The importance of standards bodies in EU funded projects

Transcription

1 The importance of standards bodies in EU funded projects INSPIRE Conference, 27. June 01. July 2011 Geospatial SDI Workshop Arnulf Christl (metaspatial) and Athina Trakas () Athina Trakas Open Geospatial Consortium Director European Services

2 A few words about 2

3 at a Glance Founded in 1994, not for profit, consensus based and voluntary 415+ member organisations (industry, government, academia) (June 2011) adopted Standards (some are ISO Standards) Several hundred software products, implementing OpenGIS Standards Cooperation with other standards organisations, foundations and projects.

4 at a Glance Europe: 199 North America: 159 Asia/Pacific: 54

5 What are Web Services (OWS)? Just as is the dial tone of the World Wide Web, and html / xml are the standard encodings, the geospatial web is enabled by standards: Web Map Service (WMS) Web Coverage Web Feature Server Server Web Feature Service (WFS) Web Coverage Service (WCS) CityGML Geography Markup Language (GML) Web Map Web Map Context (WMC) Server KML Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Others Relevant to geospatial information applications: Cadastrial Information, Critical Infrastructure, Environment, Weather, Climate, Water, Homeland Security, Defense & Intelligence, SmartGrids and others

6 The Mission To serve as a global forum for and lead the development, promotion and harmonization of open and freely available geospatial standards.

7 The Standards (developing bodies - SDO) 7

8 Standards and Interoperability Availability of geo data is crucial for the administration, businesses and citizens alike. But how to share data? Key factor for accessibility is standardisation. It is the definition of common interfaces to enable interoperability.

9 Standards and Interoperability Availability of geo data is crucial for the administration, businesses and citizens alike. But how to share data? Key factor for accessibility is standardisation. It is the definition of common interfaces to enable interoperability.

10 Interoperability?... a break-of-gauge adds delays, cost, and inconvenience to traffic that must pass from one gauge to another. Source: Source: Source: gauge_buster.jpg Source:

11 Interoperability members identify interoperability problems: We can't share maps on the Web. We can't deliver data to different systems easily. We don't have a common language to speak about our geospatial data or our services. We can't find and pull together data from our automated sensors. Copyright 2011, Open Geospatial Consortium Making location count...

12 What is Interoperability? "The capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units Source: Abstract Specification Topic 12: Services. Derived from ISO

13 What is an Standard? A document, established by consensus, approved by the membership Provides, rules, guidelines or characteristics Implementable in software Open standards does not mean open source software (Free Software). /OSGeo Paper on Open Source Software and Open Standards: standards are Open Standards Freely and publicly available No license fees Vendor neutral Open Geospatial Consortium, 2011 Making Location Count...

14 Why Open Standards? Rapidly mobilize new capabilities plug and play Lower systems costs Encourage market competition Choose based on functionality desired Avoid lock in to a proprietary architecture People want the government to be transparent, so why shouldn't the technology be? Jim Willis, Director of egovernment at the Rhode Island Secretary of State Office Decisions to share information and services become policy decisions

15 EU Digital Agenda Interoperability boosts competition, we need more of that. For devices or applications to be interoperable - to work together - all concerned parties must agree to a common way of doing things. Formal standards are one way to get there. More transparency in formal standard-setting can lead to more efficient outcomes. Public and private procurers of technology should be smart and build their systems as much as possible on standards that everybody can use and implement without constraints: this is good for the bottom-line because it promotes competition between suppliers and prevents vendor lock-in. Neelie Kroes, Open Forum Europe 2010: 'Openness at the heart of the EU Digital Agenda' Brussels, 10th June

16 -based Policy Positions European Union INSPIRE Directive emphasizing ISO and standards for improved interoperability. UK Ordnance Survey distributes its MasterMap product using standards. Dutch Policy on Open Standards and Open Source Software ( standards%3f) Canadian, Australian, US, Indian and other national Spatial Data programs recommend standards as best practice for interoperability. 16

17 Interfaces in the standards setting process Many members are involved in the INSPIRE process and vice-versa: INSPIRE Legally Mandated Organisations (LMO): IGN (F), BKG (D), DEFRA (UK), Finnish Meteorological Institute, Geonovum (NL), etc. INSPIRE Spatial Data Interest Communities (SDIC): France Forum (F), SDI of Catalonia (ES), Hydrology DWG Drafting Teams, Thematic Working Groups, thematic overlapping (e.g. Hydrology, Meteorolgy and the TWG on Atmospheric Conditions and Meteorological Geographical features etc.) IOC Task Force And of course the collaboration with the Joint Research Center (JRC) and other EU agencies. Some Interoperability Program Initiatives reflect INSPIRE topics. 17

18 INSPIRE technical architecture INSPIRE Discovery service: Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) Query language: Filter Encoding INSPIRE View service: ISO : WMS (Web Map Service) 1.3 (extensions) INSPIRE Download service: Pre-defined data sets => standard Internet protocols (like FTP) Direct access data with queries Web Feature Service: WFS / ISO Filter Encoding: Filter Encoding / ISO INSPIRE Coordinate Transformation service: An Application Profile of the Web Processing service (WPS) based on the Web Coordinate Transformation Service (WCTS) 18

19 INSPIRE and Standards Market Report on Standards in INPSIRE provide examples activities underway around INSPIRE based on international standards, highlight overlap between and ISO standards (e.g. ISO 19115) INSPIRE Annex II & II heavily rely on coverages (ortho images, elevation data, classifications, metocean data etc. encoding standards in INSPIRE for spatial data interoperability GML default encoding Quotes: WMS/SLD and SE Symbology Encoding are the normative references in the view service technical guidance, C. Portele) Well established communication & collaboration between & INSPIRE P. Baumann) 19

20 (Potential) Roles of EU funded Projects 20

21 EU funded projects (can) find out how to... rapidly mobilize new capabilities plug and play lower systems costs encourage market competition help defining European requirements and bring them into international processes

22 Examples BRISEIDE develops spatial analysis () WPSs and integrates them within existing open source frameworks. ( ) Newly developed or protypical Web Services already made available by relevant INSPIRE-related EU projects and exposing standard services such as WMS, WCS and WFS (...) Will address the relevant themes on a consensus building approach Services freely accessible through the web will be developed, assessing the different existing solutions but also guaranteeing the use of standard services (Web Map Services WMS, Web Processing Services WPS, Web Features Services WFS).

23 Examples Humboldt Conformity with standards and major European initiatives. The Humboldt Tools and Services are built on current state of the art and standards, designed to provide solutions to all types of users, data custodians as well as private end-users. (Many) Humboldt Project Partner are members: Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics, Help Service Remote Sensing, Logica, French National Geographic Institute, ETHZ, Delft University of Technology, Technische Universität München, Natural Environment Research Council, Collecte Localisation Satellites, Högskolan i Gävle Most of the Humboldt scenarios match with working groups and Interoperability Program topics

24 Example Humboldt Scenarios Activities in the Emergency and Disaster Management domain working group Activities in the Ocean Science Interoperability Program

25 Avenues for Public Input Public Domain Working Groups Aviation DWG Hydrology DWG Meteorology and Oceans DWG Business Value Committee Understand and articulate the advantages of developing and using standards Enable the wider community of stakeholders to leverage business value as a tool to foster investment and implementation Copyright 2011, Open Geospatial Consortium Making location count...

26 Avenues for Public Input (2) Requests for Information Requests for Comment Call For Participation Network Change Requests and New Requirements Fast track process Copyright 2011, Open Geospatial Consortium Making location count...

27 ISO/TC 211, CEN/TC 287 and 27

28 De Facto Where does fit in the standards world? ISO/CEN Infrastructure: WSDL, UDDI, SOAP, XML De Jure Domains: Object / Abstract Models, Content, Vocabulary Software Interfaces and encodings: Instantiate Domain and Dejure into Infrastructure OASIS/IETF / W3C Domain Infrastructure 28

29 Collaboration and Cooperation formal Liaison with CEN/TC 287 for standards coordination has a Class A Liaison with Technical Committee 211

30 Collaboration and Cooperation The CEN/TC 287 workshop on best practice for National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDIs) convened in Saint-Denis, Paris, France on 1 March This provided an excellent venue and opportunity for organizational representatives of CEN/TC 287, ISO/TC 211 and to discuss ways in which coordination between these standards bodies can be improved to better address European and international standards requirements. Discussions also included representatives from participating user communities, and led to general agreement for closer, more formal cooperation between and CEN/TC 287, as well as agreement to consider continued improvements in and ISO/TC 211 coordination. Emphasis was also placed on the testing of standards for viability, fulfillment of purpose, ease of implementation and improvements in interoperability. The mantra "test early, test often" was reflective of this need. These three organizations will be cooperatively exploring the adoption of a common Change Request / Requirements registry, and will be examining ways in which adopted standards schema can be managed more effectively and efficiently across these organizations. The requirements process is also an effort to make the standards process more transparent and more responsive to community needs. All requirements and change requests will be gathered in an open forum visible to the public. All parties agreed that continued exploration of process improvements would be valuable to the community, with particular focus on improved coordination, reduction in duplication of effort, and streamlining of standards coordination processes. 30

31 Some closing thoughts Contribute and work together participate in the international standardisation process Share your experiences especially from an European perspective (EU funded projects). Help leveraging European requirements to an international level What we are doing is facilitating a common picture of reality for different organizations which have different views of the reality, the disaster, the catastrophe, that they all have to deal with collectively. David Schell CEO and Chairman 31

32 Questions? Get involved! Athina Trakas Director European Service OpenGeospatial Consortium Heerstr Bonn Tel.: Mobil: web: