1 Web Sevices and NEFIS : Part 1 School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences University of Greenwich Keith Rennolls Frances Lee Moh Ibrahim Alex Fedorec Acknowledgements: Tim Richards, Chair, NEFIS WP3 Gill Windall, Liz Bacon, Kevin McMannus, Alun Butler, UoG:

2 Web Services and NEFIS Part 1: General and Contextual Issues Part 2 : Interoperability and Architecture

3 Web Services : What are they? Various connotations General term relating to web services Specific term as used by: Microsoft Sun IBM HP W3C

4 Web Services: Simple Specific Usage Language 1 Op.Syst.1 Hardware 1 Platform 1 Platform 2 Language 2 Op.Syst.2 Hardware 2 Different RDF XML HTML WSDLWSDL WSDLWSDL Common SOAP HTTP UDDI

5 TheWS “Stack” Turner et.al. (Oct. 2003). Turning Software into a Service. IEEE Computer

6 WhyWS for EFIS & NEFIS ? EFICS,1989, the European Forest Information and Communication System, (Council Regulation(EEC) No. 1615/89) had as its objective to “collect, coordinate, standardise and process data concerning the forestry sector and its development …to facilitate the implementation of decisions taken at national and regional level concerning the forestry sector …taking into account existing information systems”. The EFI EFICS Study, 1997, was commissioned “to analyse in detail the statistical sources of forest resources in the EU…and to draw up proposals for obtaining data which is mutually compatible and comparable, so as to be able to establish a reliable and consistent database at the European level”.

7 EFIS++ User Groups (See EFICS and EFIS reports for actual surveys & analysis) EU pan-European land-use planners. National and Regional (sub-national) land-use planners and forest managers. Trans-national environmentalists and conservationists. Forest and Environment researchers: data mining and model building. Local forest managers (sub-sub-national). Local Authority land-use and landscape planners (sub- sub-national). Educational users: Schools, Colleges and Universities. Individual personal users; business or recreation.

8 EFIS functionality Catalogue function; node of GFIS. Searchable register of Forest Inf. Objects. DC, XML, WS OK Distributed Database (ddb) Metadata for dbb …WP2 ??? Interoperable data access… WS Federation, Grids, etc…Moh! …of mutually compatible and comparable data …for processing, analysis and decision support Aggregation, Comparison, Modelling and Forecasting.

9 PROBLEM 1 The data in national databases (i.e. Forest Inventories) are NOT consistent or compatable. Forest area; dbh; volume-to; productivity class…. Well known to EFICS (89, 97) which looked at : Harmonisation (adoption of common standards - very expensive) Standardisation (adjustment/scaling of data to compatibility – not easy) CONCLUSION: Data-access interoperability is not enough, by itself.

10 SOLUTION Standardisation models required to: Convert National inventory data to a common flexible STANDARD Convert between different National standards Empirical Data is required. Too expensive? Use of Heuristic Modelling Patches in NEFIS demonstrator? (From EFICS data???) Need a Standards Conversion Toolkit (SCTK)

11 PROBLEM 2 All the national databases have different base-dates. Hence, the national databases are base-date inconsistent.

12 SOLUTION? National Inventory up-dating models are needed. Equivalent to Inventory-based forecasting models. Forest Inventory Forecasting Toolkit? Not Easy!!! Expensive! Localised or Centralised?

13 PROBLEM 3 Where do the standardisation and up-dating processes fit within the EFIS++ ddb interoperability middleware?

14 SOLUTION(S) In the central EFIS ++ processing engine? Possible. This may be complicated, and very slow. Possible alternative solution: Construct a centralised standardised and updated Data Warehouse of European Forest Inventories. Re-freshed only periodically High quality Fast access Easy to analyse, model and mine.

15 Ultimate Aim: Decision Support Support Tools Needed GIS: EFIS’s Common GIS fine. Statistical Analysis: Tabulation EFIS facilities limited. Access to generic open-source facilities needed R …open source : SOAP : D(COM).. Excel-Add-in. Data Visualisation EFIS Visual Toolkit good Need access to other facilities possibly needed.

16 More Support Tools Needed RS image analysis tools Enhanced Decision Analysis functionality Already done. Data Fusion Tools Fusion of imagery over time and space Fusion of hierarchical data Fusion of forest models for mapping and forecasting. Data Mining Tools: access needed. Already done.

17 Interoperability of Access to Tools Interoperable access to distributed databases needs a suitable architecture. Federated WS?  Part 2. Interoperable access to Analysis Tools also needs a suitable architecture. Grids?  Part 2.