Introduction to SDI and the European SDI Approach

Spatial Data Infrastructure and Earth Observation Education and Training for North Africa

Introduction to SDI and the European SDI Approach

1st Virtual Summer SchoolSession 1 – “Spatial Data Infrastructures”

18/05/2021

A. Wytzisk-Arens

Bochum University of Applied Sciences


Overview

• What is a Spatial Data Infrastructure?• Services and Data• The European Approach• The road ahead

18/05/2021 2


The starting point• Decision making processes in research, industry and public administration often

require the integration and analysis of geospatial data from different sources

18/05/2021 3

Use case: Insurance company wants to assess the risk for claims from clients living close to water bodies (e.g. when selling building insurances)

• Cadastral parcels• River network• Digital elevation model• Historic water levels• Flooding zones• …

Use case: Prepare hospitals for Covid19 cases in infections by limiting movement out of zones with high infections rates

• Administrative boundaries• Development of infection rates in

administrative units• Road network • Hospital locations and

capacities• …

https://t1p.de/85u6 https://t1p.de/q7e2


Some typical problems• Suitable geospatial data, which is needed to solve a particular problem is often

hard to find

• Data providers, data quality and data timeliness are often not known by data users• Re-use of already existing data significantly reduces costs and time needed to derive

information products

• Available data often not easy to integrate• Incompatible data formats and encodings• Spatial reference systems do not match• Semantics of thematic data not known or does not match

• Missing or improper licenses

18/05/2021 4

Man

sitt

ing

at h

isde

skat

hom

ew

ithha

ndsn

ear

his

head

tryi

ngto

solv

ea

prob

lem

byJa

cob

Lund

from

Nou

nPr

ojec

t


What is needed?• One or more dedicated “geospatial data catalogues”, which can be used by data

provides to publish their offerings and by users to search for data they need

• Clear license agreements and ideally open access to geospatial data of common interest

• (A few) up-to-date technical standards widely accepted by data providers and users and adopted by technology providers

• Easy to use data models and encodings, which address typical use cases and are well accepted in the respective application domains

• Skilled people, the political will and suitable arrangements, which facilitate the required culture of sharing

18/05/2021 5


Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI)“A set of policies, technologies and institutional arrangements [facilitating] the provision and use of standardized spatial data and processing services, to assist diverse expert user communities in collecting, sharing and exploiting geospatial information resources [via the web].” (Diaz et al. 2012)

- Network to exchange geospatial data across system- and organizational boundaries

- Connects geospatial data providers and users

- Make geospatial data accessible for users outside the data custodian organization

- Technical infrastructure plus legal, organizational and application-domain specific arrangements as well as skilled people

18/05/2021 6

Díaz, Laura & Remke, Albert & Kauppinen, Tomi & Degbelo, Auriol & Foerster, Theodor & Stasch, Christoph & Rieke, Matthes & Schaeffer, B & Baranski, Bastian & Bröring, Arne & Wytzisk, Andreas. (2012). Future SDI - Impulses from Geoinformatics Research and IT Trends. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research. 7. 10.2902/1725.


Technical implementationHigh level components

- Geospatial base data and domain-specific data

- Metadata, describing available resources

- Standardized services (geospatial web services) to provide access to geospatial data resources

- Software architecture, which facilitates an easy use and seamless integration of geospatial data resources

18/05/2021 7


Service-oriented architectures• Currently widely accepted technological basis for implementing SDIs

• Software architectural pattern to publish, find and use information resources• Service

- Software component, which encapsulates a dedicated functionality (e.g. map rendering)

- Functionalities are provided via a well-specified / standardized interfaces, which hide implementation details

- In the SDI context usually using Web-protocols (http, REST)

- Usage independent from the clients hard- and software-platform

- (Are self-descriptive, i.e. inform about their capabilities)

18/05/2021 8

Clos

e up

port

rait

ofm

ale

hand

sus

ingd

igita

l tab

let

forn

avig

atio

nby

Jaco

b Lu

nd fr

omN

oun

Proj

ect


Service-oriented architecturesService trading- Service provider (e.g. the ministry for transport) offers a web service (e.g. for providing road

network data) and publishes metadata via a central catalogue- A user (e.g. a GIS expert of a health organization) is looking for up-to-date road network data for a

specific area, accesses the central catalogue and finds suitable resources- After identifying a suitable service, which provides the required data,

the GIS expert binds / integrates the data source

What’s the benefit?- Standardized interfaces allow seamless service integration across

system boundaries

- Services / software components can be integrates on demand (developer doesn’t need to know the resources)

18/05/2021 9

Broker (Catalogue)

Provider (Service)

Consumer (Client)

publishfind

bind


SDI in actionImagine you are looking for a road network dataset in Belgium and navigate to the Belgium Geoportal, which provides access to a catalogue service for geospatial information resources…

18/05/2021 10


SDI in actionThe catalogue will provide a set of meta-datasets, which match your query. You can now check the details and identify the service, which suits you best …

18/05/2021 11


SDI in actionYou can now just add the layer to your map in the geoportal’s map viewer and use the URL provided be the metadata and add it to your GIS environment …

18/05/2021 12


Interface specifications usually developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC, https://opengeospatial.org) and adopted by ISO and SDI bodies.

Sample WMS-request to get a map image:http://www2.demis.nl/worldmap/wms.asp?Service=WMS&Version=1.1.0&Request=GetMap&BBox=-20,-40,60,40&SRS=EPSG:4326&Width=400&Height=400&Layers=Countries,Borders,Coastlines&Format=jpg

Geospatial service types

18/05/2021 13

Catalogue Service Catalog Service Web (CSW) (plus profiles for different metadata standards)

View Services Web Map Service (WMS), Web Map Tile Service (WMTS)

Download Services Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Coverage Service (WCS)

Processing Service Web Processing Service (WPS)

Geospatial data encoding Geography Markup Language (GML)


SDI architecture (simplified)

18/05/2021 14

CSW WMS WFS WCS WFS WCSWMS

Applications & Geoportals

Service Bus (Internet)

Geo Rights Management

Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 ... Node n

Provided by SDI stake-holders (broker, data and service provider, ...)

GeoportalDomain-

specific AppUsing the same service layerGIS


Data in SDI• No specifications regarding the actual data management (data model, databases),

but specification of exchange formats in order to ensure interoperability- Vector data: XML-based Geography Markup Language (GML), GeoJSON

- Raster data: GeoTIFF, HDF-EOS, NITF, DTED, CF-NetCDF etc.

• For selected data themes: specification of data models for data exchange- Structure and semantics are known in advance- Facilitates ad-hoc Integration if datasets

• Usually support of one or more default spatial reference systems is required

18/05/2021 15

Source: http://gdz.bkg.bund.de/index.php/default/open-data/inspire-wfs-land-cover-clc5-2018-wfs-clc5-2018-inspire.html


SDI Initiatives• SDIs are traditionally public sector initiatives and are being implemented on all

administrative levels- Regional (e.g. INSPIRE)- National (e.g. NSDI Croatia, GDI-DE, CGDI, - Sub-National (e.g. GDI-VLAANDEREN in Belgium, GDI.NRW in Germany)- Local (e.g. on city or municipality level)- Organizational

• SDIs are also arising in private enterprises, in the research community, in particular application domains (e.g. oceanography, hydrology)

• Due to common standards, SDI services from different initiatives can be integrated

18/05/2021 16


The European Case – INSPIRE Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe

• European Union Directive, which has been transposed into the national legislation system of each EU member state

• Laying down general rules to establish an SDI in Europe- With a clear environmental focus

- To enable better decision making process based on easy to find/access accurate and interoperable geospatial information

• In force since May 2009, full implementation by end of 2021

18/05/2021 17


INSPIRE - Implementation• Components

- Data harmonized according well defined data specifications

- Metadata- Network services as gateways to provide access to data / metadata

- Data & service sharing policies (including quality of service)

- Coordination and measures for monitoring & reporting

• Implementing rules elaborated by expert teams concretize the Directive- Binding regulations are part of the law and comprise a stable minimum set of

requirements, necessary to implement the Directive (what)

- Not binding guidance documents provide technical details based on standards (how)

18/05/2021 18

Annex I

Coordinate reference systemsGeographical grid systemsGeographical namesAdministrative unitsAddressesCadastral parcelsTransport networksHydrographyProtected sites

Annex III

Statistical unitsBuildingsSoilLand useHuman health and safetyUtility and governmental servicesEnvironmental monitoring facilitiesProduction and industrial facilitiesAgricultural and aquaculture facilitiesPopulation distribution – demographyArea management/restriction/ regulation zones & reporting unitsNatural risk zonesAtmospheric conditionsMeteorological geographical featuresOceanographic geographical featuresSea regionsBio-geographical regionsHabitats and biotopesSpecies distributionEnergy ResourcesMineral resources

Annex II

ElevationLand coverOrtho-imageryGeology


INSPIRE - Roadmap

18/05/2021 19

Major steps• Metadata for discovery available• Spatial datasets available for discovery and

view from the INSPIRE Geoportal• Newly collected and extensively re-structured

datasets conformant to implementing rules and accessible through network services• All datasets conformant to implementing

rules and accessible through network services


SDIs – Some thoughts about the road ahead

18/05/2021 20

• IT develops fast and it’s hard for legally mandated initiatives to keep track, technical evolution is challenge, but necessary to keep SDI services in use• SDI / INSPIRE is not the only ecosystem for providing spatial information

- Initiatives from the EO domain are becoming more and more prominent (Copernicus), a smooth integration with “traditional” SDIs like INSPIRE is still missing

- Open Data Initiatives are emerging in parallel due to strong legal frameworks, still not very “organized and structured”, but this will probably change

- Citizen engagement becomes an important factor for up-to-data spatial data (Open Street Map)

• It’s not all about provision, processing capabilities close to spatial data becomes reality due to the rise of cloud based platforms


Conclusion

18/05/2021 21

• SDI has entered its operational phase - There is a lot of experience and a well functioning technological basis for its implementation

- However, most initiatives are (technologically) based in the beginning of the century, thus there is a need to design and organize for adaptability; this needs to reflected in future curricula

• To bring SDI in practice and thus to unfold its full potential, its use needs to be part of the daily business- Facilitate a culture of sharing and collaboration by repeatedly seeding this idea in your courses

• It’s all about cultivating and engineering- The dynamic complexity of an SDI / INSPIRE requires a design process, which is not only a

straight forward engineering approach, but also the cultivation of self-organizing system


Thank you for your attention!

www.seed4na.eu

[email protected]

----This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This presentation reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

http://www.seed4na.eu/

mailto:[email protected]

Date post:	07-Nov-2021
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	12 times
Download:	0 times

Introduction to SDI and the European SDI Approach

Documents