The main thrust of the ICAN Technical Task Force is to research and develop solutions for coastal web atlas (CWA) advancement. A current major focus is on the cooperative interoperability and network prototype which seeks to globally-integrate locally-maintained coastal atlases. Some of the specific activities that will contribute to this are to:

• identify and develop appropriate collaborative applied research projects (e.g., enabling semantic interoperability between existing atlases),
• Document and promote specifications and standards of relevance to the coastal atlas community taking into account existing regional and global marine data standards-related projects,
• Identify the information needs for large scale interoperable CWAs.

ICAN prototype

ICAN global ontology in MMI Registry and Repository

Recent ICAN Tech papers (scroll down to "2009")

Please click --->HERE for technical work-in-progress and conference call minutes

Luis Bermudez on MMI Semantic Mediation and Ontology Registry (YouTube)

ICAN 3 Tech Notes (2008, Copenhagen, pdf) and Presentation (pdf)

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Other key activities of the TTF will include:
• Metadata issues;
• Data and organisational interoperability;
• Data specifications;
• Data theme requirements;
• Network services;
• Technology tracking;
• Research and development of innovative solutions;
• Updating structure and architecture of ICAN web portal and interoperability prototype;
• Interface extensions to CWAs;
• Ontology content and technical governance.
• Evaluation and selection of interoperability standards for use in ICAN;
• Contribution to the interoperability standards development process;
• Supporting and responding to the user community;
• Technical training of CWA developers;
• Knowledge transfer; and
• Digital Rights Management [DRM].

The TTF would also oversee technical project activities that are agreed on by the SG and undertaken within an ICAN context. The TTF would be involved in co-ordinating:
• Project selection;
• Technical development, assessment and selection;
• Project implementation; and
• Project evaluation.

Ontology Content and Technical Governance
Achieving interoperability between CWA requires the use of ontologies. Ontology content and technical governance is therefore an issue that needs to be addressed within the TTF.

Ontology Content Governance relates to the determination of the terms and definitions to be included in ICAN interoperability ontologies. One possibility is that of an ‘ontology development’ specialist subgroup reporting to the TTF. This would provide the ideal nucleus for ICAN ontology content governance.

Technical governance covers the storage, security, change management and serving of the ontologies developed by ICAN. Such governance has to deliver:
• Stability and permanence for at least the lifespan of ICAN.
• Data security with backup policies conforming to digital preservation best practice standards (e.g., daily backup with copies in at least two physical locations).
• Managed file versioning with preservation of previous versions.
• Version time stamping.
• Effective serving to both humans and software agents.

The principles and best practice for feature type catalogue content and technical governance are specified in ISO19135. These are equally applicable to vocabulary and ontology repositories.

ICAN will need to make a choice as to whether it wants to develop its own ontology technical management infrastructure or outsource the work through either a service level agreement or by establishing a partnership with an existing repository.

Background Reference Links

ICAN 2 Tech Notes (2007, Corvallis, pdf)
ICAN Tech Listserv

Initial Controlled Vocabulary/Ontology Work

AGU abstract submitted 6-Sept-07
2007 Fall AGU Poster (3.1 Mb PPT)

AGILE Workshop on Test-bed for geospatial web service interoperability, 8 May 2007

USGS Coastal Hazards Controlled Vocabulary:
Controlled Vocabulary
Related USGS Open File Report and Figure 2
Coastal Change Hazards Digital Library and Fact Sheet

Coastal Data Information Program Ontologies

USGS Societal Vulnerability to Natural Hazards (Nate Wood)

Unidata's Overview of OGC Services
Unidata Ocean/Atm Interoperability Day