Oceans Portal Workshop 30 th March 2004 Healthy oceans: cared for, understood and used wisely for the benefit of all, now and in the future healthy oceans: cared for, understood and use wisely for the benefit of all, now and in the future healthy National Oceans Office Kim Finney C.I.O. Oceans Portal Project Ocean Biodiversity Informatics Conference Hamburg, November 2004

Outline Australia’s Oceans Policy & Regional Marine Planning Why initiate An Oceans Portal Project ? Key Ingredients For Success Implementation

Australia’s Oceans Policy Launched December 1998 Maintenance of healthy and productive ecosystems Science-based planning and management Precautionary Economic, environmental, social and cultural aspirations accommodated through integrated planning and management “Healthy oceans: cared for, understood and used wisely for the benefit of all, now and in the future”

Regional Marine Planning 13 Large Marine Domains Ecosystem-based management Ecologically Sustainable Development Integrated sectoral management arrangements Participatory decision making Facilitate involvement of States

Data To Underpin Regional Marine Planning Statutory Information Economic Information Social & cultural InformationImpacts Information Indigenous Information Biological & Physical Information

Why Initiate An Oceans Portal Project ? Regional IOC/WMO Data Centres Global Observing Programs National Marine Institutions Commonwealth R&D Inst. (0.33 of Oz research) Local Govts. Museums State Fisheries Depts EPA Natural Resource Management Agencies Universities Hard to discover what’s out there IP & access issues Different data formats Different quality (scale, resolution, accuracy) General lack of a common vocabulary to describe phenomena & real world objects Most data not on-line Difficult to know where real gaps in data availability are.

Given issues – what do we need to achieve and how ? An immediate improvement in access to those national marine fundamental datasets that are needed to underpin marine management decisions and marine research activities, A networked platform ripe for scientific exploitation in terms of: ·accessing and sharing up-to-date multi-disciplinary data; ·deploying tools and models; ·communicating and conceptualising using multi-media 2 & 3D visualisations; ·facilitating collaborations across agencies and across scientific disciplines, and ·greater leverage of our existing collective IT infrastructure and agency-based capabilities. Why Initiate An Oceans Portal Project ?

The Oceans Portal Project Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI) In Action ! Project Components 1.Web-based (demonstration) portal 2.Catalogue service 3.Contributors & service providers (initially museums, Federal marine data centres, OBIS).

Key Ingredients For Success Community of interest Agency-level support Funding Governance Arrangements Architecture Standards/protocols Content (semantic interoperability)

Key Ingredients For Success Marine Community of Interest Partners Virtual Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint Facility OZCAM OBIS Marine Catalogue Marine Portal

Lobbying agency heads – high level support Oceans Policy Science Advisory Group – answers to a Ministerial Board Workshops, agency visits, presentations, established project advisory group, NOO – built Project into first RMP as a key deliverable Core funding from NOO – conditional on in-kind support from agencies Implementation Plan – sign-off at agency head level Key Ingredients For Success Agency-level Support & Funding

Key Ingredients For Success Governance Arrangements Rules/Procedures for: ·Administration, management and update of marine community profile and associated standards, ·Management & administration of (hosted) Catalogue ·Service level obligations for data/services deployed via the Catalogue and by the Catalogue. Overall Project ManagementGovernance Working Group

Key Ingredients For Success Architecture, Standards & Protocols Geospatial Services-oriented- architecture (ISO RM ODP) ·Computational viewpoint ·Information viewpoint ·Engineering viewpoint ·Technology viewpoint OGC Catalogue Specification V2.0 ebXML RIM V2.0 ISO 19119/19115 Metadata XML encodings ISO Metadata harvesting interface specification (Open Archives Protocol) Rendering symbology and styling standards (IHO S52) OGC WMS, WFS, WCS

Developing a marine community application profile ·Metadata model – dataset descriptions and services (not tackling feature types initially). ISO 19115/19119 ·Which metadata elements should be core ? ·Which code lists should we extend/add ? –marine keywords (GCMD ?), –thesauri & dictionary of terms (BODC parameter list ??), –species taxonomies (Catalogue of Life or Codes For Australian Aquatic Biota [CAAB] ??), –marine location names (IHO, AHO, AAD, GA), Commence R&D work on marine data modelling, GML application profiles and feature catalogues (Marine XML - NERC Data Grid ?? – relationship to IOC Feature Type Catalogue ?) Key Ingredients For Success Content Semantic Interoperability

Implementation Scoping Report, high level Technical Specification & Implementation Plan already developed, RFT to be let in December – buy/build Catalogue and Portal (separately deployed) ·Evaluation of COTS – shows no truly OGC compliant Catalogue software yet ! 6 Working Groups have been established: ·Governance, ·Symbology/styling ·Metadata Application Profile ·Species Finder Service ·OPENDAP (R&D) ·Data Modelling/Feature Type Catalogue (R&D) Catalogue developers to work in tandem with WGs – WGs have kicked off first. Project Advisory Committee

Implementation Species Finder Harvest data in OBIS Australian OBIS Mirror site How to generate ISO compliant metadata Wrap OBIS as a map service Register data and service in Catalogue

Conclusion Ambitious project in that it is genuinely a development by a “community of interest”. Lead the way in developing some key Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure technologies and standards, Requires national and international collaboration, Will need to expand partnership once runs are on the board. Catalogue will be accessible by anyone. All standards and specifications will be public.