1. Web based GIS 4583 Nurul Hawani Idris Geoinformation Department Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 2013/Sem 2

2. Geoportal An increased amount of geospatial data is being collected by virtue of more user generated contents on the Web, in addition to data from satellites, ground, and ocean sensors, and GPS units (Goodchild, Fun and Rich 2007) Geoportal– websites where GI can be discovered – make it easier for users to find, access, and use GI Emerged in the mid 1990s – as an important part of their SDI Geoportals are a type of Web GIS app Facilitate data sharing, and provide resources for developing other Web GIS app

3. Gateways to GI Derived from the Latin word porta, indicating a doorway – a web portal @ portal – a website that functions as an entry point to the WWW. A portal provides search tools that help users find information on the Web, and it usually also provides categorised links to many online resources Web portals provide an easy, direct means of indexing, ordering and displaying information. Examples of Web portal ? ? ? Web portals saved the Web from being bogged down in a sea of data and have played a significant role in the success and popularity of the Web (Tang and Selwood, 2005).

4. Gateways to GI Web portals can be classified by their range of contents – general (or horizontal) portals versus specialised (or vertical) portals. A geoportal – prefix ‘geo’ – specialised in GI Also referred to as a spatial portal, - website that provide a single point of access to geospatial data, web services, and other geospatially related resources A website where geospatial resources can be discovered (Tait 2005) A gateways to GI, facilitate GI sharing between providers, who own the information, and users, who need the information

5. Gateways to GI GI providers - publish the metadata of geospatial data, web services, and documents Users – browse or search through geoportals to find relevant geospatial resources and evaluate their applicability. Then download the online data, connect to and use Web services, or contact the content provider for offline data or documents Publish metadata Search and discover Geoportal User Provider Contact, acquire, download, connect, use

6. Gateways to GI The uniqueness of geoportal 1) 2)

7. The ‘face’ of SDI GI is vital to making sound decisions at the local, regional, national and global levels. It is crucial to address the issues related to social, economic and environmental issues Many are not motivated to share their data with others This creates isolated islands of information – make difficult for organisation to discover and obtain the data they need In turn leads to 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

8. The ‘face’ of SDI SDI – basically the technology, policies, standards, and human resources necessary to acquire, process, store, distribute and improve the use of geospatial data SDI can be at global level (GSDI), national level (NSDI), regional level or local level. The primary objective : to max the overall use of GI that is held by a wide range of stakeholders in both the public and private sectors Geoportals have been developed as a major part of SDI. Why ? Without geoportals, what will happen? A month to make phone calls, write letters and emails Physically travel to a place to inquire about the existance of data held by another agency Then to verify whether the data addresses the intended use.

9. The ‘face’ of SDI Geoportal – as a broker between the data provider and the users – and become the important and highly visible components of SDI, serving the face of SDI In the past decade, more than 100 countries have embarked on some form of SDI initiatives National Geoportal Data Clearinghouse (FGDC and USGS) at US. 1990s – 2003 Geospatial one stop (GOS) portal – president bush – enhanced the NGDC portals, centralised architecture, improve performance, support open standards – 2002 Data.gov – Obama – to increase ability of public to find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the federal govt. Geospatial data is the main content, supported by GOS - 2009

10. The ‘face’ of SDI NASA’s Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) – gives user access to Earth science dataset and to service that a re relevant to global change and earth science research. Mississippi Geospatial clearinghouse Arkansas GeoStor Kentucky Watershed Modeling Information portal ESRI – Geography Network geoportal (2000) - web services discovery and dynamic composition Replaced by ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS.com In Canada, Geoconnection program – component of Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure – to share GI in 4 priority areas – public safety, public health, aboriginal community affairs, environment and sustainable development

11. The ‘face’ of SDI Australia and New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) led the implementation of the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI). A key component – Australian Spatial Data Directory Europe – Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative launched in 2001. Aim to build a European SDI that goes beyond national boundaries Fully implementation required by law in 2019 The INSPIRE directive requires the European commission to establish a community geoportal where member states will provide access to their infrastructure through this main geoportal, and through any access points they decide to operate and maintain Need to address the differences in language, business practices and cultural affairs of its members.

12. MyGDI Malaysia Geospatial Data Infrastructure (MyGDI) - is an initiative by the government to develop a geospatial data infrastructure to enhance the awareness about data availability and improve access to geospatial information. This can be fulfilled by facilitating data sharing among participating agencies Through its application MyGDI Explorer, - facilitates online access to geospatial informationMyGDI Explorer It provides a base for geospatial data exploration, evaluation, and application for users and data providers within all levels of government, commercial, and non-profit sectors as well as the academia and the public.

13. MyGDI In the Malaysia contexts, SDI initiatives started from the national level and is expected to filter down to all the states and gradually to all local levels.

14. MyGDI objectives To assist in the sharing of geospatial information between agencies by providing the latest state-of-the-art information technology hence allowing the dissemination of current and accurate information. To prevent redundancies of effort in collecting, processing, maintaining, preparing and distributing of geospatial information among related agencies.

15. MyGDI The goal of MyGDI is to enable members of the geospatial community to share and access their geospatial data.MyGDI MyGDI facilitates online access to geospatial information, avoid duplication of effort in the collection of data and to ensure the accuracy, timeliness, correctness and consistency of data to be used in planning, development and management of land resources by: providing a mechanism to facilitates the utilisation and sharing of geospatial data among the agencies that use and supply the data encouraging wider use of geospatial data at the state and national levels stimulating and enhancing the awareness about the value of geospatial data and the relevant technology contributing towards strenghtening the development of national geospatial data through collaboration.

16. MyGDI stimulating and enhancing the awareness about the value of geospatial data and the relevant technology contributing towards strenghtening the development of national geospatial data through collaboration.

17. Governance Structure of MyGDI

18. Committee Members: Chairman: Secretary General, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment Deputy Chairman: Director General of Survey and Mapping Malaysia Secretary: Director of Malaysian Centre For Data Geospatial Infrastructure (MaCGDI) Members : Central agencies namely MAMPU, EPU, ICU and Treasury. Director General of Departments and Federal Agencies All Chairman for MyGDI State Coordinating Committee Chairman of Technical Framework Committee. Chairman of Technical Clearinghouse Committee Chairman for all MyGDI State Technical Committee And other agencies as periodically required Secretariat: Malaysian Centre For Data Geospatial Infrastructure MaCGDI)

19. Components

20. MyGDI Data Categories AeronauticalThis category contains geospatial information related to air transportation such as air space, aerodrome and airport. Built EnvironmentThis category contains building, property or place designated for use as premises for residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, educational, religious, recreational, cemetery and built-up structures. DemarcationThis category holds information on delimitation/delineation of topographic, maritime and cadastral features. GeologyThis category includes all geological mapping information and the related geoscience geospatial data including geolithology, mineral, fossils, mining, exploration, and geological features.

21. MyGDI Data Categories HydrographyThis category includes geospatial data on coastal hydrography, shoreline structures, fishing facilities, ports and harbours, navigation aids, danger and hazard, depth information, inland water, river structure, offshore information. HypsographyThis category contains the geospatial information related to spot heights, contours, altimetric data and gravity data. SoilThis category contains geospatial information related to soil classification such as Histosols, Spodosols, Andisols, Oxisols, Vertisols, Ultisols, Mollisols, Alfisols, Inceptisols and Entisols. TransportationThis category contains both land and water transportation geospatial information such as road network, rail line, water route and jetty terminal.

22. MyGDI Data Categories UtilityThis category contains the geospatial information related to electricity, telecommunication, water supply, oil and gas, broadcasting, sewerage and waste management. VegetationThis category includes geospatial data on agricultural land use activities, boundaries and areas of vegetation such as forest, mangrove, wetland, dryland and cropland. Special Use (Specific Dataset) This category contains the geospatial information related to terrain analysis dataset, meteorological dataset such as temperature and rainfall isoline, orthorectified images, digital elevation model and geoid surface. GeneralThis category includes monumented control points such as geodetic control station, benchmarks, tide station, standard traverse marks, ground control point, gravity station and remote sensing imagery such as aerial photography and satellite imagery

23. Functions and Architectures Geoportals should provide typical functionality suitable to each of the 3 roles – publisher, administrator, and users Administrator User Publisher Manage account, metadata, security…. Search for resources View metadata Download data View map services… Register account Create metadata Publish metadata Secure metadata

24. Functions and architectures Publisher Provides content to the geoportal. Functionality offer by geoportal to this group:  Creating account – sign up, join certain groups  Creating metadata – help creating metadata that complies with certain standards  Publishing metadata – helps contribute to the portal catalog  Securing metadata – allows publisher to specify whether their metadata is public of only accessible to certain groups  Other functions – registering metadata repositories to be harvested

25. Functions and architectures Administrator Manage content in the geoportal. Geoportals offer this group the following functionality:  Managing account – allow admin to review accounts, approve or disapprove requests to be publishers, and to join certain groups  Managing metadata – allow admin to review metadata records that are published and approve/disapprove them  Managing security– assists admin in reviewing the privileges of each group and configuring the contents that each group can access  Other functions – including managing harvesting and ensuring that harvesting occurs as scheduled

26. Functions and architectures Users Users search for contents that meet their needs. Geoportals offer this group the following functionality:  Searching metadata– provide an interfaces for users to specify criteria such as what (keywords, content type, or format), where (spatial extent, location information), and when (temporal range), and then searches the metadata catalog and returns the matching records in a list of sorted by relevance or other properties  Viewing Managing metadata – allow users to view metadata discovered in its original format or transformed formats, which are usually easier to read  Downloading data– provide links to allow user to download the resources just discovered

27. Functions and architectures Users Users search for contents that meet their needs. Geoportals offer this group the following functionality:  Viewing map services and using web services – allow users to preview individual map services or create composite maps with the use of a map viewer  Other functions – including creating accounts, managing personal profiles, saving certain search criteria, saving created maps, creating composite maps, and notifying users when relevant metadata is published or added to the portal

39. Metadata standards Geospatial metadata – refers to the information that describes geospatial data, web services or other geospatial resources Usually presented in XML format, represents the ‘who, what, when, where, why, and how’ of a piece of geospatial data or other resource object level metadata – describe a single entity, collection level metadata, which describe a series or group of entities Geospatial metadata usually includes: – Identification – dataset title, citation, abstract, purposes, keywords – Quality – positional accuracy, data completeness, consistency – Spatial reference – coordinate system and spatial extent – Temporal information – date the data was acquired, the length of time the data is valid – Distribution information – distributor, options for obtaining the datasets (format of resources, URL used to download the data/access Web services

40. Metadata standards Metadata is useful in data archiving, assessment, management, discovery, transfer, and distribution In geoportal context, metadata has the following uses:  Discovery of resources – similar to a library catalog. Enables user to specify search criteria that goes beyond the author, title, and keywords. Geoportal can search the metadata catalog, and return matching records, and details of how to access, whom to contact to  Evaluation of resources – once discover, user need to determine whether it will fit a given use – spatial resolution? Meet the quality? Any restriction on usage?

41. Metadata standards In geoportal context, metadata has the following uses:  Use of resources – metadata includes technical specifications.. Dataset volume, data format, type of web service, software tool to handle the resources  Contact between the user and the provider (publisher)– provider can disclose the terms of use – limit of web services per day, the right to discontinue the service, copyright attribution requirement, limitation of liability. When there are disputes or copyright infringement, the data provider can avoid legal responsibilities or claim copyright

42. Metadata 2.0 In the era of Web 2.0, content sharing is not limited to the scientific and professional community Everyone who is willing to share their content should be able to do so This lead to metadata 2.0 – the needs of metadata that user- centric, easy for contributor to create, and easy for users to understand Tags – represent a move towards metadata 2.0 Keyword or term that describe and item – photo, video, a tool. Tags can be considered as a bottom up type of classification compared with the traditional hierarchical system of metadata standards, which are top down

43. Metadata 2.0 Tags allow contributors to quickly share information Such metadata is often informal and incomplete Yet tags let users quickly evaluate resources to see if it’s what they’re looking for On website, the opinions of others about a resource become an integral part of its metadata- albeit informal metadata – customer review Different type of metadata are needed for different uses Metadata 1.0 is still important in enabling professional and organisation to document their GIS information assets, and to discover and evaluate the applicability of asset for certain users, a metadata 2.0 encourages broad participation in the sharing of information

44. Challenges and Prospects Geoportals facilitate the sharing of information, eliminate duplicate data collecting, and support more rational decision making Hurricane Katrina and Rita in US 2005, data providers quickly established virtual communities in GOS (Geospatial One Stop) (www. geodata.gov) and contributed critical information, including data, map services, online map viewers app. To aid federal, state and local agencies in emergency response activities. In China, the Geoportal of Earth Science Data Sharing Network supported the design and construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, emergency response for the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, and environmental protection for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

45. Challenges and Prospects Further development of geoportals faces a number of challenges: Handling the complexity of metadata standards  It is not uncommon to hear ‘ metadata is too complex’, and ‘I don’t have the time and funds to create metadata’ - obstacle to publishing data quickly, and sharing information  The decision of whether to comply with metadata standard remains a difficult choice – informal? ISO? Dublin Core? FGDC metadata CSDGM  Software vendors can provide tools that simplify or even automate the creation of standard metadata  E.g. transform metadata into HTML and GeoRSS formats which can increase the exposure of metadata for easier discovery and broader accessibility  E.g. use simple metadata tags

46. Challenges and Prospects Further development of geoportals faces a number of challenges: Supporting Semantic Search  Refer to a search based on the meaning of keywords rather than the spelling of keywords.  At present – unable to account for the meaning of keywords, the context in which keywords are used, and the ambiguities of natural languages.  A strict keyword search – will not satisfy the needs of a thorough intelligent search  E.g. search river – channels, lakes, streams related to hydrology  Search that rely on a matched string may miss records that users really want  Support semantic search by incorporating OWL (Web Ontology Language)

47. Challenges and Prospects Further development of geoportals faces a number of challenges: Supporting Semantic Search  Ontology Is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships among these concepts  OWL is a family of language for representing ontologies  GEMET (General multilingual Environmental Thesaurus) developed by the European Topic Center on Catalog Data  More than 6000 terms and defines the relationship among terms  Semantic search will search OWL, find related terms, (synonym, narrow terms) then searches the catalog for record matching these terms rather that just the term requested

48. GEMET OWL (River) River ChannelingRiverbedDeltaEstuaryWaterfallWatercourseHydrosphereWater

49. Challenges and Prospects Further development of geoportals faces a number of challenges: Protecting copyright  Digital resource owners share a common concern over protecting copyright  Once the data is given to a user, the owner pretty much loses control of data  They hope for effective ways to ensure their data is only used by authorised users, only for a period authorised and only for certain types of apps.  Solutions:  DRM (digital rights managements) related mechanism.  ISO – GeoDRM reference model, specify payment based on information sharing and data lock mechanisms – illegally or after the expiration date

50. Challenges and Prospects Further development of geoportals faces a number of challenges: Protecting copyright  Solutions:  Integrating data copyright protection specification within the information sharing workflow of geoportal remains a challenge

51. Challenges and Prospects No protection Copyright statement Click-through license Managed access WatermarkingEncryption Digital intellectual property can be managed and protected in numerous ways

52. Challenges and Prospects Further development of geoportals faces a number of challenges: Data mining  Authoritative data is extremely valuable  Massive amount of GI contributed by casual web users – valuable  Such data unstructured, dynamic, lacking of quality authoritative data  How to extract information from the massive web, then verify its authenticity, determine its spatial and temporal accuracy, and incorporate it into geoportal – a demand research attention

53. Conclusion The more information that is available, the harder it is to locate a particular piece of it, and the stronger the need for geosportal The formats used to share geospatial information also have advanced and diversified - web services, KML, GeoRSS, Online data, offline data, others Geoportal should effectively facilitate the discovery and use of web services Semantic Web, the next generation of the Web – the meaning (semantic) of information is defined, making it possible for machine to process it. While the full realisation is still a long way off, the implementation is expected to reduce the vagueness, uncertainty, and inconsistency of natural language – making discovery of GI more intelligent and accurate

54. Conclusion The sharing of information is not only a technical issue, but a social issue as well. Information is power. Sharing information with the right parties multiplies the power Restrict the sharing due to national security concerns Technological advances in GPS, - civilian GPS unit on the market can reach 10m accuracy- sufficient to produce 1:5000 scale map - + Google Map, Bing Map provide submeter resolution imagery for many region – limiting public access to such similar data has little meaning in terms of national security – but rather serves to limit the app of GIS to serve society Not motivated due to the fear to lose control over the data

55. Conclusion Not motivated due to the fear to lose control over the data The role of government to promote the sharing through policy, law and regulation US freedom of Information Act 1966 – President Johnson – federal govt agencies are duty to bound to provide government records and data, including geospatial data to the public free of charge or at minimum cost, if the data does not invade personal privacy or national security. More than 100 countries have developed similar legislation or policies that endorse SDI. How about Malaysia?