Constructing an International Geoscience Interoperability Testbed to Access Data from Distributed Sources: Lessons Learned from a GeoSciML Testbed  

Authors / CoAuthors

Raymond, O.

Abstract

Introduction Geoscience data are being generated at exponentially increasing volumes, and it is no longer feasible to develop centralized warehouses from which data are accessed. Efficient access to such data online in real time from distributed sources is rapidly becoming one of the major challenges in building cyberinfrastructures for the Earth Sciences. EXtensible Markup Language (XML) and web-based data delivery is a proven technology which allows access to standardized data on the fly via the internet. GeoSciML (GeoScience Markup Language) is a geoscience specific, XML-based, GML (Geography Markup Language) application that supports interchange of geoscience information. It has been built from various existing geoscience data model sources, particularly the North American Data Model (NADM) and XMML (eXtensible Mining Markup Language). It is being developed through the Interoperability Working Group of the Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI), which is a commission of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). The Working Group is (currently) comprised of geology and information technology specialists from agencies in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. The GeoSciML Testbed In 2006, representatives from geological surveys in USA, Canada, UK, France, Sweden and Australia came together to develop a testbed that would utilize GeoSciML to access globally distributed geoscience map data (Duffy et al, 2006). Data was served from seven sites in six countries with several different WMS/WFS (Web Feature Service/Web Map Service) software solutions employed. Geological surveys in Canada, USA and Sweden used an ESRI ArcIMS platform (and in one case a MapServer platform) with a Cocoon wrapper to handle queries and transformations of XML documents. The UK and Australian geological surveys employed the open source GeoServer software to serve data from ArcSDE and Oracle sources. The French geological survey implemented a system using an Ionic RedSpider server for WMS and client, and a custom development to implement a WFS. Web clients were constructed in Vancouver, Canada using Phoenix, and later in Canberra, Australia using Moximedia IMF software to test various use case for the WMS/WFS services. Generic web clients, such as Carbon Tools Gaia 2 were also used to test some use cases. In addition to geologic map data, the testbed also demonstrated the capacity to share borehole data as GeoSciML. Two WFS (French and British) provided borehole data to a client able to display the borehole logs.

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nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

65239

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• External PublicationConference Paper

( Theme )

• data standards

( Theme )

• geoscience

( Theme )

• information management

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2007-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

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unknown

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geoscientificInformation

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