MEDIN Standards Workshop

27th March 2012

Programme

The aim of the workshop is to improve the knowledge and use of MEDIN standards and the tools that support them. Mixture of presentations, demonstrations and practicals.

• A general introduction to MEDIN

• Discovery metadata – introduction to standard and resources, practical use of the on-line tool and metadata maestro tools

• Controlled vocabularies – demonstration of access to most commonly used vocabularies

• Data Guidelines – introduction and practical

• Stylesheets, XML, Schematron

MEDIN Standards Workshop

• 3rd MEDIN Standards Workshop • Feel free to interrupt us and ask questions• Provide feedback

MEDIN Standards Workshop

The UK Marine Environmental Data and Information Network

Mark Charlesworth– mecha@bodc.ac.uk

www.oceannet.org

Content

• Importance marine data management

• MEDIN outline

• MEDIN relationship to UK Location Programme (data.gov) and INSPIRE

• Summary

Why is data management in marine sector important?

Confidence in assessments and ability to detect trends limited

•By lack of access to data

•By lack of time to use existing data

MEDIN has grown from previous work that have been in operation since 1996 but new push as MEDIN since 2007

Operational MEDIN

Seven interlinked work streams:

1. Network of marine Data Archive Centres (DACs)

2. Suite of standards for data and metadata, together with guidelines and tools.

3. Web portal, products and services

4. International awareness, coordination and data delivery to global data-bases

5. Resource and application development

6. Communications: outreach, forums, publicity

7. Management, planning and coordination

Data Archive Centres – the base of MEDIN

MEDIN has built a network of “accredited” marine Data Archive Centres, linked by the adoption of common standards and common descriptions of their data.

DAC Network Objective:• To provide secure long-term storage for marine data.

• To provide the capability to upload data into and to retrieve data from the DACs.

• Data contributors should have free access to their data managed within the DAC framework.

Required capabilities of DACs : • To ensure the secure, long term, curation of key marine data sets,

according to best practice and to relevant national and international standards.

• To make available clear, searchable information on their data holdings, by the generation and publication of metadata on the MEDIN portal.

• To form the first point of call of expertise for the management of marine data.

Standards

1) Discovery metadata standard to support portal search.

• Marine themed UK GEMINI2 and so INSPIRE compliant.

• Tools. E.g. Metadata Maestro, DASSH on-line tool, stylesheets

2) Data guidelines: Instill good practice, for provision to DACS, specify in contracts, and thematic interoperability

• Commensurate structure to Observations and Measurements

• e.g. MEDIN data guideline for sediment sampling by grab or core for benthos

3) Controlled Vocabularies• Largely derived from other resources (e.g. SeaDataNet, ICES,

EPSG) and provided via web services

Standards

Standards are governed by the MEDIN Standards WG which meets every 4-5 months

For keeping up to date with development of standards join the MEDIN e-mail listing by e-mailing mecha@bodc.ac.uk and subscribe to Marine Data News http://www.oceannet.org/marine_data_newsletter/

MEDIN Metadata helpdeskEmail: medin.metadata@mba.ac.ukPhone: 01792 633291

Discovery Portal

CSW for data.gov ++ is in test phase. Upgrade in pipeline.

MEDIN Data Clause

– Good data management is essential if data are to be re-useable.

– Often data management is only considered as an afterthought, once the data have been collected, and inadequate resources are allocated

• Greater costs to source, reformat, reuse data

• Unnecessary expensive resurvey

– MEDIN has developed a simple standard data clause that can be included within the tender process, or referenced at the planning stage, to ensure data management is properly planned

Operational MEDIN

Discovery

Portal

Data

Archived

Metadata (discovery)

Data

Metadata

Data+MetadataMetadata

Flexibility for range of organisational technical capacities and needs

• MEDIN represents the marine community on the UK Location Information Interoperability Board

• Aim is that MEDIN can (if required) meet partners’ metadata/data publishing obligations under INSPIRE• MEDIN will publish all MEDIN metadata (on request)

through to UK node and hence to INSPIRE.

• MEDIN DACs to provide the view and download service

MEDIN relationship to data.gov +++?

The MEDIN Approach to INSPIRE implementation

Discovery

Portal

Data Archived

Metadata (discovery)CSW

Data.gov +++

Annex 1-3 ++ view and download

Summary

• MEDIN is working with a specific community to improve data management and access for a wide range of drivers

• While doing that we are adopting INSPIRE standards to enable partners to meet INSPIRE requirements if needed

• Thematic approaches do get involvement from non data managers and thus improve the stakeholder requirements.

• Relationships evolve

An introduction to the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard

What is metadata and what should I do with it?

Put simply, discovery metadata is information about a data set. For example, a metadata record typically contains information about the title of a data set, the geographic scope, when it was last updated and the contact details of the person who owns it.

Put another way, discovery metadata provides information about, or documentation of, datasets managed within an organisation or application.

Used to describe datasets (or series or services) so that a user can easily discover them using a portal and find details to where he/she can access them

Standard composed of ‘elements’ (e.g. title, begin date, contact, access conditions)

XML is used to encode the record so that it becomes machine readable.

MEDIN has produced a guidance document, validation tool (schematron) and tools to create and test metadata records

Discovery Metadata Standard

http://www.oceannet.org/marine_data_standards/medin_disc_stnd.html

Discovery Metadata Standard - Introduction

Discovery Metadata Standard - Guidance

Compliant with the ISO19115 (Geographic information – Metadata), INSPIRE and UK GEMINI2 and uses the ISO 19139 schema set for encoding xml

Short, simple version available!

The MEDIN standard specifies use of certain vocabularies (term lists) to make it ‘marine flavoured’

•Keywords: SeaDataNet parameter discovery vocab (e.g. Fish taxonomy related counts; temperature of the water column)

•Keywords: SeaDataNet vertical coverage terms (e.g. epipelagic; benthic boundary layer)

•Spatial Reference System: European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) geodetic parameters (e.g. EPSG::4326)

•Data format: MEDIN (e.g. delimited; image; GIS)

•Organisations: SeaDataNet European Directory of Marine Organisations (EDMO)

Discovery Metadata Standard - Marine

P021 SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocab (~380 terms)

P231 MEDIN Parameter Disciplines (12 terms)

P031 SeaDataNet Parameter Groups (~54 terms)

ISO Topic Categories

MSFD Indicators

Criteria Descriptors

INSPIRE themes

Specific Need Vocabs E.g. Wind farm development stages

Submit once use many times!

Discovery Metadata Standard - Parameters

1. On-line metadata generation/editing tool

Discovery Metadata Standard - Tools

2. Desktop tool – Metadata Meastro. Can work in stand alone mode. Soon to be extended to GEMINI2.

3. A tool which will assist in transforming already populated metadata databases into MEDIN format XML metadata. Designed so that organisations who hold their own metadata can transfer their data into this structure from which a tool can be applied to produce xml records. Guidance document available.

4. Specific tools for GIS users: Stylesheet for transforming ArcCat ESRI ISO standard metadata to MEDIN standard. Arc 9 stylesheet no longer supported. Arc 10 stylesheet now available.

Discovery Metadata Standard - Tools

Important to be able to test the structure and content of the xml records once produced to ensure that they comply with the standard.

A Schematron has been developed (compliant with ISO 19757 (Part 3) Information technology -- Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) -- Part 3: Rule-based validation – Schematron).

Used in many different circumstances and tools so that if the standard changes it only requires one update rather than various validation methods for different applications

This schematron ‘sits’ at the end of the on-line metadata editor tool in a validation step. Can be used by organisations to test transfer between metadata holdings.

Discovery Metadata Standard - Validation

Guidance document on the schematron – technical

Guidance document on using the schematron in software ‘Oxygen’ - aimed at more lay user.

Discovery Metadata Standard - Schematron

What is a dataset?

• All metadata records can be harvested (and produced primarily for) by the portal.

• It is important that the portal is not swamped with records or not rich enough to be useful to the user

• MEDIN guidance on website

What is a dataset?

• the correct level for a dataset is a cruise, survey or a set of repeat observations with a common purpose, 

• a data set usually constitutes a specifically-funded piece of work, 

• the dataset should be easily extractable from a database for a 3rd party,

• if you are searching for a data set using a portal and get the result every time you search by different combinations of time, location and parameter then it is probably too coarse.

Updating the MEDIN discovery standard

• Standards evolve!

• MEDIN has placed itself to be close to, and feed into, any changes in standard that could influence our own.

• Members of the MEDIN standards WG also are represented on various Location Programme, INSPIRE and BSI groups.

• Sign up to the e-mail list to be kept up to date of changes

.NET Framework 2.5

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=22