GeoSciML v3.0 (http://www.geosciml.org) is the latest version of the CGI-IUGS (http://www.cgi-iugs.org/) geoscience data interchange standard. It is a significant upgrade of GeoSciML v2, and has been adopted by major international data sharing initiatives, including OneGeology, the EU INSPIRE program, and the US Geoscience Information Network. GeoSciML v3 is being prepared as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard. GeoSciML v3 makes use of recently upgraded OGC and ISO standards, including GML v3.2, SWECommon v2.0, and O&M v2. The model has been refactored from a single application schema into a number of smaller, more manageable schema modules with individual namespaces (eg; GeologicUnit, EarthMaterial). As a result, GeoSciML v3 is not backwardly compatible with previous versions. GeoSciML v3 includes new models for geomorphological data, geological specimens, analytical metadata for geochemistry, geochronology, and better support for borehole and petrophysical data. Some previously used GeoSciML data types have been superseded in favour of data types provided by OGC's SWECommon and GML data standards. The new release includes best practice examples for delivering a range of geoscientific data types such as geological units, structures, and geochemistry. An exemplar database has been developed to assist with model testing and implementation. The GeoSciML v3 data model does not include vocabularies. However, it recommends a standard pattern to reference controlled vocabularies using HTTP-URIs. The international GeoSciML community has developed distributed RDF-based vocabularies that can be accessed by GeoSciML web services (see http://resource.geosciml.org/). Schematron validation is used to support a higher degree of semantic interoperability and accreditation of GeoSciML services.

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services offer a cost efficient technology that permits transfer of standardised data from distributed sources, removing the need for data to be regularly uploaded to a centralised database. When combined with community defined exchange standards, the OGC services offer a chance to access the latest data from the originating agency and return the data in a consistent format. Interchange and mark-up languages such as the Geography Markup Language (GML) provide standard structures for transferring geospatial information over the web. The IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI) has an on-going collaborative project to develop a data model and exchange language based on GML for geological map and borehole data, the GeoScience Mark-up Language (GeoSciML). The Australian Government Geoscience Information Committee (GGIC) has used the GeoSciML model as a basis to cover mineral resources (EarthResourceML), and the Canadian Groundwater Information Network (GIN) has extended GeoSciML into the groundwater domain (GWML). The focus of these activities is to develop geoscience community schema that use globally accepted geospatial web service data exchange standards.

In establishing lithostratigraphic units, Australian geologists have been encouraged to follow the International Stratigraphic Guide since 1978. This Guide gives limited, and sometimes conflicting, advice when applied to the naming of igneous units in particular. The Guide strongly discourages the use of form terms (dyke, pluton, batholith) and adjectives used as nouns (volcanics, intrusives, extrusives). It deems the use of 'suite' to be inadvisable, having quite different meanings in different countries. It proposes minimal use of qualifiers such as plutonic, igneous, intrusive, extrusive; except for clarifying the nature of a complex. Australia has chosen to make some exceptions to these guidelines. We do use suites and supersuites, but only for grouping igneous units, unlike the lithodemic units of the North American Code. We also use volcanics, and volcanic groups, generally for mixed, or bimodal volcanics. We have resisted using intrusives, preferring 'igneous complex' instead. We have also resisted 'dyke swarm' in favour of simple lithological names such as Alcurra Dolerite, but existing, long-standing names such as Widgiemooltha Dyke Suite, make it hard to explain current guidelines to some geologists. Australia's interpretation of the Guide means that 'complex' is used in various ways, at various ranks, and for a very wide variety of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous units. We are exploring the need to broaden naming options for igneous units in Australia, and encourage international discussion on the stratigraphic guidelines for igneous units.

Legacy product - no abstract available

Approximately 75% of Australia is covered by public-domain, airborne gamma-ray spectrometric surveys. However, all the older surveys are in units of c/s and their data values depend on the survey instrumentation and acquisition parameters. Also, many of the newer surveys were inadequately calibrated with the result that data values on adjacent surveys are not necessarily comparable. This limits the usefulness of these data Geoscience Australia and State Geological Surveys are working towards establishing a national baseline database of Australian gamma-ray spectrometric data that is consistent with the global radioelement baseline. This will be achieved by: (a) ensuring consistency in the calibration and processing of new gamma-ray spectrometric data through the use of standard processing procedures and calibration facilities that are tied to the global datum, and; (b) adjusting older surveys to the global datum through back-calibration and automatic grid merging. Surveys that are registered to the same datum are easily merged into regional compilations which facilitate the recognition and interpretation of broad-scale regional features, and allow lessons learnt in one area to be more easily applied to other areas.

As interpretations of sequence stratigraphy are published in increasing numbers in the petroleum exploration literature, the potential for confusion also increases because there are no rules for the classification or naming of the identified sequences. At present it is difficult to apply databases and geographic information systems to sequence stratigraphy, particularly when organisations with different outlooks and approaches attempt to collaborate and merge their databases. Despite sequence stratigraphic concepts having been in the literature for over two decades, no scheme for standardisation has achieved consensus in the geoscientific community, either within Australia or internationally. Three areas in particular need to be agreed on: (1) how sequence units should be defined; (2) the hierarchy of those units, and on what basis; and (3) a standard scheme for naming units. The two basic ways of subdividing a succession into sequence units, the Vail-Exxon and Galloway methods, both rely on the enclosing boundaries being defined first. Various hierarchies of units have been proposed, in which there is often a clear desire to link the scale of sequence units to phases of geological evolution or stratal boundaries of different orders. In addition, most workers use informal names, but formal names are becoming more common. Consequently, it is essential that workable national guidelines be developed to ensure that communication and computer compatibility are not impeded.

This extended abstract describes the 1:1 million scale Surface Geology of Northern Territory digital dataset and advances in digital data delivery via WMS/WFS services and the GeoSciML geological data model.

Codes, guidelines, and standard practices for naming and describing Australian stratigraphic units have been discussed for more than 60 years since the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) set up a Research Committee on Stratigraphic Nomenclature in 1946. Like today's Australian Stratigraphy Commission, its aims were 'to encourage the orderly use of names and definitions for stratigraphic units'. .......

Marine science is expensive. Duplication of research activities is potentially money wasted. Not being aware of other marine science studies could question the validity of findings made in single-discipline studies. A simple means of discovery is needed. The development of Earth Browsers (principally Google Earth) and KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files offer a possible solution. Google Earth is easy to use, and KML files are relatively simple, ASCII, XML-tagged files that can encode locations (points, lines and polygons), relevant metadata for presentation in descriptive 'balloons', and links to digital sources (data, publications, web-pages, etc). A suite of studies will be presented showing how information relating to investigations at a point (e.g. observation platform), along a line (e.g. ship borne survey) or over a region (e.g. satellite imagery) can be presented in a small (10 Kbyte) file. The information will cover a range of widely used data types including seismic data, underwater video, image files, documents and spreadsheets. All will be sourced directly from the web and can be downloaded from within the browser to one's desktop for analysis with appropriate applications. To be useful, this methodology requires data and metadata to be properly managed; and a degree of cooperation between major marine science organizations which could become 'sponsors' of the principal marine science disciplines (i.e oceanography, marine biology, geoscience). This need not be a complex task in many cases. The partitioning of the sciences is not important, so long as the information is being managed effectively and their existence is widely advertised. KML files provide a simple way of achieving this. The various discipline-based KML files could be hosted by an umbrella organization such as the AODCJF, enabling it to become a 'one-stop-shop' for marine science data.

In this age of state-of-the-art devices producing analytical results with little input from analytical specialists, how do we know that the results produced are correct? When reporting the result of a measurement of a physical quantity, it is obligatory that some quantitative indication of the quality of the result be given so that those who use it can assess its reliability. Without such an indication, measurement results cannot be compared, either among themselves or with reference values given in a specification or standard. It is therefore necessary that there be a readily implemented, easily understood, and generally accepted procedure for characterising the quality of a result of a measurement, that is, for evaluating and expressing its 'uncertainty'. The concept of 'uncertainty' as quantifiable attribute is relatively new in the history of measurement, although error and error analysis have long been part of the practice of measurement science or 'metrology'. It is now widely recognised that, when all of the known or suspected components of error have been evaluated and the appropriate corrections have been applied, there still remains an uncertainty about the correctness of the stated result, that is, a doubt about how well the result of the measurement represents the value of the quantity being measured. This presentation will discuss the latest practices for the production of 'reliable' geochemical data that are associated with small measurement uncertainties, and will provide an overview of current understanding of metrological traceability and the proper use of reference materials. Correct use of reference materials will be discussed, as well as the role of measurement uncertainty and how it is affected by such issues as sample preparation, sample heterogeneity and data acquisition.