Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group Our Vision It’s A major natural disaster strikes. UN relief agencies, governments and partners already have an accurate and shared understanding of the situation on the ground. They use state-of-the-art technologies to coordinate seamlessly with one another, the affected population and remote volunteers. The response is efficient and effective. Lives are saved and the affected population rebuilds better prepared for the next time.

Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group UN Spatial Data Infrastructure (UNSDI) Gazetteer Framework Project Suha ÜLGEN Senior Advisor on Spatial Data Infrastructure Co-chair of the United Nations Geographic Information Working Group Office of the Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Information Technology Officer New York, USA 26 th Session of UNGEGN - Vienna, 2-6 May 2011

Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group Realizing our vision 1.Define data standards needed to integrate operations between UN agencies, governments, and partners. 2.Ensure availability of data in these standard formats detailing the facilities, resources, vulnerabilities, infrastructure, and gaps in high-risk countries. 3.Identify key roles, types of information, and technologies pertaining to extra-institutional actors. 4.Based on these findings, design public UN Crisis Information Management application programming interfaces (APIs) – compliant with the aforementioned data standards -- to allow real-time interaction between UN agencies and extra- institutional actors. 5.Drive adoption of the data standards by supporting UN agencies in their efforts to bring their systems up to the level of compliance required to implement the public APIs.

Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group The situation today Who has up-to-date admin. boundaries? Where can I find a list of villages? There’s no metadata  What’s the datum? Can you send me your list of affected villages? There’s no metadata! How old is this data & who collected it ? Is Mytown in this dataset the same as Yourtown in that data set? OK I think I have the right data, let’s make some maps!! I’ll have to ask my boss How come these three versions of admin areas use different boundaries? This health centre is supposed to be in admin area A but is mapped to a village in Area B. Which one is right? UnderstandDiscover Access Extract, Transform & LoadUse Time and effort

Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group 2015 Discover/Access/ Extract, Transform & Load Understand Use and re-use UNSDI Gazetteer Framework Project developed by Office of the Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Information Technology Officer (ASG/CITO) of the UN Secretariat and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) of Australia

Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group UNSDI Gazetteer Framework Project Objectives Establish a services infrastructure enabling online (web) access to and improved use of published gazetteers Establish a framework for improved description of information resources to support evolution of the shared services infrastructure and its content Develop a reference architecture to guide the growth, and local exploitation, of a shared services infrastructure

The problem... Application: “When I select an object on the map I get a reference I can re-use” record in my dataset find related resources for the object tell someone else what I’m referring to Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group

Gazetteer service concept Model and vocabulary registry Application Gazetteer “Foo”, type=Local Government, src=… Type? Admin schema Admin schema Get admin.area Get admin.area Get admin.parent=“foo” SDMX Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group

Another City / Province / Country Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group An application example Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Another City / Province / Country One City / Province / Country Radio Television Fax Cell / SMS Sirens Storm Earthquake Fire Tsunami Volcano

CAP gazetteer reference Any City / Province / Country Radio Television Fax Cell / SMS Sirens Storm Earthquake Fire Tsunami Volcano CAP Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group

3-year work plan Build − Identify key data sources and user needs for re-use − Model and harvest a “resource view” of data sources − Prototype gazetteer and underlying model registry Review prototypes for key re-use requirements Refine − Design of content and tools based on feedback − Propose simplifications Sustain with stable production version Five workstreams – shared models; community agreements; infrastructure; tools & methods; information products Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group

Gazetteer Framework partners UN UNGEGN Global Pulse Project (Secretary-General’s Office) Non-UN Member State organizations CSIRO Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group

Advantages to participants Declaration of dataset as authoritative ISO-compliant documentation Usage statistics Crowdsourced inputs for revisions Updated registry of revisions Cloud hosting option under UN’s auspices Technical support on building system interfaces User Committee membership Geographic Information United Nations Geographic Information Working Group

Thank you Suha ÜLGEN UNGIWG Co-chair Office of the ASG/CITO, New York