GSA Abstracts

Access to geoscience data via the web is made easier for clients if all servers provide a common interface. The OGC?s Web Feature Service (WFS) defines a standard http-based service description and request syntax, using GML for the data encoding. A GML application schema for the feature-types, such as XMML, completes the definition of the service interface. This service configuration was trialled in a testbed involving government geological survey organisations serving geochemistry data from three adjacent jurisdictions in Australia. The three organisations had quite different data-store software and storage schemas. The testbed focussed on 1. the design of feature-types for specimens and measurements to support a realistic mineral exploration scenario 2. the request syntax, in particular restricting the query-model to limit the load on the server while satisfying the use-case 3. configuration of the server-layer, to translate the result-set from the private model to the GML application language representation 4. deployment of multiple applications that connect to the services and provided a merged view of the results, in map, tabular and report form. Modifications to the open-source Geoserver and Geotools software (used in all three service instances) required to accomplish the testbed have been contributed to the Geoserver codebase. Several limitations in the WFS specification were identified, and are now subject of change-requests to through the OGC specification maintenance process. Significant technology skills were transferred into the participating organisations as a result of the testbed. Several additional jurisdictions have indicated an intention to join the geochemistry testbed, and a follow-on testbed involving lease-areas (i.e. complex non-point-located data) is underway. The testbed has clearly demonstrated the value of common feature types on the public interface, creating a marketplace for information sharing through commodification of the data-product.

I am moved to write this article by an apparent lack of understanding by many geologists and managers of the growing importance of geoscience data models and transfer standards. I will try to explain why data models are becoming such a hot topic, why the exploration industry has already spent many millions of dollars on data models and why much more will be spent. The future of exploration companies may ultimately depend on how data models are used.

Papua New Guinea lies in a very active volcanic region of the world, where eruptions and other volcanic hazards can have disastrous results. To monitor the volcanoes, the Rabaul Volcanological Observatory (RVO) was established in 1940. Geoscience Australia has provided the RVO with technical aid in many forms, including (since 2010) advice and assistance in the creation of an information management system (IMS). The purpose, scope and design features of this system are described.

The national mineral deposits dataset covers 60 commodities and more than 1050 of Australia's most significant mineral deposits - current and historic mines and undeveloped deposits. This release adds more than 100 new deposits to the previous release of OZMIN plus upgraded resource and production figures.

The Christmas Island Geographic Information System (CIGIS) is a collection of spatial data, viewing and analysis tools dealing with Christmas Island, Indian Ocean. The data include orthophotography, topographic, mining, cultural and environmental features of the island. This work is part of ongoing service to the Department of Transport and Regional Services.

PIMS, or the Petroleum Information Management System, is a database that keeps track of 376 000 seismic survey tapes and 2 800 petroleum well logs housed at the National Archives facility, at Chester Hill (formerly Villawood), Sydney - the largest tape archive in the southern hemisphere. PIMS is managed by AGSO's Petroleum Resources Program, which was formerly part of the Bureau of Resource Sciences. The survey tapes and well logs are basic data from petroleum exploration. They are loged under the Petroleum (Submerged Lands) Act, and are publicly available as a stimulus to further exploration.

The role of Geoscience Australia (GA) is to provide first class geoscientific information and knowledge which enables government and community to make informed decisions about: - the exploitation of resources - the management of the environment - the safety of critical infrastructure and - the resultant wellbeing of all Australians. GA has two internal catalogues which hold metadata of significant value to external researchers. The catalogues include national collections of satellite images/datasets; geological and topographical maps of various scales; Maritime, Aboriginal Commission and Postcode boundary datasets, plus other geoscientific thematic maps and collections. Staff from GA and ANDS worked together to analyse the catalogues, map them to the ISO19115 metadata schema and provide a gap analysis to inform further development. The original intention was to cross walk the 19115 profile to RIF-CS and install an OAI-PMH harvest point. ANDS, however, was able to utilise funded work by AuScope by having an instance of GeoNetwork deployed in GA, which provides this capability and can be leveraged to expose this data at the same time. This mapping also allows data of relevance to other disciplines such as that relevant to marine research to be identified and appropriate feeds established. The more significant achievement for GA was that it is now able to dynamically map from two existing independent internal catalogues to a single standards compliant instance, without having to first create a single internal catalogue and then migrate metadata from various catalogues into it. This approach will be used for other data types where GA has several internal databases of the same data type. This poster explores the issues that confronted the team, the solutions developed and the opportunities that have arisen.

The Australian National Marine Data Group was formed by the Heads of Marine Agencies (HOMA) to promote improved interchange of marine data in Australia. The ANMDG held a workshop of practitioners in May 2002 with the intention of identifying major areas of interest and tasks for working groups to address in order to make progress with development of marine data interchange in Australia. This Proceedings CD contains the presentations by speakers in the form of PowerPoint slides and a few Acrobat documents. It was distributed to participants in the workshop.

Geoscience Australia has implemented state of the art information management methodologies to connect disparate landslide inventory databases into a single virtual database in recognition of the need to improve Australia's current collective knowledge on landslides and to ensure landslide information is useful and relevant as well as accessible and discoverable. The methodology adopted was driven by the need for a nationally consistent approach to landslide data collection in order to develop a sound knowledge base on landslide hazard and mitigation. The approach takes into account the variation in data formats and level of detail across existing landslide databases in Australia. The new Australian Landslide Database (ALD) is a joint initiative across local, state and national levels and promotes a culture of coordinating, sharing, aggregating and making information captured at different scales widely available. The approach enables independent database custodians throughout Australia to share selected pieces of information with others, while maintaining full ownership, management and the format of their data. This allows all levels of government, geotechnical professionals, emergency managers, land use planners, academics and the public to simultaneously search and query diverse landslide inventory databases in real time via a single standardised website and view results consistently. Users have up-to-date information continually at their fingertips and access to available multimedia. The ALD has the capability to display site specific details as well as present aggregated information defined by the user. Search results can be displayed as reports, graphs, maps, statistics or tables, and data can be queried against background datasets such as rainfall, geology and geomorphology. There is no limit to the number of landslide databases that can be connected to the ALD. cont'd. See attached document