Introduction to Spatial Data Infrastructures

1
Introduction toSpatial Data Infrastructures

• Werner Kuhn

2
Introductions
3
Today

• Motivation for the course topic through
• an analogy
• a case study
• Sketch basic ideas of SDI
• Course plan
• Lectures
• Readings
• Practicals

4
An analogy Cooking

• Discuss the infrastructure for preparing food
• What do you need?
• Where do you get it?
• Where does it come from?
• Who is involved in the food chain?
• Can you cook at a friends home?

5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
Elements of the cooking infrastructure

• Food contents
• Kitchen ware, stove etc. technology
• Cooks, waiters, diners, farmers etc. people

12
Characteristics

• Modularity lots of components
• Flexibility change ingredients, delivery mode
  and time, etc.
• Openness add elements (e.g., a microwave),
  change food suppliers, etc.
• Standards packaging, stores, stoves, etc.

13
Compare with Maps

• cooking a map (old style)
• What do you need?
• Where do you get it?
• Where does it come from?
• Who is involved in the food chain?
• Can you cook at a friends home or office?

14
Yesterday
GIS Specialists
Maps for Users
15
Tomorrow
Services for systems and users, built by Geo-
and GI-Scientists
16
Business Opportunities

• More potato sales
• customers cooks (i.e., service providers)
• small margins
• improved content information (metadata)
• More restaurants
• customers those who can afford it
• big margins
• some economies of scale
• multiplier for potato sales
• Develop mass products/services (chips)
• customers everybody
• huge margins
• huge economies of scale
• life line for potato growers

17
Business requirements

• Sales result from uses
• Uses occur through services
• Services support decisions by content integration
• Content integration occurs in services
• gt It is all about services, not about data!

18
The wrong analogy ?

• Multiple sales of products and services
• but multiple sales of data are rare
• Complexity of our potatoes
• but still need simple products and services
• What has all this to do with SDI?
• Market for Geographic Information (GI) requires
  infrastructures
• Mass use of GI products is likely

19
Other useful analogies

• Infrastructures for
• Transportation
• Telecommunication
• Electricity
• Education
• ....
• All of these have something to teach us

20
So, what is an SDI ?

• No official and general definition yet
• My own attempt
• An SDI is a coordinated series of agreements on
  technology standards, institutional arrangements,
  and policies that enable the discovery and use of
  geospatial information by users and for purposes
  other than those it was created for.
• Identifying the stake-holders and the subjects of
  agreements is the key step
• OGC has created the model for the necessary
  consensus process.

21
Core ideas

• Distribution
• Coordination
• Sharing
• Interoperability
• Interfaces
• Standards
• Architecture
• Metadata
• Policies

22
Scopes of SDI

• Local
• National
• Regional
• Global
• Sectoral

23
GSDI Global SDI

• critical to substantial and sustainable
  development
• involvement and support of decision makers at the
  highest levels of business, government and
  academia (G7 countries, UN Institutions, World
  Bank etc.)
• requires education and research activities which
  transcend the purely technical treatment of
  spatial data
• So far conferences and other publications

24
Why this change from GIS to SDI ?

• Non-usability of GIS
• Market growth for GI(S) industry
• E-Government initiatives at all levels
• Economic pressure to recover investments

25
Drivers

• The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
• ISO TC 211
• High-level government initiatives
• Regional initiatives (US NSDI, NRW, Emilia
  Romagna, Galicia, ...)
• In Europe INSPIRE

26
What has changed from old-style GIS ?

• Multi-vendor architectures
• Multi-source data
• Multi-user applications
• Multi-organization projects
• Diminished control over information use

27
Geolibraries

• One stop shops
• http//nsdi.usgs.gov (includes international
  data)
• http//www.geodata.gov
• http//eu-geoportal.jrc.it/ (beta version)
• Integration with GIS
• access data and services from your GIS
• based on OGC web service specifications
• e.g., http//www.geographynetwork.com/

28
Observations

• Lots of data (somewhere)
• rarely connected to infrastructure
• spotty regional coverage
• thematic variety, without ontology
• Few services
• single, isolated functionality
• often tied to a database
• Lack of business models
• free vs paid
• per use vs licensing
• commercial uncertainty paralyzes markets

29
Reference Data

• Idea spatial data provide a common reference
  frame for domain information
• examples administrative boundaries, roads
• But
• which spatial entities should be used as
  reference?
• no theory
• practice see INSPIRE catalog
• need to be well-defined and widely (maybe freely)
  available

30
The Growing Role of Services

• Bottled functionality
• (Mass) uses occur through services
• Services integrate content for decisions

31
Background Data Abstraction

• Data with associated methods define modules
• Parnas, D. L. (1972). "On the Criteria to be
  used in Decomposing Systems into Modules." ACM
  Communications 15(12) 1053-1058.
• Interfaces in object-orientation
• SCOTS in OGC

32
SDI, a misnomer

• The goal is not data exchange, but sharing of
  information
• Sometimes SDI are also called Geospatial
  Information Infrastructures (GII)
• But SDI has stuck (NSDI, GSDI etc.)

33
An SDI Case Study

• German state of North-Rhine Westphalia
• 18 Mio inhabitants
• Highly industrial
• Several small IT companies in the GI area
• Very heterogeneous GI production

34
Success factors

• Politicians wanted a show-off project in the
  media business
• State funding 1999 to 2002
• Very active PPP
• Life-critical co-opetition between small IT
  companies

35
GDI Reference model
36
User model

• Requirements for GI from user perspective
• Specification based on market study
• Results Priorities for action
• B2B
• focus on
• Telecommunication
• Trade, banks, insurances
• Involve more stake holders (e.g. Municipalities)

37
Business model

• Specification of value chains
• Specification of GI products and services
• Neutral coordinating organisation
• Coordinates implementation projects
• Maintains local standards
• marketing of infrastructure

38
Process model

• Describes technical processes
• Links other models
• Focus on
• Publishing GI services
• Discover GI products and services
• Purchase
• Assemble GI products on the fly

39
Architecture model

• Specification of a Service Architecture
• In close cooperation with Special Interest Groups
  (SIGs)
• Based on Web Services
• Mapping Service
• Catalog Service
• Data Access Services
• e-Commerce Services
• Results
• proof-of-concept through GDI Testbeds (see
  separate slides)

40
Goals of this SDI Course

1. Familiarize yourself with the basic ideas and
   terminology around SDI
2. Awareness of some SDI initiatives and of some key
   literature
3. Develop skills for project planning and proposal
   writing

41
Course idea

• Three topical blocks
• Technology
• Semantics
• People (institutions, policies)
• Each introduced by a lecture
• Followed by individual readings

42
Course Program

• Monday, March 14
• Introduction
• Goals and Schedule
• Collect materials
• Organize groups
• Skim Cookbook and read Chapters 1-2
• Tuesday, March 15
• Lecture on Technology
• Read Cookbook Chapters 5-7
• Brainstorm in groups on possible project goals
• Wednesday, March 16
• Technology discussion (based on readings so far)
• Read Cookbook Chapters 3-4
• Write one pager on proposal problem-approach-re
  sults
• Thursday, March 17
• Lecture on Semantics
• Read Geospatial Semantics paper (first part)
• Write abstract and state of the art for proposal

43
Course Program (contd)

• Friday, March 18
• Semantics discussion (based on reading)
• Read Geospatial Semantics paper (rest)
• Draft work plan for proposal
• Monday, March 21
• Lecture on institutional and policy arrangements
• Read Onsrud et al. chapter
• Finish work plan for proposal (with deliverables)
• Tuesday, March 22
• Discussion of Onsrud et al. chapter
• Write time schedule and budget for proposal
• Prepare proposal presentation
• Wednesday, March 23
• Review of SDI topic
• Present proposal

44
Practicals

• SDI need to be implemented to really understand
  the problems
• Time needed approximately 3-5 years for around
  30-50 technical experts...
• for a short course like this
• there are no toy SDI
• lab exercises with web servers often fail
• Alternative identify research needs and work
  program
• Combine with soft skills of proposal writing and
  presenting

45
Your task in this course

• write a proposal sketch
• for research or development project
• on a local or regional SDI
• in groups of 4 participants
• Manager organizes, presents, writes abstract
• Engineer architecture, technical specifications
• Scientist research questions, literature
• Moneyman budget, funding sources
• today form groups and assign roles

46
Materials

• To read and discuss during the course
• Nebert (Ed.) The GSDI Cookbook
  www.gsdi.org(excerpts today skim and read
  Chapters 1-2)
• Kuhn Geospatial Semantics why, of what, how?
• Onsrud et al. The Future of the Spatial
  Information Infrastructure.
• Additional resources throughout the course