Spatial Data Infrastructures and Spatial Ontologies and Semantics John Moeller Northrop Grumman Co-Chair of Spatial Ontology Community of Practice

The Geospatial Web “The Geospatial Web is not just a bunch of mash-ups or even the hundreds of SDI's that have been successfully deployed. The Geospatial Web is about the complete integration and use of location at all levels of the internet and the web. This integration will often be invisible to the user. But at the end of the day, the ubiquitous permeation of location into the infrastructure of the internet and the web is being built on standards. “ Dr. Carl Reed CTO Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc We are moving closer to the goal of a geospatially enabled web…

What is a Spatial Data Infrastructure ? A Spatial Data Infrastructure is the “Dial-Tone” of the geospatial web “the means to assemble geographic information that describes the arrangement and attributes of features and phenomena on the Earth” (US National Research Council) ‘the technology, policies, standards, and human resources necessary to acquire, process, store, distribute and improve utilization of geospatial data” (US NSDI EO 12906) “the policies, organizational remits, data, technologies, standards, delivery mechanisms, and financial and human resources necessary to ensure that those working at the global and regional scale are not impeded in meeting their objectives” (GSDI Association)

SDI Key Components Network Spatial Data Catalogues/Clearing Houses/Registries Data Services An Integrating Data Framework/Foundation Guidelines/policies Standards and Specifications Metadata Core/base data Spatial data Services Institutional capacity and partnerships

SDI Development Pre –SDI through Initial Development and Implementation 1990’s – current Web-based, standards based understanding of value of geospatial as an integrating function for the enterprise Early 2000 – current Implementation of service oriented architectures, development of implementation profiles and service chaining Web services 2006 – 2009 Enterprise connections enabled through semantic capabilities, embedded business processes, sensor integration, data discrimination services Anticipated timeframe: 2008 – 2010 Intelligent SDI Networks are in place using metadata for date, service, applications and models etc, registries and catalogues, semantics, chained services, e-commerce, to provide cost/accuracy/time options to meet users requests Anticipated timeframe: 2010

SDI’s at all levels join with other to form a GSDI Global Participation SDI’s at all levels join with other to form a GSDI U.S. NSDI Canada CGDI European Spatial Infrastructure Global SDI NSG Other NSDI’s Australian SDI .

From a Foundation of SDI Best Practices Easier access to multiple online info sources and services Use and reuse different vendor solutions. Reduce deployment costs by reusing information from other communities Meet requirements for Citizen access. Foundation for interoperable service networks Clearinghouse Geoparser Vendor Data Local Government National Other Collections Whoville Cedar Lake Buildings Roads Images Targets Boundaries ... Catalog View Common interfaces enable interoperability Queries extract info from diverse sources Integrated View Gazetteer Coordinate Transform Web Mapping Server, Web Feature Server, Web Coverage Server Catalog Services Services Metadata Internet Geocoder The geospatial community has made substantial progress in advancing a set of best practices necessary to make a shared Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) a reality from the local to global levels. The SDI movement that started back in the mid 1990’s has yielded world wide agreement on a core set of principles that has improved our ability to share geospatial information in support of a variety of mission needs. Geoparser Source: Open Geospatial Consortium

To Geospatially Enabling The Enterprise OGC members are now focusing on additional standards based capabilities to geospatially enable organizational enterprises. Source: Open Geospatial Consortium

Some Comments/Questions Open standards provide the framework for geospatial interoperability and data sharing SDI’s around the world are expressing support for interoperable solutions Are SOA’s along with ontology and semantic tools ready for incorporation into SDI’s of different levels of maturity or only in the most mature? If not what is needed to stimulate implementation?

From Spatial Data Infrastructures Consumers s Businesses Government Users Information Internet, World Wide Web, and other standards Network Connections Demographics Health Transportation Real Estate Defense Environment Liesure Public Safety Politics Shopping Finance Crime Economic …infrastructures rely on a variety of technology “standards” and network connections.

Every human activity happens somewhere – and “somewhen”! Source: www.fao.org/docrep/008/ae929e/ae929e03.htm Can anyone in the audience think of any human activity that is not impacted by location or impacts a location? We have a social responsibility to optimize our decision making by leveraging place