IGIBS Followon and use of Underspend

Dec 202011
 

Its a bit early to be making predictions about how IGIBS might evolve, but a recent presentation to the EDINA geoteam followed by some discussion indicated some of the possibilities.

  • The WMS Factory Tool.  With the simple but effective styling capability that Michael Koutroumpas engineered, I think we have a prototype thats not too far off a production strength tool.  There are loads of scenarios where its valuable to have access to a tool that makes it easy to see your “non-interoperable” data alongside the growing number of INSPIRE View Services (read WMS) from public authorities across Europe going online.  So top of my list is improving this tools styling capability.
  • Associated with this would be better understanding of necessary data publication infrastructure, eg, making it easy to use the other OGC Web Services.  Something like the GEOSS Service Factory ideas emerging from the EuroGEOSS project.  I think there is a real demand for tools to make it easy to use the OGC standards.
  • In the immediate future, I think its likely that the IGIBS team will do some promotion of the project outputs, eg:
    • presenting the project at relevant events, eg, Association GI Laboratories Europe conference, OGC Technical Committee meetings.  This might cost as little as £500 depending on where the event is.
    • use of social media to promote both the WMS Factory Tool and the report on “Best Practice Interaction with the UK Academic Spatial Data Infrastructure”.  This too could cost as little as an additional £500.
  • The latter report is worthy of a lot more investment.  A major output from this project, possibly the single most important output, is the increase in use of UK academic SDI services within the Institute of Geography and Earth Science (IGES) at Aberystwyth University.  IGES is acting as an exemplar for best practice research data management around geospatial data, the department is actively building on the IGIBS work and it will be interesting to see how it develops and if other departments in other institutions see the benefit and start to emulate what Aberystwyth is doing.  More work promoting Steve Walsh’s report would help.
 Posted by at 21:19 Project Management Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on IGIBS Followon and use of Underspend

Licensing for blog content, source code and data

Nov 032011
 

The blog content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.

IGIBS source code, i.e. the WMS Factory tool and the Mapping Application, is released under the modified BSD license. The full licence text will be included in any released source bundle.

The data licence(s) chosen depend on the original input data used. The WMS Factory tool will generate data (maps and tabular data) based on user-uploaded data which belong to their respective owners.

 Posted by at 15:20 Project Management, User Reqs Tagged with: , , , ,  Comments Off on Licensing for blog content, source code and data

Map Library becomes digital……

Oct 032011
 

Last week at IGES we had a rebirth of the map library as it became digital. This probably sounds more dramatic than it was.  What we did was to create a new drive on the public network for IGES staff and students   with a structured directory and put on some spatial data that relates to the Dyfi Biosphere. We also  highlighted  a few Web Map Services that you can access and invited some staff along to talk about using the area and how to create metadata through Geodoc.  There is also an  open invitation to staff and students to store any spatial data they want to make available to others on the drive as long as they also give it a metadata file to keep it company.

Really none of that had to happen in the map library but I think that the physical space it provides is more important than you might think. Now we have a place that encourages access to data  and metadata creation. This together with a map librarian who will help people through the use of the resources like Geodoc, makes it a place for spatial data management and access. The walls have posters espousing data sources, Gogeo and metadata creation and IGES has taken a step towards changing its culture of data management.

I like to think of the map library as a locus of good practice that will spread  the message of spatial data management.

 Posted by at 18:02 Uncategorized Tagged with: , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Map Library becomes digital……

Comparing Geoserver / Mapserver in terms of INSPIRE compliance

Jun 042011
 

One of the many goals of IGIBS is to generate Web Map Services that will be used in conjunction with INSPIRE type View Services which themselves are compliant with the INSPIRE Technical Guidance for View Services version 3.0. To that end, it made sense to take the following basic INSPIRE criteria into consideration when making our choice of tools:

  1. Support for the LANGUAGE request parameter in a GetCapabilities Request.
  2. Support for “extended attributes” including elements extending the
    _ExtendedCapabilities substitution group of the WMS 1.3.0 schema with a custom
    xsd.
  3. Support for the optional WMS 1.3.0 parameters wms:identifier, wms:AuthorityUrl and wms:LayerLimit

Up till ~3 weeks ago (May 12th) no stable release of either geoserver or mapserver satisfied any of the above criteria.

Mapserver Customisation

In order to make IGIBS services INSPIRE compliant we are using a customised version of mapserver 5.6.6. The customizations involve backporting selected features from the development tree of version 6.0 plus our own additions to add support for the LANGUAGE parameter and the extended attributes in the GetCapabilites response. The code is available for perusal here for any interested parties. It comprises a patch against mapserver 5.6.6 plus a sample mapscript wrapper that can be run as a cgi to provide an INSPIRE compliant View Service. Since Mapserver 6.0 the patch should no longer be necessary, but the mapscript wrapper is still required.

Latest Developments

On May 12, 2011 mapserver released version 6.0 and geoserver released version 2.1.0. As part of that release, Geoserver got funding from the Ordnance Survey to add support for the aforementioned INSPIRE spec as a plugin and can now satisfy all of the above criteria, while mapserver only got support for the wms:Layerlimit attribute.

Conclusion

The choice of software depends on one’s requirements. For a national mapping agency seeking INSPIRE compliance it seems that geoserver 2.1.0 is currently the best route. For the purpose of IGIBS, we will stick to the modified mapserver 5.6.6 for the following reasons:

  • Speed. Mapserver has performed considerably faster in our tests involving rendering and reprojection of geospatial data, which is crucial for the dynamically generated services of IGIBS.
  • Flexibility. Mapserver can be very easily scripted in a high level language for prototyping and experimentation.
  • Tried and trusted modifications to ensure compatibility while still being flexible enough to follow the fluid INSPIRE specs.
  • Geoserver does not yet fully support all parts of the INSPIRE TG e.g. the  “scenario 2” mentioned in the standard.

Please feel free to submit any comments.

 

 Posted by at 12:56 Techie Tagged with: , , , , , ,  3 Responses »

1 of 7: Aims, Objectives and Final Outputs of IGIBS

Jun 032011
 

The overall aim of the IGIBS project is to try and improve the relationship between the UK’s National Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) as manifested through the UK Location Programme (UKLP) and the UK’s academic SDI.

Our main objective is to focus on use cases emerging from research and education related to a particular area – the UNESCO designated Dyfi Biosphere Reserve.  Once articulated, these user requirements will drive the creation of two pieces of software of wider applicability and assist Aberystwyth University in developing resources for use by local students.

We are building on much prior art, especially in the area of Access Control.  EDINA runs the UK Access Management Federation (UKAMF) and, while it might not be fashionable, the reality is that many SDI resources, eg, data and web services, are going to stay protected.  This is true both of INSPIRE at the European scale and the UKLP nationally.  We aim to show how Shibboleth (the open source software that underpins the UKAMF) can be used to enable a wider range of use cases, so that UK students can get access to both open and protected resources, eg, from UK public authorities like Welsh Government.

We expect that the main four products resulting from this project will be:

  1. Working prototype of a “WMS factory” tool
  2. Simple mapping application
  3. Best Practice model for using UK academic SDI at the departmental level
  4. Demonstration of UK access management technology being used to secure public sector services in combination with academic sector services

SDI is underpinned by open geospatial standards like the OGC’s Web Map Service (WMS).  The “WMS factory” tool will allow users to upload their data and instantiate a WMS so that their data can then be viewed online, via a simple mapping application, in conjunction with reference data from Welsh Government.

Shibboleth is already used in academia, we extend its use here to demonstrate how public sector data can be made securely available to authenticated and authorised users within academia.

The Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences (IGES) has ambitions to improve the way it educates students in the use of open geospatial interoperability standards and intends using the Dyfi Biosphere Reserve area as an exemplar.  To this end we are conducting an inventory of data for the area and creating a repository for educational use.  The “Best Practice model for using UK academic SDI at the departmental level” will feed into this activity as well as provide guidance for the wider university sector.

 Posted by at 17:37 Project Management Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on 1 of 7: Aims, Objectives and Final Outputs of IGIBS

Collation of data sets

Apr 182011
 

Information is now being collated on available data sets to incorporate in this project. We have identified a number of case study users from the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences (IGES), Aberystwyth University and Forest Research in Wales, Forestry Commission who have previously and are currently working on projects based in the Dyfi Biosphere.

As part of the process for gathering this information users are being actively encouraged to create dataset metadata using GeoDoc tool – found within the GoGeo area on the EDINA web site. This utility is used to create standards compliant dataset metadata for upload into catalogues, eg, GoGeo! so that the data can be discovered, evaluated and possibly reused. Note that you need to have UK Access Management credentials to use GeoDoc.

Users that we have identified so far consist of academics, researchers and students within IGES in Aberystwyth University, and from the Centre for Catchment and Coastal Research (CCCR) which is a consortium of Aberystwyth University and Bangor University. Users will also include researchers from Forestry Research in Wales, Forestry Commission and staff from the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW). Within these bodies individuals have been identified and we will develop these as user case studies. We are currently collating their data sets and identifying their relevant uses and needs.

In the following weeks we will collate and input data sets some of which are complete whilst others are work in progress. These data sets will come from the individual user case studies. The user case studies will be something like the following:
• IGES Academic/Researcher
• IGES/CCCR Academic/Researcher
• IGES MSc Student
• IGES PhD Student
• IGES Digital Map Librarian
• Forestry Research Researcher
• CCW Senior Reserve Warden for Dyfi Biosphere Area

A ‘shopping list’ of data sets that are either not currently available to these users (and which they would like access to) or are difficult to find will also be identified and collated. Already we have had requests for biogeochemical data sets from IGES/CCCR, and for remote sensing data sets from Forest Research. It is hoped that Welsh Assembly Government may be able to help with some of these data and that, even if their use is restricted, we may be able to offer access to using web services secured using Shibboleth (the software underlying the UK Access Management Federation).

So far we have identified from the academic/researcher evidence that both academic staff and students would find the Web Map Service (WMS) “factory” application useful as a research and teaching tool. It has also been suggested by one of the academic users that an undergraduate module could be developed around the use of open geospatial standards. It was agreed that using the GeoDoc metadata input facility would generally improve data management practice for research projects.

Any comments from the user case study individuals or other potential users would be much appreciated to ensure the relevant uses and needs of all involved in this project are identified. The information will feed into the development of the mapping application and the identification of future requirements.

 Posted by at 15:05 User Reqs Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Collation of data sets

Technical Category

Apr 162011
 

IGIBS is going to try (I say try advisedly, as this is a project) to create a tool to allow the semi-automatic creation of an OGC Web Map Service (WMS). This will allow users to publish their data for viewing in a variety of WMS clients, one of which will be a demonstration mapping application we create. This page will have a technical focus and will be used to report bugs, progress, planning, etc. The idea is that as the project matures, this is where we collect information on:

  • Recommendations for what is necessary to take the “WMS factory” tool
    into production (if its doable)
  • Suggestions for enhancements to the relevant components of the UK
    academic SDI
  • Suggestions for next steps to take the mapping application forward
 Posted by at 15:35 Techie Tagged with: , , , , ,  Comments Off on Technical Category