GEOSS Common Infrastructure: A Practical Tour Doug Nebert U.S. Geological Survey AIP-3 Kickoff March 2010

GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) Common set of core services that promote the integration of GEO and GEOSS as a functional System-of-Systems Includes: –Component and Service Registry –Standards and Interoperability Registry –User Requirements Registry (in development) –Best Practices Wiki –GEO Web Portals –GEOSS Clearinghouse

GEOSS Common Infrastructure provides …a place where GEOSS-affiliated resources can be identified, found, and applied directly, or in support of one or more Societal Benefit Areas.

GEOSS Common Infrastructure value Affiliation: Registration with GEOSS defines membership or participation in GEOSS Discovery: Registration of systems and services allows them to be discovered (searched and browsed) through GEOSS Integrity: The association of services with known standards and practices facilitates integration and re- use of registered services, related data, and applications Destination: GEOSS common infrastructure provides a single focus for GEO-related resources: services, standards, best practices, user requirements

AIP-3 Goals – Relate to GCI Reach consensus on Interoperability Arrangements; register operational components and services that carry forward into persistent operations of GEOSS Develop and pilot new process and infrastructure components for the GCI and the broader GEOSS architecture Incorporate GEOSS contributed components into a operational implementation of the GEOSS Architecture in coordination with GEO Task AR-09-01a. Increase GEOSS capacity to support SBA’s: Disaster Management, Health/Air Quality, Biodiversity, Energy, Health/Disease and topics in Water (Quality, Drought, Extreme Precipitation) Exploit the service architecture for mash-ups in a link-rich environment. Vocabulary registries and ontologies as resources.

GEOSS Component and Service Registry GEOSS Standards and Interoperability Registry references links to User accesses service descriptions searches GEOSS Common Infrastructure GEONETCast Services Data and Service Catalogues Websites/ Portals (Components) Registered components and services Main GEO Web Site links to catalogues all Catalog query clients accesses registry items links to Registration clients Registry query clients Clearinghouse provides means to connect to registered services via metadata Web browser Unregistered Community Resources Web pages Documents RSS Best Practices Wiki User Requirements Registry Applications references GEOSS Clearinghouse GEOSS Clearinghouse GEOSS Clearinghouse GEO Web Portal Registries

GEOSS common interactions GEOSS Component, Service registry Standards, Special Arrangements Registries references GEO Web Portal or client application searches Offerors contribute Community Resources accesses GEOSS Clearinghouse Catalogues Services User accesses get catalogue services accesses searches invokes

Component and Service Registry Allows registration of a Systems (component) and related multiple services or URLs that provide access to information Each System is related to one or more Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs) Each Service entry can be associated with one or more Standards or Special Arrangements in the Standards and Interoperability Registry

Standards and Interoperability Registry A collection of standards and community practices that are nominated through the registration process by GEO individuals Nominations are processed by the Standards and Interoperability Forum (SIF) and are classified as: –Standards: if maintained by a standards development organization, or –Special Arrangements: ad hoc community practices, methods, techniques Standards and Special Arrangements are established as a pick-list for use elsewhere in GEOSS and include IDs, names, descriptions, and links to the owning authority

GEOSS Clearinghouse An all-of-GEOSS search facility that provides API access to metadata on all services and systems from the Component and Service Registry Registered catalogue services, in turn, are inspected and their inventory of records is also made searchable Metadata may describe systems, services, data, documents, or more specific file types Access to Clearinghouse is provided through a search API based on OGC CSW and is implemented by GEO Web Portals and other client applications

Best Practices Wiki A place to post best practices in a semi-structured document form that are intended to be shared across GEOSS BP may reference common techniques for a scientific area of study, for IT deployment, or for domain and cross-domain applications Wiki entries may link to registered service instances, standards, or other document types that are relevant to the practice

GEO Web Portals Supports client access to catalogs, map services, and data services through standards-based interfaces Provides user interface for search on the GEOSS Registries Low/minimal cost of re-deployment, readily customizable and extensible Includes community management tools and portlets Content management capabilities including teaching materials, documents Ability to integrate and visualize disparate resources and services through Web Map Service and KML/RSS viewers Place to reference (link to) or host (embed portlets for) end- user support applications

User Requirements Registry Stores requirements by generalized user types that identify observables and their properties (e.g. values, quality, resolution, frequency, units of measure) with respect to a domain of application Matching of requirements to service offers can be made in the future as a common vocabulary of observables is developed for GEOSS to: –Identify coverage and popularity of observations, and –Identify gaps in coverage of observations

AIP-3 Architectural Support for E2EDA “Connections are what scientists and other service users want and need to find; the greater the quantity and variety of connections an architecture supports, the more successful it can be as a scientific tool: –Provision of services which support fine-grained access to data through Web links (URL’s), –Registration of metadata about components and services which provide (optional) online linkages and other means of publishing linked metadata, –Access to linked metadata by search strategies which effectively leverage link relationships, –Support in client applications for visualizing and resolving metadata / service links, and –Opportunities for users to contribute the connections they discern in provided data, e.g. by way of Web feeds or other means of publishing annotated Web links, for other users in turn to make use of. “

User Context for GEOSS Publisher point of view – a GEO member or participating organization has a resource of interest to share with GEOSS User point of view – a potential consumer interested in finding information and services related to earth observation (ocean, land, atmosphere) data

Publisher’s viewpoint 1.An individual publisher goes to the GEO Web Portal and is then linked to the GEOSS registration system ( 2.Information about their earth observation initiative/system is entered as metadata into an online web form, as is the URL to the “Component” resource. It is classified by the Societal Benefit Areas (SBA) it primarily supports, its type (activities), and the timeframe of information availability. 3.For each System, one or more service interfaces may be registered. Each service is described and linked to a GEOSS- listed standard or special arrangement (community practice). If a standard or special arrangement is not present, the user may nominate one directly in the Standards and Interoperability Registry. 4.Once entered, the system and service information can be discovered through the GEO Web Portal and its search of GEOSS Clearinghouse.

User’s viewpoint 1.User is interested in finding information related to EO as registered with GEOSS 2.User searches for data, documents, and related services through the GEO Web Portal or through a catalog search client. This allows search on text, resource type, location, temporal coverage, and some classifications. Titles, descriptions, and links are returned from the search engine. 3.The user clicks on the result links to obtain more detailed descriptions (metadata) or connects directly to the resource being described. 4.Some types of results can be visualized or processed using ‘helper’ software already installed on their desktop computers or through linked client applications provided by the Web Portal. Results may be links to services, data, documents, capacity building materials, best practices, standards, etc. 5.Integrators may access GEOSS by embedding catalog search clients into their decision-support software to provide direct search of GEOSS in lieu of the GEO Web Portal. Thus, the end-user may remain in their preferred application environment and perform search on GEOSS and apply/integrate the results.

End-to-End Use Cases (Patterns) 1. Register Resources 2. Deploy Resources 3. Harvest and Query 4. Search for Resources 5. Present Results 6. Interact with Services 7. Exploit Data Visually and Analytically 8. Construct and Deploy Workflow 9. Test Services 10. Register Interoperability Arrangements

Scenario Engagement with GCI All systems, data links, and service interfaces must be registered with GEOSS Component and Service Registry (CSR) and linked with Standards in the SIR if they are to be considered part of GEOSS Scenarios should integrate periodic API-based search and bind to updated resources from CSR and Clearinghouse to enhance client access to data Mappable resources (WMS, KML, GeoRSS, etc.) can be accessed and visualized through the GEO Web Portal (GWP) implementations by general users – strive to publish such resources and consider packaging context files to enable scenario presentation via GWP