Toward interoperable information use across the geosciences Presented 23 November 2009 Second Workshop on GIS/OGC Standards in Meteorology Dr. David K. Arctur Director, Interoperability Programs Open Geospatial Consortium Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

How can we understand and communicate about all this? In relationship with our environment A little perspective first… Our social fabric is evolving… Natural Resources Biodiversity Population/Urbanization Climate Change Globalized Economy Pollution Science Technology Folks, I’d like to put the work before us in perspective. Regardless of whether you believe this version or that version of the story, the truth is that the human society’s burden on the Earth is starting to be noticeable, and the consequences for future generations are looking increasingly grim. Specificallly: Population dynamics, social equity issues Sustainable development Globalization of resource management, production & trade Toxic waste disposal Fresh water availability Energy supplies and demands We’re killing ourselves… And who can say what really needs to be done?? Source: ESRI Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Meteorology is essential, and it’s not just about the weather We can’t manage, much less improve what’s happening with these global issues unless we KNOW what’s happening. We can’t know what’s happening without the ability to share and make effective & combined use of interdisciplinary data sources, models, and processes We need interoperability of the knowledge and tools, not just the data This is complicated by the volumes of data being generated, by differing semantics, and institutional barriers There’s an increasingly urgent need for multidisciplinary collaboration. Expect that other fields of knowledge can benefit from access to weather data. Expect that weather forecasting models will get better as a result of greater understanding and ability to describe the connectedness among Earth systems. Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. It’s all interconnected, and we need better understanding of “the whole” We need to see “the whole” but reductionist approaches focus on partial aspects. Some examples of difficult questions to address: How to study the correlation of bird migration patterns with earth magnetic fields? How to better predict path of a hurricane? What disease vectors will increase with global warming? Where will fresh water shortages appear next? Source: The University of Tokyo Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. Getting There Working together across multiple disciplines, we can address these issues Each information community knows best how to define, collect, and use information within its frame of reference By working on open standards for information exchange, we can start to apply multi-disciplinary approaches to better understand and predict complex phenomena and their interactions Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. Why Open Standards? Rapidly mobilize new capabilities – plug and play Lower systems costs Encourage market competition Choose based on functionality desired Avoid “lock in” to a proprietary architecture Decisions to share information and services become policy decisions Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

What do we mean by “Open” Standard? Freely and publicly available Non discriminatory No license fees Vendor neutral Data neutral Agreed to by a formal consensus process What do we mean by “open” and an “open system”? First, consider the term “open”. This adjective is used extensively in the IT industry – including the GIS industry. But very seldom do we see this term actually defined. At the OGC, we use the term Open in very much the same way as the Open Source organization does (http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php). So, from the OGC perspective, we and our members firmly believe that all of the standards and specifications created by the OGC member consensus process must be: Freely and publicly available: All of the OGC specifications must be available free of charge (no royalties) and unencumbered by patents and other intellectual property. Non discriminatory: Available to any one, any organization, any time, any where with no restrictions. No license fees: There are no charges any time for the use of OpenGIS specifications. Vendor neutral: The OpenGIS specifications do not favor any vendor over another. They are vendor neutral in terms of their content and implementation concept. Data neutral: OpenGIS Specifications are independent of any data storage model or format. Agreed to by a formal, member based consensus process: All OpenGIS specifications are defined, documented, and approved by a formal, member driven consensus process. The OGC Technical Committee Polices and Procedures document all aspects of the formal consensus process. Definitions from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Open System: A system with characteristics that comply with specified, publicly maintained, readily available standards and that therefore can be connected to other systems that comply with these same standards. A system is a combination of two or more interrelated services arranged in a functional package to perform an operational function or to satisfy a requirement. Within the OGC, many of the terms and concepts related to open systems and interoperability can be traced to the OSI-RM, or OSI Reference Model. Essentially, this is a model of network architecture and a suite of protocols (a protocol stack) to implement it, developed by ISO in 1978 as a framework for international standards in heterogeneous computer network architecture. Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. OGC Web Services (OWS) Just as http:// is the dial tone of the World Wide Web, and html / xml are the standard encodings, the geospatial web is enabled by OGC standards: Web Map Server Web Coverage Web Feature Web Map Service (WMS) Web Feature Service (WFS) Web Coverage Service (WCS) Catalogue (CSW) Geography Markup Language (GML) Web Map Context (WMC) OGC KML Others… Relevant to geospatial information applications: Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Management, Weather, Climate, Homeland Security, Defense & Intelligence, Oceans Science, others Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. What is the OGC? Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) Not-for-profit, international voluntary consensus standards organization Founded in 1994, incorporated in US, UK, Australia 385+ industry, government, research and university members OGC Mission To lead in the development, promotion and harmonization of open geospatial standards … Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Liaison Open Standards / Organizations International Organization for Standards (ISO) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Digital Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG) OASIS Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) buildingSMART International / Alliance (bSi / bSa) IEEE Technical Committee 9 (Sensor Web) Web3D Consortium Others Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Environmental Information Collaborations NCAR – US National Center for Atmospheric Research MoU with University Corporation for Atmospheric Research on behalf of NCAR established 2005 TDWG – Taxonomic Data Working Group MoU established 2006 WMO – World Meteorological Organization MoU is now signed iEMSs – international Environmental Modeling & Software society MoU in process Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

OGC Interface to Geoscience Models Established geospatial interface with predictive models using Web Coverage Service (WCS) standard WCS Access to model outputs as 5D grids: parameters varying in three spatial dimensions with two time coordinates (model run time and forecast time) http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/galeonie GALEON Interoperability Experiment Geo-interface to Atmosphere, Land, Earth, Ocean, NetCDF This Geo-Interface for Atmosphere Land, Earth, Ocean and NetCDF Experiment, is being advanced by a number of OGC members to improve the ability of the science and research community to share and apply important (and complex) science information. Using the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS), organizations around the world can simplify the exchange and usage of important scientific information and models. See http://www.ogcnetwork.net/galeon, and http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/galeonie for more detail. The graphic shown is the result of information acquired in real time from several different servers using the WCS standard. The result is a 5D rendering of the jet stream over North America (information presented in 3 dimensions over time (4D), rendering an animation of fluid dynamics) Hopefully, the OGC based best practices produced by this experiment will help the science community improve their collaboration on climate issues by minimizing the time spent on barriers to information sharing. The Experiment is also producing valuable feedback to the OGC process for potential improvements in the WCS standard in the future. Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

GML Application Activities Profiles GML Point Profile GML Simple Features Profile GML GeoShape for use in IETF GML in JPEG2000 GeoRSS: GML Serialization US NSDI GML Schemas for Framework Datasets Base Transportation Roads Governmental Units Linear Reference Systems Dictionaries Hydrology Community Application Schemas Climate Science Modelling Language (CSML) CityGML CleanSeaNet NcML/GML (NetCDF and GML) TDWG Biodiversity GML GeoSciML - Geological Sciences ML MarineXML Ground Water Modeling Language WaterML Further information on OGC Network http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/210 Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Uncertainty Markup Language (UnCertML) XML schema for describing uncertain information Descriptive capabilities range from Simple statistics, to more complex representations such as Parametric distributions at each point of a regular grid, or Jointly over the entire grid. Based on ISO/IEC guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement (GUM) UnCertML available as an OGC Discussion Paper Coordination with GML and SWE Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Enables discovery, access and application of real time sensor observations for enhanced situational awareness Sensor Model Language (SensorML) Transducer Markup Language (TML) Observations & Measurements (O&M) Sensor Planning Service (SPS) Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Sensor Alert Service (SAS) Web Notification Service (WNS) IEEE (sensor) and OASIS (alert) stds Quickly discover sensors (secure or public) that can meet my needs – and learn about what they can do (location, observables, quality, ability to task) Obtain sensor information in a standard encoding that is understandable by the user and by software Readily access sensor observations in a common manner, and in a form specific to my needs Task sensors, when possible, to meet my specific needs Request and receive alerts / notification when a sensor measures a particular phenomenon, or completes a requested task Information Models and Schema Sensor Model Language (SensorML) for In-situ and Remote Sensors - Core models and schema for observation processes: support for sensor components, georegistration, response models, post measurement processing Observations and Measurements (O&M) – Core models and schema for observations TransducerML – adds system integration and real-time streaming clusters of observations Web Services Sensor Observation Service - Access Observations for a sensor or sensor constellation, and optionally, the associated sensor and platform data Sensor Alert Service – Subscribe to alerts based upon sensor observations Sensor Planning Service – Request collection feasibility and task sensor system for desired observations Web Notification Service –Manage message dialogue between client and Web service(s) for long duration (asynchronous) processes Sensor Registries – Discover sensors and sensor observations Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) WPS-client Communication over the web using HTTP WPS GetCapabilities DescribeProcess Execute Algorithms Repository Data Handler Repository … … … … Algorithm 1 Data Handler A Web Processing Service Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

“Chaining” Web Services For Decision Support Assess Wildfire Activity Demonstrated in 2004 as part of OGC Web Services Testbed 2 Service chaining creates Value-added products OGC Interfaces Decision Support Client Internet WCS (NASA Data Pool) WPS - WCTS (Producer-B, Vendor-2) WPS - Classification (Producer-C,Vendor-3) WFS (Producer-n, Vendor-x) Web-based geospatial service chaining and decision support. How do we reliably and repeatedly combine results from several distributed services on the web to produce a result for a user? Service chaining is the term commonly used for the process of organizing disparate web based services into an orderly process. For instance, a raw image is sent to a service that performs a coordinate transformation. This services sends the transformed image to a classifier service that processes the image to highlight areas of active fire. The result of this service is sent to a user’s client along with other geospatial data such as vegetation overlays, transportation. Service chaining will play an important role in future capabilities. … Web Servers Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Models Types from Interface Perspective Does user request “run” the model? Are source data & parameters fixed? Example Model Applicable OGC Service No Yes Access to daily run of a large model Access: WMS, WFS, WCS, SOS Prediction based on moving window of input measurements Access: WMS, WFS, WCS, SOS Predictions based on several datasets Processing: WPS Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

WPS for Hydrological Modelling A recent GIS reference text describes the web application architecture shown here using OGC WMS, WFS, and WPS to enable generalized (multi-vendor) servers, clients, and related tools. Geospatial Services and Applications for the Internet, M. Gould, et al., Springer, 2008 Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

GEOSS Observations and Models Home: http://www.earthobservations.org/ The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is being developed by the Group on Earth Observation (GEO). As of September 2009, GEO’s Members include 80 Governments and the European Commission. In addition, 56 intergovernmental, international, and regional organizations with a mandate in Earth observation or related issues have been recognized as Participating Organizations. The AIP is a spiral development process for building and testing exemplars of services and clients for using GEOSS resources. GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) develops and deploys new process and infrastructure for GEOSS http://www.ogcnetwork.net/AIpilot Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Estimated rainfall accumulation and flood prediction model From portal select desired theme(s) and area of interest Selected workflow automatically activates needed assets and models Disaster Management Information System (DMIS) Mozambique Workflows Wizard Wizard picks appropriate workflow for desired result Estimated rainfall accumulation and flood prediction model Baseline water level, flood waters and predicted flooding Flood Model GEOSS AIP-2 Flood Prediction and Response Led by NASA, Spot Image, Northrop Grumman, ERDAS Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. GEOSS Portal OGC WPS Access to Model req resp Research Scientist IP3 Client & Workflow engine OpenModeller Server OGC WPS CSW IP3 Distributed Community Catalog/Mediator req req req req req req req req Broker resp resp resp resp resp resp resp resp WCS WFS Other Non-OGC Services GBIF WCS - T Non-OGC Services GEOSS AIP-2 Biodiversity & Climate Change Led by CNR, Univ of Colorado, GBIF Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

WMO Information System (WIS) and GEOSS Access Data and Product Users WMO Information System (WIS) National Centres WIS Global Information System Centres (GISC's) WIS Data Collection or Production Centres (DCPC's) Earth System Models Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS) Discovery Other Data Sources GEOSS Clearinghouse WIS and GEOSS are complementary systems that should support each other well. Earth Observation Systems From presentation: “ Interoperable Interfaces for Selected WMO Systems, WIS, and GEOSS,” 26-Oct-06. For more information see “Services Oriented Architecture Concepts Applied to Specific WMO Systems, E. Christian, 23 Jan 2007. Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Interoperability is about Organizations “Interoperability seems to be about the integration of information. What it’s really about is the coordination of organizational behavior.” David Schell CEO and Chairman OGC Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. Dr. David Arctur Director, Interoperability Programs Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) darctur@opengeospatial.org Questions? Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.