Spatial Information Integration Services (SIIS) ISO/TC211 Workshop on Standards in Action Adelaide, South Australia October 2001 Mr. Neil Sandercock, SA.

Spatial Information Integration Services

(SIIS)

ISO/TC211 Workshop on Standards in ActionAdelaide, South Australia

October 2001

Mr. Neil Sandercock, SA Spatial Information CommitteeMr. Rob Crompton, Aspect Computing Pty Ltd

A South Australian implementationof ISO 19115

Agenda

• The SA Govt’s Spatial Initiative• SIIS Overview

– the vision, design objectives, business models

• Data Discovery– technology & standards– using an object model for metadata– Real World Views and Information Community

Views

• Lessons learned

The “Spatial Initiative”• The SA Govt’s Spatial Initiative was

conceived in 1992• Enjoys highest level of support• Its objectives are to:

– build a sustainable, export-focused spatial industry in SA

– gain operational efficiencies by process reform within government

– empower the community and industry with ready access to government information

The SIIS Vision

• “to develop and implement the technology for a spatial information infrastructure for the SA government and the broader community that will enable spatial information from any number of disparate data sources to be accessed by users and business systems anywhere across the State”

Design Objectives• generic, best-of-breed components, open,

scalable, distributable• support existing standards, reactive to new and

evolving standards• support legacy systems (preserve existing

agency investments)• vendor independent• provide clear separation of responsibilities

(custodian, deliverer, client)• able to be commercialised

The Spatial Business Model

Policy and Standards

High Level State Needs

economic, community, environment

Govt Business Needs

asset management, emergency response, environmental protection, land administration, resource development

Spatial Applications

Spatial Information Integration Services

Spatial Datasets

Spatial Information Integration Services

SIIS Services Model

Web Interface

Dataset Interfaces

Directory Services

Service Manager

Security Services

Accounting and Commerce Services

Query and Response Services

Integration Services

Datasets

Access Services

API

Spatial Browser Agency Applications

Client

Service Deliverer

Data Custodian

Application Interfaces

Spatial Information Integration Services

Data Discovery

presented by

Mr Rob CromptonAspect Computing Pty Ltd

The SIIS Project

• Technology– Built around strategic commercial-off-the-

shelf technologies – scalable, open architecture– browser-based (of course)– designed to handle medium to high data

volume spatial queries from multiple data sets

– multi-thread capable

The SIIS Project

• Standards used– ISO 19110: providing a framework for

classifying real world phenomena in a set of geographic data

– ISO 19115: providing a structure for describing digital geographic data in metadata

– ISO 23950: providing a standard for communicating between library/information based systems

The SIIS Project

• Specific themes & features for creating the Real World View from:– AS 2482 & AS 4270: feature coding for

spatial data interchange– FGDC: US Federal Geographic Data

Committee– DIGEST: Digital Geographic Information

Exchange Standard– TSSDS: US Tri Service Spatial Data Standard

Data Discovery

• Two stages of discovery:– select an “area of interest”

• via a polygon on a map• via a gazetteer

– search through metadata• via a theme search using a pre-defined

Information Community View• via field searches

Data Discovery

• Spatial metadata is:– structured according to ISO 19115

• ISO 19115 CD1 is to Draft ISO 19115 as HTML is to XML

• structure specified by UML which we translated to a relational database structure

• DTD specified as part of ISO 19115

– organised into categories via Real World Views & Information Community Views

Views

• The Real World View (RWV) is an ISO 19110 defined structure for the naming of geographic entities

• Information Community Views (ICV):– map to the RWV– use the terminology of a particular user

community to make searching easier– a catalogue for a particular community

Views

• The RWVs and ICVs have hierarchical structures

• For example, an ICV for “Environmental Management”– themes (hydrography)

• feature types (aquifer recharge area)– attributes (flow rate, salinity, discharge, pH etc)

Views

EnvironmentalManagers

PropertyDevelopers

LocalGovernment

InformationCommunities

Metadata record

Metadata record

Metadata record

RealWorldView

InformationCommunity

View 1

Metadata"catalogues"

InformationCommunity

View 2

InformationCommunity

View 3

MetadataDatasets

Lessons Learned

• Converting existing metadata into the new structure requires a significant effort - plan for it– scripts & parsing to leverage any structure

existing in the original metadata

• Maintain the principles of good user-interface design for metadata maintenance whilst grappling with the complexity of the standards and how to implement them

Lessons Learned• In general, the standards are abstract,

specifying structure but little on content or specific examples– ill-defined metadata elements / fields– difficult to determine the intent of the

Committee

• There is no single source of information on which to develop a RWV - we consolidated our RWV from a large number of standards & guidelines

Lessons Learned

• working with an evolving standard requires a strong link to the standards body: we were able to provide valuable feedback on improvements

• Obtaining copies of draft Standards by “early implementers” requires a process – straightforward & cost free

Lessons Learned• provides a significant opportunity to

upgrade Government spatial data to leverage the open approach (eg Gazetteer)

• Implementation technologies are immature & rapidly improving– choice of Java (J2EE) was the correct strategic

choice– XML will open up the exchange of spatial

information between governments and private sector users

Questions