Oceans Portal Workshop 30th March 2004

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Oceans Portal Workshop30th March 2004
Oceans Portal ProjectOcean Biodiversity
InformaticsConference Hamburg, 29 - 1 November
2004

• Healthy oceans cared for, understood and used
  wisely for the benefit of all, now and in the
  future healthy oceans cared for, understood and
  use wisely for the benefit of all, now and in the
  future healthy

Kim Finney C.I.O.
National Oceans Office
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Outline

• Australias Oceans Policy Regional Marine
  Planning
• Why initiate An Oceans Portal Project ?
• Key Ingredients For Success
• Implementation

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Australias Oceans Policy

• Launched December 1998
• Maintenance of healthy and productive ecosystems
• Science-based planning and management
• Precautionary
• Economic, environmental, social and cultural
  aspirations accommodated through integrated
  planning and management
• Healthy oceans cared for, understood and
  used wisely for the benefit of all, now and in
  the future

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Regional Marine Planning

• 13 Large Marine Domains
• Ecosystem-based management
• Ecologically Sustainable Development
• Integrated sectoral management arrangements
• Participatory decision making
• Facilitate involvement of States

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Data To Underpin Regional Marine Planning
Biological Physical Information
Economic Information
Indigenous Information
Statutory Information
Social cultural Information
Impacts Information
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Why Initiate An Oceans Portal Project ?
Regional IOC/WMO Data Centres
Global Observing Programs
National Marine Institutions
Commonwealth RD Inst. (0.33 of Oz research)

• Hard to discover whats out there
• IP access issues
• Different data formats
• Different quality (scale, resolution, accuracy)
• General lack of a common vocabulary to describe
  phenomena real world objects
• Most data not on-line
• Difficult to know where real gaps in data
  availability are.

Museums
State Fisheries Depts
Local Govts.
EPA
Universities
Natural Resource Management Agencies
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Why Initiate An Oceans Portal Project ?

• Given issues what do we need to achieve and how
  ?
• An immediate improvement in access to those
  national marine fundamental datasets that are
  needed to underpin marine management decisions
  and marine research activities,
• A networked platform ripe for scientific
  exploitation in terms of
• accessing and sharing up-to-date
  multi-disciplinary data
• deploying tools and models
• communicating and conceptualising using
  multi-media 2 3D visualisations
• facilitating collaborations across agencies and
  across scientific disciplines, and
• greater leverage of our existing collective IT
  infrastructure and agency-based capabilities.

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The Oceans Portal ProjectAustralian Spatial Data
Infrastructure (ASDI) In Action !

• Project Components
• Web-based (demonstration) portal
• Catalogue service
• Contributors service providers (initially
  museums, Federal marine data centres, OBIS).

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Key Ingredients For Success

• Community of interest
• Agency-level support
• Funding
• Governance Arrangements
• Architecture
• Standards/protocols
• Content (semantic interoperability)

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Key Ingredients For SuccessMarine Community of
Interest Partners
Marine Catalogue
OBIS
Marine Portal
OZCAM
Virtual Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint
Facility
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Key Ingredients For SuccessAgency-level Support
Funding

• Lobbying agency heads high level support
• Oceans Policy Science Advisory Group answers to
  a Ministerial Board
• Workshops, agency visits, presentations,
  established project advisory group,
• NOO built Project into first RMP as a key
  deliverable
• Core funding from NOO conditional on in-kind
  support from agencies
• Implementation Plan sign-off at agency head
  level

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Key Ingredients For SuccessGovernance
Arrangements

• Overall Project Management

• Governance Working Group

• Rules/Procedures for
• Administration, management and update of marine
  community profile and associated standards,
• Management administration of (hosted) Catalogue
• Service level obligations for data/services
  deployed via the Catalogue and by the Catalogue.

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Key Ingredients For SuccessArchitecture,
Standards Protocols

• Geospatial Services-oriented-architecture (ISO RM
  ODP)
• Computational viewpoint
• Information viewpoint
• Engineering viewpoint
• Technology viewpoint
• OGC Catalogue Specification V2.0
• ebXML RIM V2.0
• ISO 19119/19115 Metadata XML encodings ISO 19139.
• Metadata harvesting interface specification (Open
  Archives Protocol)
• Rendering symbology and styling standards (IHO
  S52)
• OGC WMS, WFS, WCS

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Key Ingredients For SuccessContent Semantic
Interoperability

• Developing a marine community application profile
• Metadata model dataset descriptions and
  services (not tackling feature types initially).
  ISO 19115/19119
• Which metadata elements should be core ?
• Which code lists should we extend/add ?
• marine keywords (GCMD ?),
• thesauri dictionary of terms (BODC parameter
  list ??),
• species taxonomies (Catalogue of Life or Codes
  For Australian Aquatic Biota CAAB ??),
• marine location names (IHO, AHO, AAD, GA),
• Commence RD work on marine data modelling, GML
  application profiles and feature catalogues
  (Marine XML - NERC Data Grid ?? relationship to
  IOC Feature Type Catalogue ?)

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Implementation

• Scoping Report, high level Technical
  Specification Implementation Plan already
  developed,
• RFT to be let in December buy/build Catalogue
  and Portal (separately deployed)
• Evaluation of COTS shows no truly OGC compliant
  Catalogue software yet !
• 6 Working Groups have been established
• Governance,
• Symbology/styling
• Metadata Application Profile
• Species Finder Service
• OPENDAP (RD)
• Data Modelling/Feature Type Catalogue (RD)
• Catalogue developers to work in tandem with WGs
  WGs have kicked off first.
• Project Advisory Committee

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ImplementationSpecies Finder
Harvest data in OBIS
Australian OBIS Mirror site

• How to generate ISO compliant metadata
• Wrap OBIS as a map service
• Register data and service in Catalogue

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Conclusion

• Ambitious project in that it is genuinely a
  development by a community of interest.
• Lead the way in developing some key Australian
  Spatial Data Infrastructure technologies and
  standards,
• Requires national and international
  collaboration,
• Will need to expand partnership once runs are on
  the board.
• Catalogue will be accessible by anyone.
• All standards and specifications will be public.