1. James Reid Project Manager EDINA

2. The geoXwalk project funded under JISC IE Development Programme
builds on Phase I scoping study
aims to develop a demonstrator gazetteer service suitable for extension to full service.
time-frame: start 1 June 2002 for 1 year
project partners: EDINA and UK Data Archive
aim: to develop a ‘proof of concept’ demonstrator

3. JISC Information Environment -geoXwalk as ‘shared service’
Content providers
Provision layer
Shared services
Fusion layer
Authentication
Authorisation
Broker/Aggregator
geoXwalk
Collect’n Desc
Portal
Portal
Portal
Service Desc
Presentation
layer
Resolver
Inst’n Profile
End-user

4. Geo-referencing: that’s what’s special about the spatial
subject content most often referenced by topic …
… but much (80%?) can be referenced to specific geographic places
broad disciplinary base for more powerful geographic searching
across the social, life & physical sciences as well as the humanities
also from libraries, archives and museums
now from digital libraries, service providers & data providers
geo-referencing thus a way of viewing information content:
subject, people, place and time
geographic co-ordinates are persistent regardless of name, political boundary or other changes

5. Why this is difficult... How to search ‘geographically’ given that :
e.g. a postcode, a placename and an administrative area are all valid geographies and yet every information system cannot know about all the possible variations of what constitutes a ‘geography’!
Problem compounded by inconsistency of use even in the ‘standards’ e.g. placenames evolve, have alternative names
Long history in UK of boundary changes and changes in the geographies used to record things e.g. electoral ward boundary changes …

6. There is underlying complexity, such as Multiple Geographies …

7. The vision Make variations in definitions of ‘geography’ transparent
Provide a means to ‘crosswalk’ geographies
i.e. translate one geography into another - hence the name
‘Geographic agnosticism’
How?
A digital gazetteer that stores the different geographies and can implicitly resolve the relationships between them
Provision as a service to service other services

8. A shared ‘terminology’ service.
Gazetteer - A list of geographic features together with their associated spatial location
Digital Gazetteer - An electronic list of geographic features together with their associated spatial location
(An authority database of places (and features?))
Digital Gazetteer Service - A network-addressable middle-ware server supporting geographic referencing and searching.
A shared ‘terminology’ service.

9. Why not just use hierarchical thesauri
Why not just use hierarchical thesauri? (part of the ‘Document Tradition’)
United Kingdom………………………… (nation)
England …………………………..(country)
Devon………………………….. (county)
Barton………………………………..
Comment:
one type of simple relationship between entries is exploited
entries ordered from very general to very specific (BT, NT)
can efficiently determine what a given area contains
normally structured to handle alternative names (SY)
rigid structure, one view only, typically geo-political
entities can belong in many hierarchies and new relationships evolve
names may not be unique
cannot deal with spatial proximity / contiguity
no way to relate to other geographies, e.g. postcodes
lack of simple hierarchies in UK (and other ‘old’) geographies …

11. Uses of geoXwalk Digital Gazetteer Service
1. As ‘shared service’, enabling other information services to support full range of spatial searching (query constraints)
no need to hold all data (at service) to resolve spatial query
uses co-ordinates and (implicit) spatial relationships to ‘cross-walk’ between geographies
machine-to-machine (m2m) interaction to ‘shared service’
2. As reference facility for researchers, libraries & museums
including means to resolve variant names etc.
3. As online facility to assist metadata creators and means to semi-automatically geo-reference existing resources

12. geoXwalk Use Cases Geo-parsing & indexing Searching (1 - use cases)
Information server
Geo-parsing &
indexing
Searching (1 - use cases)
The geoXwalk
Server
Information server
e.g.
Where is Aberdour?
On what river is Dundee situated?
By what alternative names has York been known?
List me all places ending with ‘kirk’
Searching (2)
Reference use

13. Supporting cross searching:
geoXwalk in the Common Information Environment
Coordinate footprints - Dundee
(334995, , , )
Places:
Barnhill
Broughty Ferry
Craigie
Douglas And Angus
Fintry
Lochee
Monifieth
West Ferry
<

14. (Images indexed on place names)
Supporting service searching:
“Photographs of towns along the River Tweed”
Place name - River Tweed
Feature Type: River
Relation: ‘near’
Distance: 1/2 km
Target type: towns
Places...
Peebles
Innerleithen
Melrose
Kelso
Coldstream
Berwick upon Tweed
Image finder server
(Images indexed on place names)

15. As online facility to assist metadata creation
Most of the extant resources in the JISC IE have some form of spatial reference e.g. placename, county name, postcode
A ‘geoparser’ has been developed which will assist in the semi-automatic indexing of these resources by using the gazetteer as reference.
The results of the geoparsing can be used to update the documents metadata, making it directly geographically searchable.

16. Need screen shot of parser here
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17. Developments to Date
Creation & population of GB gazetteer database with:
Enhanced OS 1:50,000 Placename Gazetteer
Digital boundary data (UKBORDERS)
Additional Place Name Variants (partial for Scotland and Wales)
Derived multi-source data e.g. named woodlands and lakes based on hybrid 1:50K gazetteer and OS products
Development of spatial extensions to database to support enhanced geographic search capabilities
Development of middleware to support m2m and interactive searching
Support for and testing of alternative query protocols -ADL / Z39.50(?)
Development of a geoparser to support semi-automatic indexing

18. Ongoing Work and Issues
Merging geo-data from different scales & from different sources
how to accommodate historical data
positional accuracy & expression of confidence?
how to minimise effort in de-duplication of place(s)?
places have multiple names, types, and footprints
need to be able to identify duplicate entries for the same place
Presenting geo-names on different occasions?
many variant ‘proper’ names, what is preferred?
what is the ‘name authority body’? - none in the Scotland or the UK
preferred name varies with location and use and culture
there are language and character code set issues
‘standard’ codes for postal addresses and other geographies
IPR issues in metadata; and hence terms & conditions of use
Service performance issues and appropriate protocols

19. Contact details James.Reid@ed.ac.uk
EDINA, Data Library, University of Edinburgh
telephone +44 (0)
For information on geoXwalk project:

20. Query by feature type and bounding box
XML query fragments
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gazetteer-service
xmlns="
version="1.1">
<query-request>
<gazetteer-query>
<name-query operator="equals” text="Fife"/>
</gazetteer-query>
<report-format>standard</report-format>
</query-request>
</gazetteer-service>
Query for a placename
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gazetteer-service
xmlns="
xmlns:gml="
version="1.1">
<query-request>
<gazetteer-query>
<and>
<class-query thesaurus="Edina FT Thesaurus” term="towns"/>
<footprint-query operator="within">
<gml:Box>
<gml:coordinates> , ,
, </gml:coordinates>
</gml:Box>
</footprint-query>
</and>
</gazetteer-query>
<report-format>standard</report-format>
</query-request>
</gazetteer-service>
Query by feature type and bounding box

21. 5 15 Task: Find resource about 'Liverpool docks’
Search using a ‘traditional’ gazetteer might yield: 5
Using spatial proximity in an active gazetteer, the search can be widened:
Place County/UA
Liverpool Liverpool
Bebbington Wirral
Birkenhead Wirral
Bootle Sefton
New Brighton Wirral
Seacombe Wirral
Seaforth Wirral
Waterloo Sefton
co-ordinates allow (near) co-located places to be co-identified. 15
… that means more & better hits …. !!!

22. Supporting cross searching different services
‘Find resources for this postcode’ (NB postcode often used to geo-reference survey data files)
Portal service
Post code: L34 0HS?
Coordinate footprints
Content
Provider A
340900, ,
Knowsley
BX003
Place names
Content
Provider B
Parish names
geoXwalk Server
Content Provider C
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