AGU Fall Meeting 2007 Coordinating Communities and Building Governance in the development of Schematic and Semantic Standards: Is this the key to solving Global Earth and Space Science Challenges in the 21 st Century? Lesley Wyborn Geoscience Australia and AuScope

Motivation: changing focus of our science and an increasing need for cross disciplinary integration at a global scale From Reductionism To Greater Integration Atom Molecule Mineral Rock Outcrop Section Mountain Continent Planet Solar Source: Office of Integrative Activities NSF

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 Content (Data, Information Knowledge) Tools Bandwidth High Performance Computing The Geoinformatics Tetrahedron Bandwidth Content: Data, Information, Knowledge Tools High Performance Computing Ideal WorldCurrent Reality the internet is our computer: we need to strike a balance between our available ICT resources

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 So what really is interoperability ? Based on Agreed Standardised Interface Alignment Domain: Machine to Machine Systems standards Syntactic standards Schematic standards Semantic standards Institution A Institution B Internal Processes The size of the community you can interoperate with is at a minimum the size of the community that develops and/or knows about the data transfer standard To ensure global scale interoperability, data transfer standards must be developed by international communities

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 Standardised within institutions Silo Collaborative Networked Interoperable between a few institutions Global network capability Personal silos Level of Collaboration Time Full potential of Geoinformatics to solve key challenges in earth and space sciences depends on global collaboration Based on None High, Global

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 The Increasing Complexity of Interoperable Technologies

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 Integrated Map Data Content (Ontology, Vocabularies) Data Structure (GeoSciML, Chemical ML) Data Language (O&M, SensorML) (GML) Data Services (WMS, WFS, WCS) The Interoperability Standards Stack systems syntax schematic semantic Map System 2 systems syntax schematic semantic Map System 1 Technical ISO, OGC W3C, IEEE, IETF,OGF, OASIS Information: Atmospherics Geology Marine Geophysics Water Quakes Adapted from Brodaric

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 Syntactical standards: OGC Sampling Manifolds A unified way across all sciences to encode the fundamental patterns of the spatial geometry of observations

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 What is the ISO/OGC/W3C governance equivalent for Semantic and Schematic Standards? We need ISO/OGC/W3C compliant, internationally endorsed semantic and schematic transfer models for –Geochemistry − Atmospherics –Geochronology− Heliophysics –Geophysics− Biogeology –Geodesy− Ecology –Seismology− Cryosphere –Hydrogeology− ????? –Marine− ????? –?????− ????? But we need to coordinate the development of the schematic and semantic standards (including ontologies) to avoid a plethora of incompatible data transfer standards and the uncontrolled growth of YAMLS (Yet Another Markup Language)

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 Can existing groups provide governance and coordination for schematic and semantic data transfer standards? GeoUnions –IUGS, International Union of Geological Sciences (GeoSciML) –IUGG, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics –IUSS, International Union of Soil Sciences –IGU, International Geographical Union –INQUA, International Union for Quaternary Research –ISPRS International Union for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Not in GeoUnions –International Hydrological Association –International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Chemical ML) We need to look higher to ICSU, CODATA, SCID for coordination and governance

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 The Standards Stack for the GA Geochronology Data Transfer Model: an example of reuse (beg, borrow & steal) StandardDescribesGovernanceType Chemical ML Molecules, atoms, isotopesIUPAC Inform-ation GeoSci ML Earth materialsIUGS:CGI Geography ML Location, time, peopleOGC & ISO Technical Observations & Measurements Observation patterns and processes OGC Sensor ML Sensor and instrument metadata OGC If we can leverage Chemical ML for geochemistry, can we leverage physics standards for geophysics, and so on…..?

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 When will YOU reach the Tipping point and change to machine readability? You have too much data (Terabytes and Petabytes cf Astronomy & High Energy Physics) You want to go cross disciplinary, ie work on data outside of your own small community You are working with sensor networks You have to meet legal requirements, eg Sarbanes-Oxley

AGU Fall Meeting A Starting Point for Collaboration: SEE Grid TWIKI SEE Grid is the Solid Earth & Environmental community web site (includes space people) Started in communities now In 2007 – 48,264 unique visits – 1,170,567 hits – 52.52GB download AppSchemas page

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 The SEE Grid community website aims to enable sharing as per Commandment X Thou shalt not reinvent the Wheel, nor the Common Code Table, nor the Commonly Used Procedure nor anything that has already been invented, but shall develop with reusability and sharing in mind Alternate wording for Commandment X: Thou shalt covert thy neighbours common Code Table, his Commonly Used Procedure, and anything and everything that has already been invented, and shalt share thine own good stuff too That is, the world is changing from data ‘myning’ to data mining Source - John Flack: Sharing the Wealth: a methodology for Preventing Wheel Re-Invention

AGU Fall Meeting 2007 Thank You and Questions? Lesley Wyborn –Geoscience Australia – Key Collaborative TWIKI Websites – –