The GeoShare Project – Building a Transnational Geodata-Infrastructure

Thomas Vögele, Rainer Spittel, Sebastian Hübner, Ubbo VisserCenter for Computing Technologies, TZI

Universität Bremen

Münsteraner GI-Tage 2003

Universität Bremen Center for Computing Technologies (TZI)

Director: Prof. PeleskaManaging Director: Dr. Boronowsky

Scientific Support: IhlenfeldAdmin: Landau

Scientificand Industry

Advisory Board

Digital Mediaand Networks

Image Processing

Prof. U. BormannProf. J. FriedrichProf. H. Kubicek

Prof. O. Herzog

Dr. M. WindDr. G. Ioannidis

IntelligentSystems

Prof. O. Herzog

Dr. H. Wache

Safe Systems

Prof. B. Krieg-Brückner

Prof. M. GogollaProf. H.-J. KreowskiProf. J. PeleskaProf. R. Drechsler

Dr. K. Sohr

Human Factors and Information

Management

Dr. C. Bormann

The GeoShare Project

Collaboration of 4 partners in the North Sea Region Sogn og Fjordane (Norway) Groningen (Netherlands) Edinburgh (Scotland) Bremen (Germany)

Mostly administration, plus technical experts

Project is funded through theEU Interreg IIIB North Sea Region programme

Duration: 12/02 – 12/05

Objectives

Improve exchange and usage of geospatial data and other spatially related information

Establish a transnational cooperation in 3 thematic areas: Spatial planning Labour and education Tourism and cultural heritage

Develop a transnational (technical) infrastructure for the exchange of geospatial data and information

Technical Approach to GeoShare

The GeoShare Network is a transnational, OGC compatible and service-based geodata infrastructure

Distributed services, accessible to all project partners

Concept is tested and proven (e.g., GDI-NRW)

Two types of services: Basic services (basic functionality needed by

all partners) Advanced services (specialized functionality

needed by one or more regional applications)

GeoShare Network:Implementation-Phase I

Intelligent Catalog Service (ICS) provides centralized registration, search, and metadata management services

Applications in the partner regions remain independent

Applications are hosted and maintained by the partners

Applications are accessible through customized clients

GeoShare Network: Implementation-Phase II

A common WMS is made available for all project partners

Basic web services (e.g., WMS, WFS), and geodatabases are implemented in partner regions

Project partners are able to integrate individual applications in

common WMS configure map representations

remotely Common WMS accesses remote data

through WMS (cascading), WFS, or OGC geodatabase interface

GeoShare Network: Implementation Phase III

All data will be accessible through web services hosted by the partners

Additional “advanced services” (ADS) will be hosted by the partners

All available services can be linked together to complex applications through service chaining

Software Solutions

Applications use software from different vendors

Common infrastructure based on OGC compatible (conforming or implementing) software

Focus is on OpenSource software and in-house developments

For first prototype: UMN Web Map Server (Minnesota

University) with ArcSDE and PostGIS

Intelligent Catalog Server (ICS) based on BUSTER tool (Universität Bremen)

The Intelligent Catalog Service

Manages metadata descriptions for all registered data and services in GeoShare Network

Search over terminological, spatial, and temporal domain

System maintains formalized knowledge (ontologies) for these domains

Intuitive queries, logic conclusions, mapping between ontologies

Step 1: Selection of Thematic, Spatial and Temporal Domains

Step 2: Selection of Keywords, Regions and Time Periods

Step 3: Query Results

Water Quality Data on WMS 1 (SBU)

Background Data on WMS 2 (Catastre Office)

Integrated View through Cascading WMS

Summary and Discussion

Project still in initial phase Overall objective: Building a transnational geodata infrastructure Regional objective (Bremen): Initializing geodata infrastructure for Bremen Basic infrastructure will be available in September 2003 Advanced services will be available by summer 2004 Focus on the use of OpenSource software Intelligent Catalog Service Integration of thematic applications in the partner regions Thematic focus in Bremen: Implementation of WFD

More information about GeoShare at

www.geoshare.dewww.geoshare.net

vogele@tzi.de