Clearinghouse Working Group Telecon, February 15, 2001

Presentation and Meeting Notes

Telecon Participants• NOAA

– NESDIS– CSC

• USGS– NBII– Geology– EROS

• USDA– HQ– NRCS

• TVA• MMS

• Alaska GDC• Minnesota• Chicago (NIPC)• Montana• New Mexico• JMU, Virginia• Cornell U, NY• Wisconsin

• CEONet (Canada)

• Uruguay• AWCubed• ESRI

• RTSe• FEMA• FGDC Staff• Army COE• USFS

Agenda

• Clearinghouse Servers, Gateways, and software Status Report

• ISO Metadata Status

• FGDC Wizard Discussion

• Activity reports

SDI Clearinghouse Growth 2001J an 2001 : 238 Clearinghouse Nodes

01

Server and Gateway Status

• 243 servers, 214 active

• Six domestic Gateways but working on supporting other international gateways

• Support staff will continue to test all servers for availability, spatial, field, and text search

Gateway Software

• Blue Angel MetaStar Gateway 3.5.2 in use. Blue Angel is under contract to update the basic and Wizard interfaces

• ICN distributed search client still being tested and will have a similar Wizard interface for search (intended to replace the zcon/zgate capabilities of Isite)

Server Software Status

• Isite 2.07i in general release everywhere

• SMMS 3oh! GeoConnect Servers awaiting an imminent upgrade to make them searchable through Clearinghouse Gateways

• Compusult prototyping ISO metadata in their database/Z39.50 server solution

Recent Activity - Isite

• Scoring bug fixed for Boolean queries and virtual databases

• Improved XML for selected doctypes using zsearch/zpresent

• Spontaneous (?), occasional crash of NT zserver under investigation

• Any site running Isite 2.07 for NT that crashes is encouraged to send the error file from “Dr Watson” to warnock@awcubed.com

Coming Soon - Isearch2

• Major “roadblock” bug now fixed

• In limited beta test now

• Remote indexing - by URL

• Development activities– Doctype modification to support crawler– Crawler testing– How to handle element sets with crawler?

Metadata Software

• The MetaLite software is being re-engineered at FGDC by a visiting programmer from South Africa– supports ISO 19115 Core+– is multi-lingual (extensible)– uses a tree and tab interface– imports and exports XML– planned for beta release late March

ISO Metadata Status

• Implementers are experimenting with the ISO metadata as XML in many settings – let’s share our work!

• Author is receiving editorial comments from nations and will combine them at the upcoming ISO TC 211 meeting

• March 9th Metadata (ISO 19115) is expected to be approved as a Draft International Standard

FGDC to ISO Metadata

• RTSe has a contract with FGDC to develop a transformation program and style sheet to convert FGDC metadata in XML format to ISO metadata in XML format

• This will facilitate translation of metadata on-the-fly or for batch conversion of content

• Expect initial deliverable by April, final deliverable by July.

Frequently Asked Questions

• FAQ system is under development to answer common question about Clearinghouse and supporting software

• Could be used for other related activities

• Available temporarily at: http://edcnts9.cr.usgs.gov/fgdcfaq/default.asp

Search Wizard Overview

• Search wizard being implemented in two forms to help select servers based on GSDI Registry metadata. Uses:– Geographic area selection– Scope or Extent of collections– Thematic classification as per ISO 19115

Categories tags

Step 1: Select Nodes based on ISO 19115 Categories

Step 2: Define Geographic Area of Interest

Step 3: Review, select/deselect from ‘found’ servers

Step 4: Compose query of selected servers, spatial extent is re-used

Step 5: Search and request results

Step 6: See titles of results from a given server

Step 7: Display and evaluate the metadata

Search Wizard Summary

• Remedies some ergonomic issues identified in usability study

• Improves search scalability by targeting search to likely Nodes

• Provides a model that can be adapted for different user communities

• Is a work-in-progress – input wanted! http://clearinghouse1.fgdc.gov/servlet/FGDCWizard

http://edcw2ks15.cr.usgs.gov/servlet/FGDCWizard

Search Wizard Feedback

• Email request sent yesterday to solicit comment from the user communityon what features you like, dislike, don't understand, or wish were there– What’s missing from spatial/placename search?– How can the Extent capability be improved?– How could topic selection be done better?– How can the “field” query page be improved?– How do you like the layout of results?

See: http://130.11.52.184/wizardcomments.html

Activity Reports• NASA: the metadata display from IDN/GCMD

now appears properly through the clearinghouse gateway - as an FGDC-formatted record.

• Greater Yellowstone Area Data Clearinghouse is moving to become the Yellowstone-to-Yukon node hosted by USGS. Mark as inactive for a few months.

• ESRI Geography Network now searchable as a Clearinghouse Node

• Arctic GIS Workshop (next slide)

Arctic GIS WorkshopArctic Research Consortium of the United State (ARCUS)

http://www.arcus.org/gis/index.html and National Science Foundation (NSF)

• Which Arctic science issues would benefit from improved internet-base GIS capability?

• What strategies could be used to implement enhanced GIS capability for the Arctic?

• What are the anticipated impacts in terms of research and societal benefits?

Preliminary RecommendationsPreliminary Recommendations• A shared vision of an Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI)

as an international cooperative initially based on nodes at USGS Alaska, UNEP Grid-Arendal, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Upcoming Events

• Next Clearinghouse WG Telecon May 16th, 2001

• Considering a North American SDI implementers’ workshop for the summer, possibly co-sponsored by CEONet, FGDC, and NBII, etc.