1. FOSS4G2006 – Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics
The Role of Open Source Software
in Canada’s
National Forest Information System (NFIS Canada)
Robin Quenet and Brian Low
Presented at
FOSS4G2006 – Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics
12-15 September 2006,
Lausanne, Switzerland
Authors:
R.V. Quenet, PhD
Project Manager, National Forest Information System (NFIS Canada)
Administrateur de projet, SNIF - Système national d’information forestière
Canadian Forest Service Service canadien des forêts
Pacific Forestry Centre Centre de foresterie du Pacifique
506 West Burnside Road , chemin Burnside ouest
Victoria, BC Victoria, (Colombie-Britannique)
CANADA V8Z 1M CANADA V8Z 1M5
tel: ,
fax:
Brian Low
Geospatial Scientist Géospatiographe
Applications Lead Chef des applications
National Forest Information System Système national d'information forestière
Natural Resources Canada Ressources naturelles Canada
Canadian Forest Service Service canadien des forets
Tel: (250)
506 W. Burnside Rd.
Victoria, BC V8Z 1M5

2. Canada’s National Forest Information System
Canada’s commitment to sustainability was enshrined in 1992 in the National Forest Strategy entitled Sustainable Forests: A Canadian Commitment. The National Forest Information System (NFIS) is being developed to provide Canadians, and the international community, with authoritative information about the state of Canada’s forests and how they are being sustainably managed.
NFIS is a Canadian Council of Forest Ministers initiative that began in NFIS provides users with Web-based direct access to information held by federal, provincial, territorial and other government agencies and non-government organizations. It means users can discover, integrate, and display this current, authoritative and accurate information on Canada’s forests and on sustainable forest management.
NFIS provides Web tools, ranging from simple portrayal to sophisticated analyses, to users from anywhere in the world.

3. What is the National Forest Information System?
It is an initiative of the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM) to provide the point of contact for information on sustainable forest management in Canada.
NFIS is an international standards based distributed interoperable network providing the ability to access, analyze and report on Canada’s most current authoritative forestry data and information over the Web.
The data and information are accessed directly from the custodial holdings published on federal, provincial and territorial servers distributed across Canada.
The NFIS Canada architecture consists of a network of content servers working within a common information and services framework. Open GIS Consortium (OGC) Web Map Technologies (WMT) ( form the basis for vendor-neutral information interoperability over the NFIS network. The common information and services framework allows NFIS member organizations to attach attributes to the shared representations of the landscape and to carry out independent, server side and off-line analyses and compilations Web-based delivery through the common framework.
The distributed architecture allows responsibility for the management of information and definition and implementation of services to reside with the custodian, closest to the data source. This approach ensures that the data are authoritative and current and it also provides the custodial agency with full control of access to the data..

4. Who are the Partners and who is involved?
CCFM Partners
Departments of Forestry
Canada
Provinces
Territories
CFS Partners
CFS Centres
Corner Brook Office
CFS HQ
Technology Partners
GeoConnections
NLWIS (National Land and Water information Service)
Industry
Universities (UVic, U of A)
Who is Involved
Holders of forest land related resources including governments, industry, ENGOs, First Nations, etc.
Surficial and bedrock geology
Soils
Water
Environment
Fisheries
Wildlife
Parks and protected areas
Agriculture
Ownership
Base mapping
Land tenure
CCFM (Canadian Council of Forest Ministers [ partners include the Government of Canada; Provincial partners including the governments of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan; and Territorial partners including the governments of the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon.
CFS (Canadian Forest Service [ partners include the Atlantic Forestry Centre, Pacific Forestry Centre, Northern Forestry Centre, Great Lakes Forestry Centre, Laurentian Forestry Centre, Corner Brook Office and Headquarters.
Technical Partners include GeoConnections ( National Land and Water Information Service (NLWIS [ ]), the forest and IT industry and academic institutions

5. Reduce costs through the sharing of information technology
NFIS purpose:
Provide the strategic context for provincial, territorial and federal agencies to easily and reliably address regional, national and international challenges to Canadian forest practices
Provide the transparent integration of information across jurisdictional boundaries
Provide consistency in reporting thereby avoiding different answers being given to the same question
Reduce costs through the sharing of information technology
Provide free exchange of NFIS technology among partner jurisdictions.
The requirements to:
Reduce costs through the sharing of information technology
Provide free exchange of NFIS technology among partner jurisdictions
were instrumental in decision to adopt ‘Open Source’ as a business model and along with it vendor neutrality.
This led to adopting a ‘common services sharing a common architecture’ approach

6. Authoritative information
Services Development
Common Services Sharing a Common Architecture
Common Services
Information Request
CFSNet
SFM
Federal
portals
CCFM portals
Provincial
Secure
Access
Common
Infrastructure
The NFIS/CFSNet services development approach.
Territorial
Other
Authoritative information
Authoritative
Report

7. The Development Environment:
Business Principles
International Standards (W3C, OGC, CGDI, ISO, etc.)
Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) Principles
Vendor neutrality
Open Source
Mandatory Requirements
Security
Minimal impact on business practices
Branding
The development environment

8. Generic Services Infrastructure / Connectivity / Web Sites / Portals
Publishing – Thematic Templates
Security - Distributed Access Control System
Terrain Server
Area of Interest
Data Domain Statistics
Spatial Operations
Generalized Summary Reporting System
Data capture, access, analysis, download and reporting
SDI-in-a-Box
Generic services supported by NFIS/CFSNet- there are open source solutions to all NFIS/CFSNet services with the exception of Terrain Server.
Open source Proprietary

9. Some Current NFIS Applications
National Forestry Database Program (NFDP) data capture services
National Forest Inventory (NFI) spatial data capture and analysis services
National Afforestation Inventory (NAI) web services
Canadian Wildland Fire Information System
Conservation Areas Reporting and Tracking System (CARTS) analysis services
Conservation of Forest Genetic Resources – Tree Species of Concern
Canada’s Boreal
Earth Observation for Sustainable Development of Forests (EOSD) web services
Forest Ecosystem Mapping in Canada - FEMiC V1.0W (restricted)
Mountain Pine Beetle Internet Tool
A list of some of the applications that are supported

10. Provincial / Territorial Portals NFIS Infrastructure
Defining critical loads of N and S for the Georgia Basin, BC
WebCalc (Softwaregarden’s WikiCalc)
Provincial / Territorial Portals
NFIS Infrastructure
SDI Infrastructure Footprint - SDI-in-a-Box (a.k.a. CGDI-in-a-Box)
And coming…..
Plant Hardiness Mapping –(Climate and climate change effects on plant species in North America)
SEEDWHERE
CCFM Criteria and Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management
Canadian Biomass Innovation Network - Purpose-Grown and Opportunity Sources of Woody Biomass for Bioenergy
Climate maps on the web
Insect and Disease Risk Mapping, etc.
And now some examples …..
N= nitrogen
S= sulphur

11. Protected areas from Federal/Provincial/Territorial NFIS nodes – One provincial node was down at the time of query
Protected areas are underlaid by a DEM from the Centre for Topographic Information (CTI of NRCan)

12. Brundtland Report
Distributed access to Federal/Provincial/Territorial protected areas attribution showing protected area count and extent (area) by IUCN categories !-VI by year with graphical representation – Generalized Summary System service
Brundtland Report 1987 – Canada’s response (in 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), which had been set up in 1983, published a report entitled «Our common future».

13. White Goat Provincial Park
3D rendition of White Goat Provincial Park – runs on Terrain Server provided as a service to NFIS/CFSNet partners
Alberta Park/Protected areas boundaries
Landsat 7 imagery
CTI DEM
Refractions Terrain Server
NOTE: full server side processing – nothing on client desktop/laptop
Theme … using protected areas with wildland fire system

14. Canadian Wildland Fire Information system deployed on SDI-in-a-Box footprint over the NFIS/CFSNet infrastructure
shows current (August 31, 2006) and burned areas
Developed by Northern Forestry Centre, CFS (Edmonton)
Canada overview

15. For September 5, 2006 – current and fully dynamic
shows hotspots
areas burned by year
Conservation/parks/protected areas
shaded relief

16. Same area showing fire danger forecast and hotspots
Carry theme
Protected areas, Fires, and and next Trees of Concern

17. Canada’s tree species of concern
trees of concern
daily hotspots
fire danger forecast
protected areas, etc
Seamless integration of information from authoritative custodial information holdings

18. Protected areas

19. Hotspots

20. Species information with Google search results on the species

21. Google link to USDA Forest Service species description

22. Public Portal – Anonymous Access
Internet Mapping Framework (proprietary) public portal – NFIS provides the service to NFIS/CFSNet partners
forest cover
vegetation classes
protected areas
ecological classifications
imagery

23. Boreal portal (SDI-in-a-Box)
boreal mask
roads
mineral deposits
protected areas, etc
now linked to wildland fire information’
tree species distribution

24. PEI provincial portal (SDI-in-a-Box)

25. Protected Areas by Ecozones Protected Areas Ecozones
WMS Spatial analysis

26. National Afforestation Inventory (SDI-in-a-Box)
activity site map

27. National Afforestation Inventory
activity site report

28. NFDP

29. NFI

30. In what way does NFIS provide value to Canada?
NFIS is contributing to:
Information in support of forest policy development
Environmental, social and economic
National Reporting
State of Canada’s Forest annual report to Parliament (National Department of Natural Resources Act)
Criteria and Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management in Canada (National)
International Reporting
FAO Forest Resources Assessment (International)
Canada’s Report on the Montreal Process Criteria and Indictors for the Conservation and Sustainable management of Temperate and Boreal Forests (International)
CFS contributes data and information to Environment Canada for
Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Kyoto Protocol
Convention on Biological Diversity

31. Value to Partners All Provinces and Territories: NRCan/CFS:
Access to other interoperable infrastructures including Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada CANSIS and NLWIS, Environment Canada Nature Watch, DFO Mapster, NOAA, etc.
Provinces and Territories:
NFIS Services for Publishing Data and Information
- NFIS Infrastructure
Data Capture, Analysis and Publication services (e.g. NFDP, NFI, C&I)
Access to CFS research and information holdings, e.g. climate covers
NRCan/CFS:
Research Initiatives and Research supporting Policy Development
- CFSNet Infrastructure
Data Capture, Analysis and Publication services
Access to NFIS Partner (Federal, Provincial and Territorial) information holdings, e.g. forest cover, parks and protected areas, ownership, CTI, GeoGratis, etc.)

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