A Community Specific SDI – the Case of UK Academia GI-days in Munster 26 th June 2003 Chris Higgins (Medyckyj-Scott, D. and Reid, J) GIS Project Leader 26 June 2003

Part of the Data Library, University of Edinburgh Designated a national datacentre in 1995 EDINA's mission... to enhance the productivity of research, learning and teaching in UK higher and further education Bibliographic and Geodata services Undertake R&D  service EDINA

26 June 2003 “SDI encompasses the policies, organisational remits, data, technologies, standard delivery mechanisms and financial and human resources necessary to ensure that those working with spatial data, whether at the global or local scale, are not impeded in meeting their objectives”, (INSPIRE consultation paper, 2003) “the relevant base collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the availability of and access to spatial data”, (GSDI cookbook 2001) Definition of Spatial Data Infrastructure

26 June 2003 IC1 e.g. soil scientists IC2 e.g. ecologists ICn e.g. architects CSSDI1 e.g. academic sector CSSDI2 e.g. governmental CSSDIn Relationship between Information Communities (IC) and CSSDI

26 June 2003 Non-commercial Supporting the national interest Requirement for educational tools Large number datasets Requirements of teaching different from research Unique characteristics of the academic sector

26 June 2003 Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Uniquely British institution? Funded by the UK HFE funding councils Supports teaching, learning, research and administration Provides strategic guidance to UK HFE on use of ICT Provides advice and opportunities

26 June 2003 JISC Information Environment A national digital library... for higher and further education A managed collection of resources A distributed resource supporting learning and research in the UK Enable people to discover, access and use a wide variety of quality assured resources Heterogeneous… bibliographic, images, data, video, geo- spatial, etc. Simple underlying functional model of the Information Environment - discover, access, use, publish

26 June 2003 JISC Information Environment Portal Content providers End-user Portal Broker/Aggregator Authentication Authorisation Collect’n Desc Service Desc Resolver Inst’n Profile Shared services Portal Provision layer Fusion layer Presentation layer geo-X-walk Go-Geo! Portal

26 June 2003 CHEST Combined Higher Education Software Team Focal point for supply of IT related products to UK HFE Software, data, information and training materials Not for profit Agreements between suppliers of IT products and CHEST

26 June 2003 JISC Funded National Data Centres MIMAS – in the geo area specialises in raster data EDINA – in the geo area specialises in vector data Geo-spatial data increasingly important part of EDINA’s activities Strategic move toward interoperability - Member of OGC - Share between internal and external services - Reduce costs - Many implications for future

26 June 2003 Go-Geo! - A Geo-data Portal Go-Geo! A resource discovery tool that tells users what geo-spatial data exist for a given area Also related resources, eg, images, articles, projects JISC funded, joint project between EDINA and HDS Links with GIgateway and built upon Z39.50 technologies Will migrate to be OGC Catalog service compliant

26 June 2003 Other IE Content Providers Go-Geo! portal architecture Geo-data Network (proposed) GIgateway network Geo-data Gateway Metadata or resource servers Local go-geo database

26 June 2003 UKBORDERS Web-accessible online access service for boundary data data can be ‘generalised’ & made available in many GIS formats Covers all main geographies in Britain Over 400,000 polygons + another 250,000 for 2001 census boundaries for all levels of census geography

26 June 2003 Current UKBorders datasets Census Geographies Administrative Geographies Electoral Geographies Postal Geographies Other Geographies Historical Geographies

26 June 2003 Digimap Access and use core datasets Internet mapping and data delivery service Subscription service but free at point of use Launched in January 2000 ‘Virtual map library‘ Interoperability MoU with Ordnance Survey

26 June 2003 Land-Line.Plus ® 1:10, :1,250 Land-Form PANORAMA ™ 1:50,000 contours and DTM Strategi ® 1:250,000 OS data available through Digimap Meridian ™ 1:50,000 1:50,000 Colour Raster and Gazetteer Code-Point with polygons

26 June 2003 Carto (applet) ‘Lite’ Downloader Gazetteer Mapping, data search and export clients

26 June 2003 Learning and Teaching - the e-MapScholar project Tools and materials that enhance and support the use of geo- spatial data in learning and teaching Led by EDINA with a number of associate partners Deliverables – a range of Teaching Case Studies from a variety of subject areas – customisable and interactive Learning Resources – a proof-of-concept Virtual Placement

Slide 19 of ## 26 June 2003 Components of an e-MapScholar Learning Resource A learning resource contains: Learning objects include: Plain text Interactive tools Web mapping and are customisable in content and spatial extent where appropriate Learning units contain: Metadata Learning objectives Learning objects Metadata Learning objectives Learning units And can be made up of different combinations of units

26 June 2003 geoXwalk - a gazetteer service Digital Gazetteer - An electronic list of geographic features together with their associated spatial location Digital Gazetteer Service - A network-addressable middle- ware server supporting geographic referencing and searching Infrastructural service, eg, used by Go-Geo! Represents objects by correct geometry Alexandria Digital Library query protocol

26 June 2003 Supporting reference use: the “where is?” type of question What is at grid ref. NY ? Where is Aberdour? What is the largest town in Cornwall? List me all places ending with ‘chester’ What parishes fall within the Pembrokeshire National Park? On what river is Dundee situated? Which Roman roads pass through Scotland? By what alternative names has York been known? + research use to resolve variant names etc.

26 June 2003 Supporting service searching: Return me “Photographs of towns along the River Tweed” Place name - River Tweed Feature Type: River Relation: ‘near’ Distance: 1/2 km Target type: towns Places... Peebles Innerleithen Melrose Kelso Coldstream Berwick upon Tweed Image finder server (Images indexed on place names)

26 June 2003 Conclusion CSSDI accurately describes the situation in the real world CSSDI is a useful concept for strategic planning Contact: