FOSS4G2006 – Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics The Role of Open Source Software in Canada’s National Forest Information System (NFIS Canada) Robin Quenet and Brian Low Presented at FOSS4G2006 – Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics 12-15 September 2006, Lausanne, Switzerland Authors: R.V. Quenet, PhD Project Manager, National Forest Information System (NFIS Canada) Administrateur de projet, SNIF - Système national d’information forestière Canadian Forest Service Service canadien des forêts Pacific Forestry Centre Centre de foresterie du Pacifique 506 West Burnside Road 506, chemin Burnside ouest Victoria, BC Victoria, (Colombie-Britannique) CANADA V8Z 1M5 CANADA V8Z 1M5 rquenet@pfc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca, tel: 250.363.0127, fax: 250.363.0775 Brian Low Geospatial Scientist Géospatiographe Applications Lead Chef des applications National Forest Information System Système national d'information forestière Natural Resources Canada Ressources naturelles Canada Canadian Forest Service Service canadien des forets Tel: (250)363-8303 Email: blow@nrcan.gc.ca 506 W. Burnside Rd. Victoria, BC V8Z 1M5 http://nfis.org

Canada’s National Forest Information System   Canada’s commitment to sustainability was enshrined in 1992 in the National Forest Strategy entitled Sustainable Forests: A Canadian Commitment. The National Forest Information System (NFIS) is being developed to provide Canadians, and the international community, with authoritative information about the state of Canada’s forests and how they are being sustainably managed. NFIS is a Canadian Council of Forest Ministers initiative that began in 2000. NFIS provides users with Web-based direct access to information held by federal, provincial, territorial and other government agencies and non-government organizations. It means users can discover, integrate, and display this current, authoritative and accurate information on Canada’s forests and on sustainable forest management. NFIS provides Web tools, ranging from simple portrayal to sophisticated analyses, to users from anywhere in the world.

What is the National Forest Information System? It is an initiative of the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM) to provide the point of contact for information on sustainable forest management in Canada. NFIS is an international standards based distributed interoperable network providing the ability to access, analyze and report on Canada’s most current authoritative forestry data and information over the Web. The data and information are accessed directly from the custodial holdings published on federal, provincial and territorial servers distributed across Canada. The NFIS Canada architecture consists of a network of content servers working within a common information and services framework. Open GIS Consortium (OGC) Web Map Technologies (WMT) (http://www.opengis.org/index.htm) form the basis for vendor-neutral information interoperability over the NFIS network. The common information and services framework allows NFIS member organizations to attach attributes to the shared representations of the landscape and to carry out independent, server side and off-line analyses and compilations Web-based delivery through the common framework.   The distributed architecture allows responsibility for the management of information and definition and implementation of services to reside with the custodian, closest to the data source. This approach ensures that the data are authoritative and current and it also provides the custodial agency with full control of access to the data..

Who are the Partners and who is involved? CCFM Partners Departments of Forestry Canada Provinces Territories CFS Partners CFS Centres Corner Brook Office CFS HQ Technology Partners GeoConnections NLWIS (National Land and Water information Service) Industry Universities (UVic, U of A) Who is Involved Holders of forest land related resources including governments, industry, ENGOs, First Nations, etc. Surficial and bedrock geology Soils Water Environment Fisheries Wildlife Parks and protected areas Agriculture Ownership Base mapping Land tenure CCFM (Canadian Council of Forest Ministers [http://ccfm.org]) partners include the Government of Canada; Provincial partners including the governments of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan; and Territorial partners including the governments of the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. CFS (Canadian Forest Service [http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/cfs/]) partners include the Atlantic Forestry Centre, Pacific Forestry Centre, Northern Forestry Centre, Great Lakes Forestry Centre, Laurentian Forestry Centre, Corner Brook Office and Headquarters. Technical Partners include GeoConnections (http://geoconnections.org), National Land and Water Information Service (NLWIS [www.agr.gc.ca/nlwis-snite/ ]), the forest and IT industry and academic institutions

Reduce costs through the sharing of information technology NFIS purpose: Provide the strategic context for provincial, territorial and federal agencies to easily and reliably address regional, national and international challenges to Canadian forest practices Provide the transparent integration of information across jurisdictional boundaries Provide consistency in reporting thereby avoiding different answers being given to the same question Reduce costs through the sharing of information technology Provide free exchange of NFIS technology among partner jurisdictions. The requirements to: Reduce costs through the sharing of information technology Provide free exchange of NFIS technology among partner jurisdictions were instrumental in decision to adopt ‘Open Source’ as a business model and along with it vendor neutrality. This led to adopting a ‘common services sharing a common architecture’ approach

Authoritative information Services Development Common Services Sharing a Common Architecture Common Services Information Request CFSNet SFM Federal portals CCFM portals Provincial Secure Access Common Infrastructure The NFIS/CFSNet services development approach. Territorial Other Authoritative information Authoritative Report

The Development Environment: Business Principles International Standards (W3C, OGC, CGDI, ISO, etc.) Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) Principles Vendor neutrality Open Source Mandatory Requirements Security Minimal impact on business practices Branding The development environment

Generic Services Infrastructure / Connectivity / Web Sites / Portals Publishing – Thematic Templates Security - Distributed Access Control System Terrain Server Area of Interest Data Domain Statistics Spatial Operations Generalized Summary Reporting System Data capture, access, analysis, download and reporting SDI-in-a-Box Generic services supported by NFIS/CFSNet- there are open source solutions to all NFIS/CFSNet services with the exception of Terrain Server. Open source Proprietary

Some Current NFIS Applications National Forestry Database Program (NFDP) data capture services National Forest Inventory (NFI) spatial data capture and analysis services National Afforestation Inventory (NAI) web services Canadian Wildland Fire Information System Conservation Areas Reporting and Tracking System (CARTS) analysis services Conservation of Forest Genetic Resources – Tree Species of Concern Canada’s Boreal Earth Observation for Sustainable Development of Forests (EOSD) web services Forest Ecosystem Mapping in Canada - FEMiC V1.0W (restricted) Mountain Pine Beetle Internet Tool A list of some of the applications that are supported

Provincial / Territorial Portals NFIS Infrastructure Defining critical loads of N and S for the Georgia Basin, BC WebCalc (Softwaregarden’s WikiCalc) Provincial / Territorial Portals NFIS Infrastructure SDI Infrastructure Footprint - SDI-in-a-Box (a.k.a. CGDI-in-a-Box) And coming….. Plant Hardiness Mapping –(Climate and climate change effects on plant species in North America) SEEDWHERE CCFM Criteria and Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management Canadian Biomass Innovation Network - Purpose-Grown and Opportunity Sources of Woody Biomass for Bioenergy Climate maps on the web Insect and Disease Risk Mapping, etc. And now some examples ….. N= nitrogen S= sulphur

Protected areas from Federal/Provincial/Territorial NFIS nodes – One provincial node was down at the time of query Protected areas are underlaid by a DEM from the Centre for Topographic Information (CTI of NRCan)

Brundtland Report - 1987 Distributed access to Federal/Provincial/Territorial protected areas attribution showing protected area count and extent (area) by IUCN categories !-VI by year with graphical representation – Generalized Summary System service Brundtland Report 1987 – Canada’s response (in 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), which had been set up in 1983, published a report entitled «Our common future».

White Goat Provincial Park 3D rendition of White Goat Provincial Park – runs on Terrain Server provided as a service to NFIS/CFSNet partners Alberta Park/Protected areas boundaries Landsat 7 imagery CTI DEM Refractions Terrain Server NOTE: full server side processing – nothing on client desktop/laptop Theme … using protected areas with wildland fire system

Canadian Wildland Fire Information system deployed on SDI-in-a-Box footprint over the NFIS/CFSNet infrastructure shows current (August 31, 2006) and burned areas 2000-2005 Developed by Northern Forestry Centre, CFS (Edmonton) Canada overview

For September 5, 2006 – current and fully dynamic shows hotspots areas burned by year Conservation/parks/protected areas shaded relief

Same area showing fire danger forecast and hotspots Carry theme Protected areas, Fires, and and next Trees of Concern

Canada’s tree species of concern trees of concern daily hotspots fire danger forecast protected areas, etc Seamless integration of information from authoritative custodial information holdings

Protected areas

Hotspots

Species information with Google search results on the species

Google link to USDA Forest Service species description

Public Portal – Anonymous Access Internet Mapping Framework (proprietary) public portal – NFIS provides the service to NFIS/CFSNet partners forest cover vegetation classes protected areas ecological classifications imagery

Boreal portal (SDI-in-a-Box) boreal mask roads mineral deposits protected areas, etc now linked to wildland fire information’ tree species distribution

PEI provincial portal (SDI-in-a-Box)

Protected Areas by Ecozones Protected Areas Ecozones WMS Spatial analysis

National Afforestation Inventory (SDI-in-a-Box) activity site map

National Afforestation Inventory activity site report

NFDP

NFI

In what way does NFIS provide value to Canada? NFIS is contributing to: Information in support of forest policy development Environmental, social and economic National Reporting State of Canada’s Forest annual report to Parliament (National Department of Natural Resources Act) Criteria and Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management in Canada (National) International Reporting FAO Forest Resources Assessment (International) Canada’s Report on the Montreal Process Criteria and Indictors for the Conservation and Sustainable management of Temperate and Boreal Forests (International) CFS contributes data and information to Environment Canada for Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Kyoto Protocol Convention on Biological Diversity

Value to Partners All Provinces and Territories: NRCan/CFS: Access to other interoperable infrastructures including Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada CANSIS and NLWIS, Environment Canada Nature Watch, DFO Mapster, NOAA, etc. Provinces and Territories: NFIS Services for Publishing Data and Information - NFIS Infrastructure Data Capture, Analysis and Publication services (e.g. NFDP, NFI, C&I) Access to CFS research and information holdings, e.g. climate covers NRCan/CFS: Research Initiatives and Research supporting Policy Development - CFSNet Infrastructure Data Capture, Analysis and Publication services Access to NFIS Partner (Federal, Provincial and Territorial) information holdings, e.g. forest cover, parks and protected areas, ownership, CTI, GeoGratis, etc.)

Visit us at: http://nfis.org