1. Global Partnerships for Sharing Forest-Related Information through the GFIS gateway at
Juha Hautakangas
GFIS Developer
IUFRO c/o Metla
Web2ForDev 2007
September , 2007
Rome, Italy

2. Contents
GFIS in general
Technical description
On-line demonstration

3. What is GFIS?
Information service that stores metadata on forestry ”under the same roof”
GFIS provides:
Accurate search results
Reliable information
-> Efficient information retrieval
GFIS is an initiative of the CPF led by IUFRO
Core partners:
CIFOR, FAO, NBII, UNFF

4. Mission
To enhance access to diverse types of forest information

5. Vision
GFIS is the most well-known and used service that provides access to forest-related information
Generate forest community of practice

6. Web GFIS.net Information Provider User DB GFIS Search Index RSS 2.0
Get Query
Add Feeds
Fetch
Metadata
Get Information
on Feeds
Display Search
Results
GFIS.net
Store Feeds in
the Database
Index
Metadata
Search the
Index DB
GFIS Search Index

7. How information reaches users
NBII Metadata
Clearinghouse
Search results
FAO AGRIS
Information
System

8. Open Search specification
Defines a standard interface for search engines
RSS with Open Search extension as a standard format for search results:
<channel> …
<opensearch:totalResults>31300</opensearch:totalResults>
<opensearch:startIndex>31</opensearch:startIndex>
<opensearch:itemsPerPage>10</opensearch:itemsPerPage>
</channel>
More information on Open Search at:

9. Overview Multilingual search aggregator
Metadata on forest-related web resources
Searching / browsing functionalities
Metadata fetched from RSS feeds
Access to other metadata storages
Search-related communication between separate storages in RSS format

10. Financial contribution
Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Wasserwirtschaft (BMLFUW)