James Reid Project Manager EDINA

The geoXwalk project funded under JISC IE Development Programme builds on Phase I scoping study aims to develop a demonstrator gazetteer service suitable for extension to full service. time-frame: start 1 June 2002 for 1 year project partners: EDINA and UK Data Archive aim: to develop a ‘proof of concept’ demonstrator

JISC Information Environment -geoXwalk as ‘shared service’ Content providers Provision layer Shared services Fusion layer Authentication Authorisation Broker/Aggregator geoXwalk Collect’n Desc Portal Portal Portal Service Desc Presentation layer Resolver Inst’n Profile End-user

Geo-referencing: that’s what’s special about the spatial subject content most often referenced by topic … … but much (80%?) can be referenced to specific geographic places broad disciplinary base for more powerful geographic searching across the social, life & physical sciences as well as the humanities also from libraries, archives and museums now from digital libraries, service providers & data providers geo-referencing thus a way of viewing information content: subject, people, place and time geographic co-ordinates are persistent regardless of name, political boundary or other changes

Why this is difficult... How to search ‘geographically’ given that : e.g. a postcode, a placename and an administrative area are all valid geographies and yet every information system cannot know about all the possible variations of what constitutes a ‘geography’! Problem compounded by inconsistency of use even in the ‘standards’ e.g. placenames evolve, have alternative names Long history in UK of boundary changes and changes in the geographies used to record things e.g. electoral ward boundary changes …

There is underlying complexity, such as Multiple Geographies …

The vision Make variations in definitions of ‘geography’ transparent Provide a means to ‘crosswalk’ geographies i.e. translate one geography into another - hence the name ‘Geographic agnosticism’ How? A digital gazetteer that stores the different geographies and can implicitly resolve the relationships between them Provision as a service to service other services

A shared ‘terminology’ service. Gazetteer - A list of geographic features together with their associated spatial location Digital Gazetteer - An electronic list of geographic features together with their associated spatial location (An authority database of places (and features?)) Digital Gazetteer Service - A network-addressable middle-ware server supporting geographic referencing and searching. A shared ‘terminology’ service.

Why not just use hierarchical thesauri Why not just use hierarchical thesauri? (part of the ‘Document Tradition’) United Kingdom………………………… (nation) England …………………………..(country) Devon………………………….. (county) Barton……………………………….. Comment: one type of simple relationship between entries is exploited entries ordered from very general to very specific (BT, NT) can efficiently determine what a given area contains normally structured to handle alternative names (SY) rigid structure, one view only, typically geo-political entities can belong in many hierarchies and new relationships evolve names may not be unique cannot deal with spatial proximity / contiguity no way to relate to other geographies, e.g. postcodes lack of simple hierarchies in UK (and other ‘old’) geographies …

Uses of geoXwalk Digital Gazetteer Service 1. As ‘shared service’, enabling other information services to support full range of spatial searching (query constraints) no need to hold all data (at service) to resolve spatial query uses co-ordinates and (implicit) spatial relationships to ‘cross-walk’ between geographies machine-to-machine (m2m) interaction to ‘shared service’ 2. As reference facility for researchers, libraries & museums including means to resolve variant names etc. 3. As online facility to assist metadata creators and means to semi-automatically geo-reference existing resources

geoXwalk Use Cases Geo-parsing & indexing Searching (1 - use cases) Information server Geo-parsing & indexing Searching (1 - use cases) The geoXwalk Server Information server e.g. Where is Aberdour? On what river is Dundee situated? By what alternative names has York been known? List me all places ending with ‘kirk’ Searching (2) Reference use

Supporting cross searching: geoXwalk in the Common Information Environment Coordinate footprints - Dundee (334995, 729203, 350609, 734710) Places: Barnhill Broughty Ferry Craigie Douglas And Angus Fintry Lochee Monifieth West Ferry <

(Images indexed on place names) Supporting service searching: “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)

As online facility to assist metadata creation Most of the extant resources in the JISC IE have some form of spatial reference e.g. placename, county name, postcode A ‘geoparser’ has been developed which will assist in the semi-automatic indexing of these resources by using the gazetteer as reference. The results of the geoparsing can be used to update the documents metadata, making it directly geographically searchable.

Need screen shot of parser here <

Developments to Date Creation & population of GB gazetteer database with: Enhanced OS 1:50,000 Placename Gazetteer Digital boundary data (UKBORDERS) Additional Place Name Variants (partial for Scotland and Wales) Derived multi-source data e.g. named woodlands and lakes based on hybrid 1:50K gazetteer and OS products Development of spatial extensions to database to support enhanced geographic search capabilities Development of middleware to support m2m and interactive searching Support for and testing of alternative query protocols -ADL / Z39.50(?) Development of a geoparser to support semi-automatic indexing

Ongoing Work and Issues Merging geo-data from different scales & from different sources how to accommodate historical data positional accuracy & expression of confidence? how to minimise effort in de-duplication of place(s)? places have multiple names, types, and footprints need to be able to identify duplicate entries for the same place Presenting geo-names on different occasions? many variant ‘proper’ names, what is preferred? what is the ‘name authority body’? - none in the Scotland or the UK preferred name varies with location and use and culture there are language and character code set issues ‘standard’ codes for postal addresses and other geographies IPR issues in metadata; and hence terms & conditions of use Service performance issues and appropriate protocols

Contact details James.Reid@ed.ac.uk EDINA, Data Library, University of Edinburgh telephone +44 (0)131 650 3302 For information on geoXwalk project: www.geoXwalk.ac.uk

Query by feature type and bounding box XML query fragments <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <gazetteer-service xmlns="http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/gazetteer" version="1.1"> <query-request> <gazetteer-query> <name-query operator="equals” text="Fife"/> </gazetteer-query> <report-format>standard</report-format> </query-request> </gazetteer-service> Query for a placename <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <gazetteer-service xmlns="http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/gazetteer" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml" version="1.1"> <query-request> <gazetteer-query> <and> <class-query thesaurus="Edina FT Thesaurus” term="towns"/> <footprint-query operator="within"> <gml:Box> <gml:coordinates> -0.02988,51.45753, 1.30798,52.07042 </gml:coordinates> </gml:Box> </footprint-query> </and> </gazetteer-query> <report-format>standard</report-format> </query-request> </gazetteer-service> Query by feature type and bounding box

5 15 Task: Find resource about 'Liverpool docks’ Search using a ‘traditional’ gazetteer might yield: 5 Using spatial proximity in an active gazetteer, the search can be widened: Place County/UA Liverpool Liverpool Bebbington Wirral Birkenhead Wirral Bootle Sefton New Brighton Wirral Seacombe Wirral Seaforth Wirral Waterloo Sefton co-ordinates allow (near) co-located places to be co-identified. 15 … that means more & better hits …. !!!

Supporting cross searching different services ‘Find resources for this postcode’ (NB postcode often used to geo-reference survey data files) Portal service Post code: L34 0HS? Coordinate footprints Content Provider A 340900,392300 - 347217, 397660 Knowsley BX003 Place names Content Provider B Parish names geoXwalk Server Content Provider C <