and
Geospatial Standards for Earth System
Science Data, National e-Science Centre,
Edinburgh, Sept 2005
Chris Higgins
[email protected]
http://edina.ac.uk/
EDINA
• Part of the Data Library, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Designated a national datacentre in 1995
• EDINA's mission...
to enhance the productivity of research, learning
and teaching in UK higher and further education
• Bibliographic and Geodata services
• Undertake R&D  service
Importance of standards to the academic community (1)
Which of the following do you believe to be the single greatest benefit
offered by approved standards in software development?
Importance of standards for the academic community (2)
• National datacentre engagement with the concept of a
UK academic Spatial Data Infrastructure:
• Policies and institutional agreements
• Data
• Technology and standards
• Ability to find geo-related resources
• Means of accessing data
• Tools to enable use of the data
SDI for the UK Academic Community
Web Services
Data
Data
Data
Data
© 2004 Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
Ordnance Survey Digimap
EuroGlobalMap
GoGeo!
Web Services Agreement with the Ordnance Survey
• Agreement with the OS that can make data available as
web services to other JISC services
• Possibility of direct access by students and researchers
• Trial service - WMS into desktop GIS
• Security a key issue so Digimap users only
• Big questions about capacity
Importance of standards to the UK academic community (3)
• SDI courses beginning to be taught, eg, Muenster, Delft,
Utrecht, Wageningen, ITC, Jaume I, New Brunswick
• Any SDI courses in the UK?
• Opportunity to bring relevant research into the standards
process:
• Strengthen the ability of University members to contribute to innovation in
interoperability and to help improve the quality of both the existing and future
work force needed to support national and global spatial data infrastructures
(OGC University WG Charter, 2004)
• Increasingly graduates will be employing these standards in
their work
• Valid research topic in own right?
• JISC Interoperability Study
JISC Interoperability Study
Objectives:
• prove the feasibility of delivering geospatial data using OGC standards;
• demonstrate ease of use and value added;
• build support and enthusiasm for further
development;
• stimulate and advance further thinking
• identify major hurdles in full
development.
JISC Interoperability Study - deliverables
• A range of OGC based web services (WMS;WFS;WCS)
• A basic annotation web service (XIMA)
• Use cases realised:
– Datacentre. Access to data
– Teaching (urban expansion)
– Research (dynamic image registration using web
services)
• A report on the utility and issues surrounding
implementation of open standards for geospatial data
within UK academic sector, including an assessment of
security and access authorisation issues
JISC Interoperability Study
JISC Interoperability Study – preliminary conclusions
• More work required than possibly initially anticipated
(though overheads with modern tools is less significant
than was required previously e.g. MMS)
• Differences in underlying technologies may impact upon
the degree of support for ‘standards’ (open source vs
commercial)
• Security and DRM issues barely addressed – how do
OGC ‘web services’ map into mainstream Web Services
– what about WS-Security…longer term where does eResearch and GGF approaches to security fit in?
• Interoperability by definition assumes a minimum of 2
endpoints – providing the services themselves is only
half the story! Still early days…
Future - A Common Architecture
Datasets
OS Data
(GML)
Technologies
File based
Data supply
Map supply
Object based
SOA/Web
services
Open
standards
Historic
Shibboleth
Hydrographic
(MarineXML)
GRID
New services
Desktop
Plug-ins
Geology
(XMML)
Data
harmonisation
OSNI
(GML)
????
(GML?)
Google Earth
Contexts
Software
Hardware
(File server -> database)
Spatial Data
Infrastructures
(INSPIRE
Europe)
JISC
e-framework
Programme
GPS/LBS
DNF
Other JISC
services
Growth in use
and users
Changing
user needs
(& expectations)
Future – infrastructures everywhere
JISC e-Framework
UK academic
SDI
JISC
Information
Environment
e-Infrastructure
Future - Grid and OGC
• Initiatives taken to date:
• Dec 2003 – 2 day workshop at NIEeS
• June 2004 OGC TC Southampton – ad hoc Grid
meeting under Earth Observation WG
• July 2004 – formation of GridGIS WG
• Where next? Under investigation – making OGC
services available under OGSA-DAI. A collaboration
between NeSC and EDINA.
Contact:
[email protected]