Advances at the OGC, and Opportunities for Harmonization with TDWG Standards and Models
Phillip C. Dibner
Abstract
Several recent developments in technology and organization at the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) are highly relevant to the mission and objectives of the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) community.
Most fundamentally, a new institute has been created: the OGC Interoperability Institute (OGCii). Whereas the OGC’s mission is to create standards that support spatiotemporal processing, the OGCii was constituted to help make these standards accessible to the scientific research community through education, technical engagement, and collaboration in research programs. The OGCii also maintains a strong relationship with the OGC’s Standards and Interoperability Programs, and enjoys continued access to OGC resources.
As of this writing, the OGCii has collaborated with several academic and research institutions in scientific proposals that span a variety of domains, including biodiversity informatics. These essentially independent efforts share a common theme: enabling the integration of datasets from different domains of knowledge by harmonizing the information models employed by their respective information communities.
Several OGC specifications in the final stages of the approval process are highly relevant to these and future efforts. Prominent among them is the Observations and Measurements (O&M) standard that has been a topic in several presentations to the TDWG membership (e.g., P. Dibner, 2006, Proceedings of TDWG, “An integrative, standards-compliant framework for TDWG schemata and services”), and a key component in the TDWG/OGC domain modeling and harmonization workshop conducted in Edinburgh in June, 2006. Related standards, also near release, include the Sensor Observation Service (SOS), which serves Observation objects, and Sensor Modeling Language (SensorML), which describes sensing devices and data collection processes.
There has been a recent convergence of interest throughout the scientific community in standards for describing and sharing observations. The same formats and schemata need not be adopted by every discipline; it is sufficient if the information models they use are consistent, so that real-time conversion between them is feasible. In this capacity, the O&M and related standards offer the prospect of enabling seamless integration of BIS (TDWG) data into investigations and analyses that use the growing network of OGC service implementations.
Other developments at the OGC involve products and tools that are associated with the mass market. A particularly prominent example is the project to harmonize the KML language for describing geographic information with OGC specifications, and ultimately to release it as an OGC standard in its own right. Ultimately, this will enable the distribution of scientific data via powerful, popular, and freely available tools such as the Google Earth browser.
Perhaps more significant than these technical capabilities and projects is the growing web of relationships and common interests between the two organizations. The MoU executed between TDWG and the OGC in October 2006 has continued to spawn a variety of exchanges, including speakers at meetings, collaboration in modeling exercises and proposals, and incorporation of biodiversity data in research exercises and implementation pilots. The relationship is alive, well, and continuing to grow.
Most fundamentally, a new institute has been created: the OGC Interoperability Institute (OGCii). Whereas the OGC’s mission is to create standards that support spatiotemporal processing, the OGCii was constituted to help make these standards accessible to the scientific research community through education, technical engagement, and collaboration in research programs. The OGCii also maintains a strong relationship with the OGC’s Standards and Interoperability Programs, and enjoys continued access to OGC resources.
As of this writing, the OGCii has collaborated with several academic and research institutions in scientific proposals that span a variety of domains, including biodiversity informatics. These essentially independent efforts share a common theme: enabling the integration of datasets from different domains of knowledge by harmonizing the information models employed by their respective information communities.
Several OGC specifications in the final stages of the approval process are highly relevant to these and future efforts. Prominent among them is the Observations and Measurements (O&M) standard that has been a topic in several presentations to the TDWG membership (e.g., P. Dibner, 2006, Proceedings of TDWG, “An integrative, standards-compliant framework for TDWG schemata and services”), and a key component in the TDWG/OGC domain modeling and harmonization workshop conducted in Edinburgh in June, 2006. Related standards, also near release, include the Sensor Observation Service (SOS), which serves Observation objects, and Sensor Modeling Language (SensorML), which describes sensing devices and data collection processes.
There has been a recent convergence of interest throughout the scientific community in standards for describing and sharing observations. The same formats and schemata need not be adopted by every discipline; it is sufficient if the information models they use are consistent, so that real-time conversion between them is feasible. In this capacity, the O&M and related standards offer the prospect of enabling seamless integration of BIS (TDWG) data into investigations and analyses that use the growing network of OGC service implementations.
Other developments at the OGC involve products and tools that are associated with the mass market. A particularly prominent example is the project to harmonize the KML language for describing geographic information with OGC specifications, and ultimately to release it as an OGC standard in its own right. Ultimately, this will enable the distribution of scientific data via powerful, popular, and freely available tools such as the Google Earth browser.
Perhaps more significant than these technical capabilities and projects is the growing web of relationships and common interests between the two organizations. The MoU executed between TDWG and the OGC in October 2006 has continued to spawn a variety of exchanges, including speakers at meetings, collaboration in modeling exercises and proposals, and incorporation of biodiversity data in research exercises and implementation pilots. The relationship is alive, well, and continuing to grow.