ICAN Technical Team Meetings
Next telecon: mid-March 2009 (TBD): 4:00 PM GMT, 8:00 AM PT, 11:00 ET, 4:00 PM Ireland, 5:00 PM Italy
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Open Tasks/Timeline
- [All] - see specific tasks/deadlines in Liz's spreadsheet (xls) | pdf version
- [All] - discuss and implement vision for prototypes 2 and 3
- [All] - seek to finish prototype 2 by August/September 2009 in advance of ICAN Workshop 4 in Italy
Most Current Theme Ontologies:
- Global ontology: http://ican.ucc.ie/ont/20080701/coastal_erosion.owl
- MIDA ontology: http://mida.ucc.ie/ont/20080124/theme.owl
- OCA ontology: http://ican.ucc.ie/ont/oca/20080701/theme.owl
- Draft MarBound ontology: http://ican.ucc.ie/ont/marbound/20080701/theme.owl
27 October 2009 Skype Conference Call Notes
Participants: Liz O’Dea (LOD), Tanya Haddad (TH), Yassine Lassoued (YL), Declan Dunne (DD), Roy Lowry (RL), John Helly (JH), David Hart (DH)
**NOTE** Next ICAN Tech call November 10, to discuss final preparation for the workshop.
1. Prototype - Where it is now, what needs to be done.
Prototype Update:
No changes have been made to the Interoperability Prototype since February, due to other priorities. The Prototype is still operating, although sometimes the Oregon Coastal Atlas node is down. Tanya says she sometimes turns off GeoNetwork.
The NETMAR project (Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data): European FP7 grant for 3 years. Funding approved, due to begin at beginning 2010. ICAN interoperability project is listed as one of the use cases. This will provide grant money for further development on the prototype and on semantics work beginning next year (CMRC, Roy Lowry, others to receive funding - NERSK in Norway is leading – Torill Hamre at NERSC, Norway is coordinator.). Well done!!!
In the meantime, YL is willing to make interface changes if necessary. TH and YL also discussed needing to update GeoNetwork. YL tried to implement the interface to show WMS and is still working on it. He’s using a Flex library called Modest Maps - the latest version supports WMS.
Outstanding Copenhagen tasks:
We did not review these in depth. The Nov. 2008 Task Status table needs to be updated with current status prior to Trieste workshop.
TASK: Liz will update the table and ask people for clarification as needed.
Atlas/Node Updates:
LOD: Washington Coastal Atlas is hoping to get ESRI GeoPortal extension up and running before the workshop. Delays have been due to conflicting software versions with the agency’s server environment and staff resource limitations. It would be great to have an example of an ESRI GeoNetwork node with Washington – Important to demonstrate that it can be done.
TASK: LOD will try to get ESRI GeoPortal extension up and running prior to Trieste. Will need support from YL/TH.
DH: Wisconsin has GeoNetwork up and running, and are hoping to upgrade. They have barebones coastal atlas ontology that was developed after Copenhagen. They got project funding to develop a statewide coastal atlas in the next few years. It includes a bunch of research angles – atlas design and evaluation, cartography, archive, ontologies (working with Isabel Cruz). A Coastal Management Fellow will develop a Great Lakes decision support toolbox on top of the coastal atlas. They also may develop a handbook on different web mapping technologies available.
TASK: DH will try to get GeoNetwork up and running prior to Trieste. Will need support from YL/TH.
JH: California Coastal Atlas up and running. Different approach from other atlases - focus is to provide platform for science projects that come and go, where short term projects can publish data. They have various thematic projects on acidification with Mexico, tying in with OOS, sea level rise with Navy, and watershed conditions. For their infrastructure they use Drupal with Integrated Rule Oriented Data Systems (IRODS) for data archiving and synchronization of data and metadata resources (JH encourages people to look at it). JH has not looked at GeoNetwork to see if he can do something, would like advice on it and CSW.
JH asked if there is a plan to implement open archives – an Open Source digital library methodology for harvesting MD records for digital library catalogs. Designed for discovery of digital resources. Not OGC, is alternative to CSW. RL knows some that are looking at CSW to take over.
TASK: JH will look at CSW and GeoNetwork.
Prototype needs (before/after workshop):
- Washington and Wisconsin will try to connect to the Prototype before the workshop.
- TH and YL need to update GeoNetwork. Current version of GeoNetwork is 2.2.
- Need to update ontology and to demonstrate with fewer records. Prototype is currently supporting CSW Standard v.2.0.1. ESRI GeoPortal 9.3 supports CSW standard v.2.0.2.
- YL planning to add definitions to keywords around Christmas. OCA has definitions in its ontology, but they are not in the global ontology. Would be nice to have for global ontology as well.
- Next version of prototype will be around Christmas – need to change structure of ontologies. YL will include SKOS ontology, instead of using classes (classes not ideal).
TASK: TH will add keyword definitions to global ontology and send these to YL.
TASK: TH, YL and other GeoNetwork users to update to version 2.2.
TASK: YL to update ontologies.
2. Prepare for Trieste:
General:
JH is working on governance doc and said that we are missing unification across efforts. What are decision support requirements that ICAN prototype is designed to support? What benefit does ICAN provide to participants? Initially it was technology. What are benefits of interoperability? What are limitations of not having a well-structured requirement? Need to assist in developing an ICAN strategy. What needs do we have to achieve what we would like to do? What is justification for atlases to participate?
TH: The real benefit is connection with neighbors and participating local jurisdictions. ICAN can provide a structure/mechanism so that atlases aren’t isolated islands.
DH: Needs to focus their efforts on the coastal erosion use case and test that with local groups in Wisconsin as well. Coastal planning is another important need, as it is elsewhere.
In Trieste, we need to ensure there is integrated discussion between funding group and tech group.
Program: (http://ican.science.oregonstate.edu/ican4_prog)
[NOTE: Please provide changes or additions if needed!]
Reminder: The thrust of the ICAN 4 workshop will be on conquering the long-standing task of finalizing a governance and membership structure for ICAN, as well as engaging Mediterranean partners. Therefore we did not think it feasible at this point for ICAN regular to give updates on their atlases. We really don't have the time in the schedule with the other priorities that we are trying to get to. But the "Mini Workshop for CWA Users" (Tuesday, 2:00-5:00) will likely share some updates as they reach out to the new users (see Kathrin K., Kathy T., Marcia, and David in that portion of the schedule). And a more comprehensive series of talks covering progress on current atlases could certainly be a major focus for ICAN 5 in Belgium.
Tue 9:00-10:30: Progress to Date on ICAN Prototype (Yassine, Liz, Luis, Tanya)
- Overview focusing on existing ICAN Interoperability Prototype and what has been done in last year. Include prototype purpose and benefits of connecting.
- Presentation of current prototype:
o Separate into client side/web interface and server side progress (LOD and YL)
o TH: Current status of existing atlas nodes (which atlases are ready, almost ready, and example of Oregon and/or Washington Coastal Atlases)
§ DH: Wisconsin progress in terms of Prototype?
o Luis: Ontologies update, adding definitions to global and local ontology terms, registering ontologies on MMI portal in future development, MMI and potential links with ICAN, what MMI can provide, services,
- Projects on the horizon (YL) - new funding opportunities and development directions
o We discussed the possibility of discussing technology changes we see on horizon – new technology, other ways of sharing. But we decided to discuss this later in the week.
Tue 10:45-12:00: Mini Workshop on Improving Existing Nodes, Adding New Ones (Ned Dwyer to moderate)
- ICAN Prototype Cookbook will be main topic of conversation.
- Need outline for cookbook, which will provide discussion structure. Compile this before going into the workshop, based on emails and existing presentations. Look at what’s missing, what’s needed.
TASK: TH and YL will compile emails detailing how to connect to the prototype. LOD to share Washington Coastal Atlas presentation on how to connect.
TASK: TH/YL/LOD to create one page outline which will structure discussion and circulate BEFORE NOV 10 CALL.
Wed 5:00-5:30: Presentation of ICAN Prototype Demo to EEA (non-technical – Yassine)
- Shared slot with Dawn/Ned on ICAN. We need to prepare 15-20 minute presentation, non-technical. Can be repeat of Tuesday 9:00 presentation, but less technical. (Note: this is last presentation of the day, so we should be prepared to make it shorter if necessary).
- LOD and YL have lighter version of presentations on prototype. Need to make these available on the ICAN web site.
Need more non-technical presentation for this and EEA sessions. YL and my presentation
TASK: YL and LOD to share existing prototype presentations on ICAN tech website, and use to create non-technical overview.
Wednesday 2-hour slot TBD: Tech Team continued discussions
- Topic to be decided based on Tuesday discussions.
Thursday: Tech Team Future Plans Discussion: 3 hours
- Discuss strategy for future development. This will be important in particular for the NETMAR project. Need a good, detailed plan.
- Discuss changes we see on horizon – new technology, other ways of sharing, documentation, directions ICAN could take.
Friday: Presentation of future steps
- Present outcomes of Thursday discussions.
3. ICAN Prototype Poster for AGU on Dec 15:
- "Interoperability between coastal web atlases using semantic mediation: A case study of the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN)", Abstract: http://ican.science.oregonstate.edu/node/551
- Liz, Tanya, Yassine to work on this during workshop.
- Need to bring old poster, reduce text, update images and include more images.
TASK: TH will find old poster file and bring with her. Look at it prior and see if diagrams are needed.
19 February 2009 Skype Conference Call Notes
Agenda:
- Coordinated writing of the Coastal Atlas Handbook
Participants:
Liz O’Dea (Chair), Ned Dwyer, Tanya Haddad, Yassine Lassoued, Declan Dunne, Kathrin Kopke, Luis Bermudez
In the new Coastal Atlas Handbook being written, some of the chapters cover similar topics and are written by different authors. The purpose for this cal was to provide some authors of the overview and technical chapters to discuss overlaps and cross-referencing.
Given that the theme of the call is internal to the book and not relevant to the technology or prototype, these notes were mailed to the internal list and will not be posted here. If you would like to read them, please contact Liz at lode461 (at) ecy.wa.gov.
Next call:
mid-March to discuss writing status and prototype status.
28 January 2009 Skype Conference Call Notes
Agenda:
- Ontologies
- Prototype v. 2.0: feedback
- GeoNetwork FGDC metadata issue
Participants:
Liz O’Dea (Chair), Tanya Haddad, Yassine Lassoued, Declan Dunne, Simon Claus, Luis Bermudez, David Hart
Ontology input:
- Tanya report – she has not yet had time to update the global ontology with definitions; will try to do soon.
- David Hart: Isabel Cruz at UI in Chicago has developed an Ontology tool called Agreement maker:
- Improves ontology development
- Just launched a new version
- They are looking for practical test cases, interested in ICAN possibly being one.
DH will try to use it with the Wisconsin Atlas as well. LB said MMI would be very interested in seeing it.
To do:
Task: DH will email information to group and Luis will look at it and forward to MMI.
Prototype feedback:
- TH suggested 3 categories to organize comments: ease of use, appearance, technical items.
LB: Google Codes can be used to track comments. We can use the database to keep track of suggestions. Should consider looking into it to track progress. It also has capability to share code if we want to do that in the future. LB says it’s easy to set up, organizes information automatically. Consider using this instead of the ICAN portal discussion forum. We will evaluate it.
LB quickly set up an ICAN Google Code site for us during the call. The new tool has been created at http://code.google.com/p/ican-prot/issues/list. It will be tested and populated with prototype comments if we decide to keep it.
To do:
TH will add comments to both the portal’s discussion forum and to the Google Code site to test it out. She’ll let us know how it goes.
Prototype Comments:
- YL still hasn’t made changes previously discussed, as he has not had time. He will try to get the text box LOD provided into prototype and then we can get feedback from the wider group.
- SC: Very nice site, likes design. He prefers single click instead of double click.
- SC: Symbols aren’t clear. Arrow for theme lists isn’t obvious what you are supposed to do (click to expand list of terms). YL will try to set it so the tree is automatically expanded.
- To make it clearer which list of terms the user is looking at when searching, change the word “Theme” to “Coastal Erosion” and the name of the ontology (“Global”, “MIDA”, “OCA”, etc.). How best to phrase?
- Tabs: The progression of searching is not intuitive. The flow is broken up by having the search icon to the left of the tabs.
- YL wants the user to know that they do not have to select something from every tab in order to do a search. He played around with using a “Next” button, but went with this instead.
- How best to simply communicate what the user has to do?
- SC thought the magnifying glass icon was not clear and suggested using a “run” or “go” symbol instead?
- YL: Designed this by thinking of peer to peer software. They use tabs and button search. Can we find a more suitable icon or include a message to direct people what to do?
- TH/LOD suggest moving the search icon to the right, between the “What?”, “Where?”, and “Who?” tabs and the “Results” tab would help because it’s a more logical flow.
- Another alternative is to duplicate the search button and include in each tab. This could be problematic because people might think they can only search by one tab at time.
- Alternatively the Search functionality could be embedded in the “Results” tab – search runs when tab is hit. This may be too complex.
- YL will try moving icon to right.
- Text wrapping in windows about atlases, datasets, etc: title names don’t wrap, so you can’t read beyond the extent of the window. YL said rendering is tricky, but he will look into this.
- Results presentation:
- TH: Make items top-justified instead of centered.
- Atlases - need to set a standard size for atlas icons/logos so they are consistent.
- TH: Flash is adding scroll bars to logo window in her browser.
- YL tested prototype with Firefox for errors when browsing and has cleaned it up a lot. TH: Application doesn’t detect screen size, can this be implemented? YL hasn’t seen this in his tests. TH will send on an image of this.
- Highlighting and copying text does not work because it isn’t enabled. YL said it rendered better without, but he will enable.
- How much help documentation do we want? For now, just basic help to explain how to use prototype. Once YL adds introductory text that LOD sent, we can figure out how much more is necessary.
FGDC MD: CSW doesn’t work properly with keywords:
- This problem has been discussed in previous calls. The problem has been narrowed down to this: When importing FGDC metadata into GeoNetwork, it’s converted to XML. CSW XML is then generated, and the keywords field is being dropped in the translation. The CSW output is missing keywords.
- YL sends CSW request ‘get response’ that requests keywords. OCA doesn’t have keywords when it is FGDC format.
- The workaround: TH didn’t put metadata into the CSW in FGDC format. Instead TH translated FGDC metadata to ISO herself and then imported the ISO version into the CSW. That is what is being read by the current ICAN prototype.
To do:
- TH will write up the bug and send it to LB.
- Luis will take a look at it and see if he can spot the problem. He will get in contact with GeoNetwork to inform them of the bug and see if it can get resolved.
-LOD asked if we can expect to encounter this when using ESRI GeoPortal Toolkit. They presume that it won’t be a problem using ESRI when our CSW translates our metadata from FGDC to ISO. The error appears to be with GeoNetwork.
-What’s status of testing URI as keywords? Up to YL and how he queries the keywords. Adding URI as keyword will facilitate code. YL: working with concept ids and names of classes.
- LB: It’s an easy thing to add. YL says there is not much to do there, it will just take adding a couple of lines of code. He will see what happens with GeoNetwork when he gets keywords. He will add more tags inside keyword tag, with keyword and then the URI. It’s not the same structure and he’s not sure that GeoNetwork will be able to accept it. TH tested it last fall, but this doesn’t mean that it will be accepted in a feed. It needs to be tested. YL not sure what algorithm it uses to test keywords.
To do:
- TH will put test MD in her atlas and add a couple references with URIs and no other records. She will try it in ISO MD, not FGDC. TH will let YL know and he can test if search works.
Upcoming Work:
- Many of us have time constraints, between writing and other work. YL won’t be able to make many improvements until after March.
- The NOAA Geotools Conference is March 2-5, and Dawn, Tanya and Liz will be presenting ICAN, the Oregon and Washington Coastal Atlases, and the Prototype. We need to have Prototype operational for that. YL will work on adding the text box before then.
- WA Coastal Atlas is getting ready to set up ESRI GeoPortal Toolkit, and will try to connect to the node before the conference (some internal barriers need to be overcome before it can be fully operational). Even adding 5 MD records would be useful. This will be a key point for LOD’s presentation. Hopefully we will be able to test during the week of Feb. 23-27.
Next call: Two to 3 weeks. Will talk discuss writing, chapters.
14 January 2009 Skype Conference Call Notes
Agenda:
- Ontologies: Administrative boundaries, governance, outstanding items
- Prototype v. 2.0: Introduction, initial comments
Participants:
Liz O’Dea (Chair), Tanya Haddad, Roy Lowry, Yassine Lassoued, Declan Dunne, Alessandro Sarretta, Luis Bermudez
Note: Previous notes refer to a Prototype 1.1. We skipped that version and went straight to Version 2.0 for the just-released prototype.
What to do about Admin boundaries:
- Administrative boundaries will no longer be at a high theme level (i.e., at the top level with Agents of Coastal Change, etc.) within the Coastal Erosion use case.
- Currently in the global ontology, the best place for it is within Human Responses to Coastal Change/Legislation and Policy. Administrative boundaries in local ontologies should be mapped to that location.
- Later when we expand our global ontology beyond the current use case, we can add an Administrative boundaries/Base Maps theme.
To do:
- Yassine to remove Administrative boundaries from global ontology and re-map local ontologies to Human Responses to Coastal Change/Legislation and Policy.
Ontology management:
- Currently all ontologies (global, MIDA, OCA, VLIZ) are hosted on the CMRC server instead of on atlas servers. This is done because Yassine needed to edit the ontologies and their mappings. Distributed ontologies is problematic. Yassine recommends downloading latest ontologies from the CMRC server, make edits and then resubmit ontology to him.
- Ontologies need to be cached in one place. They need to go into a registry to make them more extensible. Two good services for registries already exist (MMI, SeaDataNet). We should be submitting ontologies and mappings to them and make one of them work for us, we should not create our own. It is important that we be using MMI tools and keeping them involved.
- SparQL should be used for working on ontologies.
- Yassine looked into MMI tools but could not determine how to use them, could not find documentation. Luis recommended providing feedback to MMI so that they can make improvements – they are willing to make changes.
To do:
- Luis will send on links and information on how to use MMI tools.
- can someone outline how the ontology management would work?
- Yassine will investigate how to use MMI services.
Ontology Governance:
- This is a big issue that needs to be ironed out. We need to more formally establish governance.
- The Tech Group is the current governance structure for ontologies.
- We need a more diverse group that has authority to decide what terms should be included in the global ontology, how should this be mapped. Need to broaden beyond tech group to include more people with strong knowledge of the subject matter.
- Atlases have local contacts but unsure how we can expand to include them – need to formalize a group and involve non-tech ICAN members.
- For now we will freeze the ontology as it is (with minor adjustments). We will open the global ontology to new themes after we have a governance process set up. They can be discussed and decided by this broader group.
- Who wants to oversee this?
URI:
- This issue was raised again on how to incorporate URIs in our ontologies, which is not currently done.
- GeoNetwork is bad at managing keywords and may not be able to handle searching for URIs in the metadata. It has limited capabilities for querying standard operations using ISO and providing a graphical reference.
- Luis has contacts to make GeoNetwork add this functionality if it does not currently work.
- To test GeoNetwork, we need to encode keywords using their URIs in the MD. We try to send requests using the URIs and see if they work. If it doesn’t respond correctly, changes need to be made in GeoNetwork.
- If GeoNetwork uses URIs then it will be minor change. It will be useful for GeoNetwork to use URIs.
To do:
- Yassine will test URIs and then contact Luis. Luis can then follow up with his contacts to get the change implemented.
- Yassine will then need to implement.
- The purpose of adding URI to MD is to annotate data. URI links to certain CSW. It is a non-intrusive approach. All service providers map to that ontology and know each ontology and all mappings. It’s one less thing to do.
- Another problem is that we need to search by human readable keywords.
What do we need to do to resolve this?
- Roy said that there are many parallels to sea data net so wants to see what happens to URI in our case.
- Luis said that there are easy tools at MMI site. Luis will send link to information and documents to the list, as well as a contact person. It’s an advanced portal for handling ontologies, using bioportal. It is hard to find a better tool. They need feedback.
To do:
- Luis will send us an email with information.
- Ontology documentation needs to be added to the portal that is non-technical and easy for non-tech to understand. This is one of our outstanding items.
New Prototype 2.0:
Yassine gave overview of what is available in the new prototype:
- The ICAN Catalogue icon allows the user to search by any or all keywords using the Global Ontology, draw an area of interest to search, and select any Atlas nodes to search (allows multiple atlases to be selected). You can change the basemap provider in the map interface.
- The magnifying glass button starts the search, which sends request to atlases.
- Network Feature allows the user to search individual atlases using the atlas’s local ontology. Right-click on an atlas to view properties of a node. Double-click to open catalogue and search local ontologies.
- The Event Monitor allows user to see what happens behind the scenes. It’s important for demonstrating the prototype and showing what goes on behind the interface behind the interface.
- With the search results, can double-click an entry to get more detail about metadata records. The ISO tab in the new window gives whole metadata (now as XML, but may change).
Next version will:
- Include mapping facility and support WMS;
- Add a favorites window, like My Documents in Windows. A user can drag and drop interesting metadata records to a window to refer back to, in a single session. (A save feature could be possible but we would need to add user accounts to make saves permanent).
Prototype 2.0 feedback:
There was not enough time to provide much feedback, so it will be deferred to the next call on Jan 28. Some feedback that was discussed:
- Tanya suggested altering the search results to make it less vertical [did TH mean horizontal?].
- Luis said it was very sophisticated. Suggested it may need a single-click rather than a double-click to open items. Yassine said he designed it like this to mimic a desktop interface.
- No link to ICAN anywhere. In the acknowledgements, Yassine and ICAN team need to be named and an ICAN link added at the top of the window. We need to start with text describing who is involved in the prototype development. Then list the people to thank.
- Atlas URLs should be somewhere.
- Luis asked if it could run on iPhone. No because iPhone does not support Flash yet.
- We need to enlist a user group of people willing to test the prototype so we can see how they want to search for data, how the search should be filtered. It would be beneficial to get input from coastal managers and include them in some conference calls to discuss. Look at both ontology/terms and the web interface.
- The web client is developed in Adobe Flex. Anyone editing the web interface needs to be familiar with the programming language needed. It would be nice to have other people interested in Flex have the skills so that Yassine is not the only person who can edit the interface.
- The site needs to be evaluated from a user perspective. Some extra text would help first-time users to quickly understand how to use the site.
To do:
- Liz has drafted text for an introduction window that Yassine can add, and will send it to Yassine.
- Tanya will try to find an article she saw on how to make Flex easier to interpret for people used to regular web sites.
- We need to get feedback from the larger ICAN community on the prototype usability.
For next call on Wednesday, 28 Jan. 2009:
- People need to test the prototype and prepare comments.
- Comments should be submitted to the Discussion Forum on the portal.
Skype Conference Call AGENDA for 20081218 (canceled)
- Prototype 1.1 status and future Prototypes discussion
- Global ontology and administrative boundaries.
Skype Conference Call 20081105
Chaired by Liz O'Dea; attended also by Luis Bermudez, Simon Claus, Declan Dunne, Tanya Haddad, and Alessandro Sarretta
The 5 Nov 2008 ICAN Tech call focused on reviewing the tasks set out in Copenhagen. These notes reflect the status and next steps on some of those tasks. Linked in above is an updated Task list, modified after the discussion.
The group would like regular updates on what’s going with the funding/strategy group. This should be easier once the new ICAN portal is up and filled in.
Reminder about the prototype versions:
- Prototype 1 = Prototype demonstrated in Copenhagen.
- Prototype 1.1 = Prototype 1 migrated to a new interface using Flex, with prototype 1 improvements made.
- Prototype 2 = Prototype to demo at next workshop in Nov. 2009, with WMS and more atlases.
- Prototype 3 = Beyond Nov 2009.
Declan said that Yassine is making good progress on transferring things over to Prototype 1.1. He is currently at a course in Brazil for 2 weeks and will continue it on his return. Littoral Conference starts Nov 24.
Task 1: The new content management system (Drupal site) is currently being developed by Dawn and her crew and aim to be done on Nov 8. Once that is done we are expected to contribute content. Be ready to help populate pages, particularly if your name is down for this task. Luis is also willing to add content to web site.
To do:
- Dawn/Liz to recirculate content responsibilities (from Copenhagen discussion) amongst ourselves.
- Determine deadlines for content.
Task 2: Yassine resolved geographic search bug locally on his computer and still needs to implement it in the working prototype. This is one of the tasks that will be addressed in Prototype 1.1.
Task 3: Tanya sent potential temporary solution to FGDC metadata problem to Yassine and is waiting for it to be tested to see if it resolves the issue.
To do:
- Yassine needs to test fixes in prototype and get back to Tanya.
Task 4: MIDA manually inputting their ISO 19115 test metadata (field by field) to GeoNetwork because they are in a customized database. CMRC are currently redesigning the MIDA metadata database (“like a Phoenix” rising from the literal ashes of the torched server) to make it a more robust central system and open to connecting to all necessary services (like ISDE and the existing MIDA interface). This issue should be resolved in that development. Once portal is stable, they will look into writing script to export ISO 19139 XML from their Discovery database. GeoNetwork will then be able to bulk-import the records.
For those working with ArcCatalog, Tanya has a solution on how to batch export metadata to GeoNetwork that she can document.
Alessandro mentioned that the Open Source desktop GIS gvSIG (http://www.gvsig.gva.es/) has a metadata extension that exports into ISO and other options.
Task 6: We will discuss our visions Prototype 2 and 3 in the Nov. 20th conference call and then put it out for comment. P2 will have WMS. Too early to think about WFS. Tanya raised question about where to store links to WMS in the CSW metadata records and Luis offered to look into it. Luis cannot participate in the next call and suggested that we include:
- Improvements to the interface
- Link to GEOSS interface
- Links to MMI services and documentation on how to develop ontologies
- Information that will go into the ICAN portal (like how to join the network, how to register for ICAN, etc)
- Make sure the infrastructure can work with all OGC services. What services will be supported? WFS? SOS?
- How do we enable workflow?
- Making things easy for new users should be the priority at this stage, over adding new functions such as WFS...
To do:
- Luis will research ISO 19139 and get back to us.
- Outline Prototype 2 and 3 in Nov 20 call.
Task 18: Administrative boundaries were added prior to Workshop 3 to test the Prototype by connecting with an available VLIZ web service on administrative boundaries. We decided to keep administrative boundaries in the Use Case, however the current structure in the prototype is not appropriate (make it legislation and Policy instead?). Belgium’s data in the Prototype does not come from the Belgian Coastal Atlas, however they intend to eventually upgrade their technology to be more dynamic and implement it. Simon is interested in making relevant coastal atlas metadata available to participate in the prototype.
To do:
- December phone call to discuss the global ontology to include administrative boundaries.
- Tanya to work on definitions for Global Ontology.
- OCA and MIDA need to add administrative boundaries metadata to the prototype.
- Tanya to send global ontology and local ontology links to Simon so he can decide with Kathy what metadata is relevant to the Use Case.
- Simon will make that Use Case metadata available to the ICAN Prototype.
Luis again mentioned the new MMI tool for working with ontologies.
To do:
- Question for Luis: Is the MMI Workshop going to be available online (live or archive?)
Tasks 24-28: Documentation tasks that we set out in July overlap somewhat with the Handbook. We all need to keep these in mind as we think about the handbook, as well as the new ICAN portal. These will be online documents. There is some confusion about the writing tone for the Handbook and how it differs from the Cookbook. How academic does the Handbook need to be?
The Cookbook will be more detailed and a step by step guide that will complement the Handbook. Tanya pulled together various notes for David Hart last spring to get him up to speed for joining the prototype. We can use those as a starting point for the Cookbook template.
Alessandro is interested in knowing what he needs to start thinking about to prepare their metadata to be able to easily connect with the Prototype later. They have a lot of relevant data to contribute for the Use Case. As we begin to document things it will be useful to others to make this information available online, even in draft form.
To do:
- Tanya will pull together the notes that she shared with David Hart last spring, and we will use that to begin to draw up a cookbook outline.
- Develop cookbook outline and circulate for comments by email.
- Get clarification from Dawn about the writing tone of the Handbook. Any useful examples available?
Next Conference Calls:
Our original plans of having the call every 3rd Wed. have been difficult to stick with due to people’s schedules. We will use Doodle surveys to find suitable dates when most people are available, and try to do these in advance so people can schedule.
- Thursday Nov 20th: Prototype 1.1 status and future Prototypes discussion
- 2nd week in Dec.: Global ontology and administrative boundaries.
To do:
- Liz to send Doodle survey for Dec. meeting
Skype Conference Call 20081022
Chaired by Liz O'Dea; attended also by Tanya Haddad, Yassine Lassoued, Declan Dunne, and Alessandro Sarretta
1. Questions from the last call
Yassine agreed with Luis that the URI should not be constructed on the fly (hard coded in the prototype). The question remains that we still have two choices: i) full URI in the Keyword section, or ii) URI root in Thesaurus section plus concept name in Keyword section. Yassine is still determining which of these is easiest.
Sharing the code on the ICAN web site is premature at this stage - things are changing daily. The code will be shared when it becomes more stable.
Luis also had asked the question about the method that the CSW uses to store the URIs - he circulated an example tag for Yassine to consider.
2. Status of the tasks
Yassine has begun work on the new prototype 2.0 interface in Flex. Our task list includes tasks to improve Prototype 1. Yassine and Declan decided to save time by instead transferring the existing Prototype 1 into a new interface that uses Flex, and implement the prototype 1 changes during the migration. This interim interface is called version 1.1. He will do his best to have a functional version 1.1 By the end of November. He will try to get it working in time for Littoral 2008 conference in Venice, Nov 24-29, where Ned, Kathy and Simon will be giving a presentation and Prototype 1.1 demonstration. Once Prototype v1.1 is available Yassine will let us know and we will schedule a conference call for feedback.
In order for the prototype to work at Littoral, we will work around the FGDC metadata bug by inserting ISO metadata into the OCA GeoNetwork. This is a temporary fix and will give us more time to resolve the bug.
Prototype 2 will definitely include WMS.
Please review our task list and keep in mind deadlines for our tasks. The updated Tech task list is available above ("Liz's spreadsheet").. We will review this in the next conference call.
ICAN Drupal Site: Dawn is working to transfer web content to the new ICAN Drupal site for the Nov 1st deadline. Those involved in contributing to this should be prepared to add content (Dawn sent Drupal author training a couple of months ago to those who are listed contributors).
3. Next calls
Nov. 5th at 8:00am Pacific/16:00 Irish time (Note change of time): Prototype Status, review task list.
Nov. 19th at 8:00am Pacific/16:00 Irish time: Prototype 1.1 feedback call, prior to Littoral conference.
Skype Conference Call 20081007
Chaired by Liz O'Dea; attended also by Tanya Haddad and Luis Bermudez
Outstanding tasks from last call:
- September was a busy month for folks so there are still remaining tasks from the last call to be done by the end of October.
o Tanya’s going to send sample metadata to Ali so he can look into resolving the FGDC-to-ISO metadata bug in GeoNetwork.
o We need to have another call in October with the CMRC contingent to talk about the status of tasks and collaborate. Suggest October 15th ?
Washington Coastal Atlas:
- If we get the go-ahead to join, WA Dept of Ecology will use ESRI ArcGIS Portal Toolkit as the CSW. It will be beneficial to have a COTS product included in the prototype to get the experience. Liz met with ESRI Olympia to discuss if their CSW would have what’s necessary to work with the ICAN prototype (Thanks to Declan for the questions to ask!), and it looks good. They showed great interest in how it would be used in the ICAN prototype. (GIS Portal Toolkit is currently free, but we just learned they are talking about charging for it – apparently the new version is so easy to set up that they aren’t making enough money from support requests! We have ordered it already.)
URIs in the ICAN Prototype:
- Luis raised an issue about how we are discussing the technical approach in the project, after he presented at OGC. In the examples he used, he wasn’t able to see any URIs in the data that was sent. He is wondering if we are still using URIs in the prototype? He wants to be sure that he is selling the prototype correctly.
- The issue is that we agreed originally to use URIs as keywords, and yet our current deployment does not reflect that practice. So he guesses that the URIs are being constructed on the fly. We thought this would be something that Yassine could confirm. Luis requested that we revisit this technical point as it is very important that the full URI be included in the Keywords of the metadata, because it is important to know the ontology version being used, and this information should be provided by the data owner. Everyone tags services with their own vocabulary. Then map it to a central ontology and that’s it.
- Another point raised by Luis was the use of the correct ISO tags for storing the URI. We need to see if GeoNetwork (and ESRI’s portal toolkit) can support the appropriate ISO tags. See Luis’s email to the ICAN_Tech list from Sept. 16, 2008, where he shared this example of what the appropriate tag should look like:
Mis-translation Bug:
- One of the bugs in prototype 1 is that FGDC metadata is not properly translated to ISO on the fly by GeoNetwork. Ali will look into this bug. Hopefully the XSLT can be changed.
- Tanya says that ArcGIS 9.3 has a much-improved Metadata Translator tool. Tanya will play with it and see if it might point to ways to resolve the FGDC bug.
- We need to resolve the GeoNetwork bug in reading FGDC metadata directly and translating it into ISO on-the-fly. It is a harder sell if we are asking all FGDC people to translate all of their metadata into ISO to connect with the Prototype.
MMI:
- Luis’s presentation got a lot of good interest in our prototype.
- MMI plans to release a new suite of ontology tools next month that will be more straightforward and easier to use than existing ontology tools. It will upload ontologies to a registry and make it easy to search across existing ontologies. The tool is currently in alpha testing. Se example at the MMI Semantic web site, http://mmisw.org/regtest/.
Next calls:
Oct. 15th at 8:30 Pacific/11:30 Eastern / 16:30 Irish – October catch-up call
Nov. 5th at 8:30 Pacific/11:30 Eastern / 16:30 Irish – Discuss our vision of prototypes 2 and
Skype Conference Call 20080903
Chaired by Liz and Declan; attended also by Tanya, Dawn, Luis Bermudez, John Helly,
Goal is to discuss the tasklist and timeline that we set out in Copenhagen, as well as the update on the technical work in progress on the current prototype.
Picking up where we left off:
Pinpoint tasks, update deadlines, and make sure that we can accomplish what we set out to do
Do we need to elaborate on any points, set new dates
Let's just go through the list on Liz's spreadsheet
WEB PORTAL
Overview by Dawn
Luis - Drupal would like to help groups communicate better
help someone new to ICAN get engaged more quickly and better - their intro to ICAN
examples of WMSs,
John has been building Drupal sites and written a module to imbed SRB and allow it to be searched from a Drupal page - offers opp to put a federated data network behind a Drupal site
New deadline of Nov 1
Dawn's list of structure - will want to assign tasks to people to populate with content once the basic blocks and menus are modified
- CMS system we'd agree to initially develop using Drupal - Dawn is the
super admin and will be beginning to assemble the various lists of links
we'd talked about adding. She will also initiate the template
modifications discussed in copenhagen. Next step will be interfacing
with Simon's group about possibly connecting to their database of
experts, and other changes that will be enable more collaboration
between the ICAN participants. John Helly offered that he has recently
been working in Drupal and has authored a module to allow the embedding
of a ICAN like search into a Drupal site. Dawn will connect with John on
this.
TECHNOLOGY
- Yassine reported that he has a local solution to the geographic search
bug. He will try to get the solution up onto the sever by October.
Resolve Geographic Search Bug
- The OCA metadata search bug is related to the FGDC metadata
translation to ISO. Geonetwork tries to do an automatic translation that
is not working correctly, which makes the metadata impossible to search
once transformed. Ali from CMRC has been working a lot with GeoNetwork
SLD files and might be able to help track down the source of this bug.
Resolve OCA metadata search bug
Tanya
- Tanya and Kathrin will coordinate on the "ease of metadata insert"
issue. It should be an easy fix.
- same bug related to conversion from FGDC to ISO style sheet
- blunt force method is to switch all metadata from FGDC to ISO before loading
or more elegant is to dive into SLD files and see where we can find out where the translation mistake is happening (this is time well spent because otherwise it will be a problem for all US participants)
having to convert all FGDC metadata will be one more barrier to their participation
- needs time for occasional testing; needs to happen on Ireland end; Tanya can make changes to metadata but needs CMRC to make changes on search function end
- Yassine could only see the bug when connecting to OCA server with CSW query; from interface you can't see it; someone at CMRC is now doing work on GeoNetwork and playing around with GeoNetwork style sheets and perhaps he (Ali) could have a look at it
- Tanya to send sample metadata to CMRC to insert in GeoNetwork and test
- will keep Oct 2008 deadline and see how it progresses (could be difficult bug to fix)
- We set a date of end of October for error handling.
- We will initiate prototype II in November 2008. Yassine is testing
Adobe flex as a interface option.
- we still need to evaluate possible lessons that could be learned from
efforts like InterRisk and ISDE.
- we deferred smart search and WFS discussions to later in the year, as
we need to think more about it, and get other items described below done
first.
- We decided to implement WMS by December 2008. First step will be
thumbnails, second step will be full map access
Manual insertion methods
Tanya
- open-ended issue, prototype 2 at this point with no deadline
- should be a simple issue with a short date -
- a modification of which part of GeoNetwork Kathrin is using - move from manual to bulk import
- need to write a script to point to where bulk insert function is
- November deadline
Improve Error Mgmt
Yassine
- manage basic errors such as if 1 node is not connected it breaks up everything; put in directive to ignore those errors so as not to affect other nodes
- end of October
Next Prototype
Declan
- evaluate architecture
- smart search
- WFS
- start in November on prototype 2
- Yassine testing new technology here (Adobe Flex); Flex is a programming language which is Adobe and it is for client side programming and replaces JavaScript in web app (while JavaScript is executed by browser, Flex is executed by a Flash Payer plugin in your browser; good news is that if you develop any app in Flex it will be executed by any Flash Player in any browser; more dynamic, nicer, more advanced graphics; better for next prototype)
- WMS should be next step, to set these up at each ICAN node; MIDA has this already and OCA can set up quickly
- next, implement thumbnails associated with metadata (search comes back with results including map thumbnail); one larger map to visualize that dataset in detail; can re-use MIDA web GIS engine as a starter
- smart search; not sure how it will work exactly yet, many scenarios to consider; giving more flexibility in typing and selecting keywords; not obliged to select global keyword, can select others which will then be translated to global keyword; or can use MiDA keyword at local level which gets translated to global keyword
- WFS can be discussed further in Nov and Dec; focus on WMS for the time being
INTERFACE
Lots of items that all need to be moved to Oct
- we discussed fixing major functional bugs in prototype I by end of
october, and then defer other major interface improvements (anything not
easy) to prototype II. We hope to have a stable version of prototype II
ready by March 2009 for new ICAN folks to plug into
Nested search - implementing a tree
Yassine
- would prefer to add the new functionalities in Prototype 2 as technology will be changing anyway; save effort by just fixing errors in current version and then adding new functions for Prototype 2
- however if Prototype 1 is done by October, then time frame for these new functions in 2 will be straightforward; differences will be at interface level (HTML/Javascript to Flex programming), while engine on server side will remain the same
- get Prototype 2 to work before ICAN 4 workshop in Trieste, Italy
- at some point Prototype 1 will go to an unpublished state so that people won't see it and get confused;
- Prototype 1 is demonstrating a backend solution; 2 will have more of a focus on the front end user experience
- wrap Prototype 1 by October and move into Phase 2 after that; set up WMS servers in meantime; postpone interface issues until Phase 2
Overall timeline question - what do we tell new ICAN nodes about when it is possible for them to plug in (e.g., David Hart of Wisconsin) - they should plug into Prototype 2 - we need to migrate function of 1 to 2; by end of year
- they need to wait for Prototype 2 because of the way that we define key words and mappings will likely change (SKOS in RDF used in GeoNetwork but we are now using OWL which is not supported in GeoNetwork;
- we are using URI of term that holds tags to metadata record, but the way that we do mappings might change (right now we do mappings in OWL, but it is worth investigating the use of SKOS instead); MMI uses SKOS for most of the mappings, and it is built into the MMI VINE tool
- Luis - new users should be able to just set up WMS server, tag keywords, and then mappings can be done regardless of prototype version
- Yassine - trying to save effort of doing things twice
- key is that GeoNetwork is being used to provide CSW service for all atlas nodes; GeoNetwork supports the use of thesauri so you can define that in RDF or SKOS; current version of GeoNetwork does not do inferencing, maybe next release may support that; but why is reasoning needed? Some of the reasoning is done at the global level, as well as at local level (where we have a hierarchy of concepts); atlas provider must link records to thesaurus in GeoNetwork; language that we use to define our concepts should be same one use in GeoNetwork (problem is that GeoNetwork does not support OWL)
- Luis suggests that to keep things open, if someone has WMS and want to use CSW they can just publish in RDF, SKOS, OWL, or whatever format without worrying about doing reasoning. Can we let everyone use SKOS? All reasoning should be done only at portal side/semantic mediator side.
So if we Prototype 1 and minimum way to participate which already exists, let they continue for users while we learn about new technologies and players. We should not make user try to do reasoning on their side (keyword matching with thesaurus on network). People may also choose in future to stand up CSW without GeoNetwork (e.g., an ESRI version may be forthcoming), so we may not want to wed our architecture too closely to GeoNetwork
- Let's commit to use existing ontologies and try to improve only a few things. Let's incorporate that into documentation for new nodes which will also reside on the Drupal
- Liz is working on a technical work plan to justify her work on ICAN; she has produced a task list; she has cookbook of all steps needed to get Washington Coastal Atlas up to speed as a node; great template
- Bugzilla ready by December; should apply to interface, but also to everything else (ontologies, etc.)
Ontologies
Tanya, Liz, Declan, Yassine
- Declan suggested that we do a comprehensive review of what we have
done with ontologies once we are finished with fixing the bugs from
prototype I. This will help lead us into documentation of the ontology
portion of our work
- we had a discussion about Geonetwork, and how it is being used.
Yassine raised the question that Geonetwork uses SKOS and RDF and should
we reconsider our use of OWL? Luis argued that our current approach is
sound as it keeps the burden of connecting for new Atlases low. There
seemed to be some agreement towards the end of the discussion that we
would stick with the current approach.
- Luis described ontology registry products from MMI and from Stanford
and advised that ICAN should look at implementing something in this
regard.
Add MIDA admin boundaries to MIDA ontology
- results are only returned from Belgium because of Simon's node
- need to keep focus on coastal erosion as our continuing test case
- other topics may be incorporated in Prototype 3
- do we need to keep Admin boundary in or should we ask Simon to replace Admin boundaries with coastal erosion?
- we need to communicate to Simon on the emphasis on coastal erosion themes (Liz, Tanya, Yassine)
All other blue tasks under Ontologies
Tanya to take on superterms task
Need further discussion on need to separate mapping from local ontologies. Luis - Yes, they should be separated. MMI workshop at Huntsville shows some of the MMI products, Registry of Ontologies.pdf shows how easy it is to submit an ontology, a mapping to a registry and then you can see relations because you submitted the mappings
SPARKL interface available now. Will be enhancing the MMI registry or using the BioMed Registry (Stanford) which is incredible. Overall, it will be beneficial for ICAN to use their registry, good linkage to MMI too.
DOCUMENTATION
- We will need to get complete drafts of the various documentation needs
by the end of the year before we move into major recommendations for the
next phase of ICAN
Liz has great start with her outline of tasks
Next month's conference call can look at that and assign writing tasks
Yassine and Declan already have a lot of tasks, so we still need to be sensitive to divvying up the work
Liz will email cookbook doc to everyone for discussion
How much time do we want to spend documenting version 1? Perhaps merge tasks between version 1 and 2
Recs for next phase - on hold
Dawn will send around the benefits list to ICAN Tech
MISCELLANEOUS
- Skype calls - Liz will oversee
- Contact GeoNetwork people - Yassine still working on it; Paula Carerra no longer on GeoNetwork team; needs to contact Joeren Titchnor is the main contact person actually, and Tanya has his email. Yassine will still contact Paula tomorrow and try to contact Joeren as well
SUMMARY
- version 1 finished by end of October (fixing bugs, flash page)
next we will review what we have done, esp. in terms of ontologies (Yassine and Luis to discuss methodology and make sure it is standardized for new nodes; document that)
Liz working on general cookbook for new nodes coming online
Yassine working on new technologies such as Flex
End of December - documentation and review stage to discussion of version 2 in January 2009
WMS stage set up of server can be done now but bigger issue of plugging into atlas needs more development work and be pushed into January 2009, as well as WFS
WFS is still on the table for prototype 3 so need to discuss more about when it should fit in
New GEOSS participation
- in GEOSS response we said that we were going to be a community registry - one community registry to link to GEOSS, but we don't have an API or interface for this just yet
- we need a CSW for global atlas that encompasses all of the other CSWs - so that is the idea of the CSW mediation, not implemented yet, but will be in version 2 where the atlas exposes a CSW service so that you can send a query. You can send a CSW to an atlas, it rewrites to a local CSW request, local sends answer back to application making the request
- GEOSS meeting in September in Boulder; Dawn and Luis will report back
- GEOSS registry should be independent of atlas interface; so in theory it should be easy to set up a separate CSW node; perhaps aim for January
- Dawn and Luis will email us after the Sept 25-26 GEOSS meeting to fill
us in on the relavent GEOSS related deadlines.
NEXT CALL?
7 October 2008
Follow-up 20080627
Here is the newer version of the Oregon Coastal Atlas ontology:
www.coastalatlas.net/ont/20080627/theme
Follow-up 20080618
Here is the newer version of the Oregon Coastal Atlas ontology:
www.coastalatlas.net/ont/20080618/theme
Follow-up 20080611
Here is the URL for the Oregon Coastal Atlas GeoNetwork site:
www.coastalatlas.net:8080/geonetwork
Tanya still has plans to add some more metadata records, and to add more ontology keywords to the metadata. She also wants to add logos and thumbnail images to the records.
She will do this on Thursday after meeting with Dawn about the local ontology. She will also be adding the WMS URL to the "Online Resources" section for all the records.
Meeting 20080610
Skype conference call on ICAN Prototype
Tuesday, 10 June 2008, 1200 ET, 0900 PT, 1600 UTC
Participants:
Yassine, Declan, Katherine, Ned - CMRC
Dawn - OSU
Tanya - OCMP
Liz - Washington Dept. of Ecology
Luis - SURA
** Seek to finish prototype 1 week before workshop to have participants demo
** June 30 deadline for completion
Issues to discuss:
-- (1) Improving the global ontology --
- only 3 items at the moment - need to expand this a bit (Coastal Change Topic)
Human Responses to Coastal Erosion
Agents of Coastal Change
Effects of Coastal Change
- need to refine key words, we have 50-60 and it would be nice to refine this to around 10
- we did have levels below each of the 3, are we taking the 3 and break into sub-categories?
Yes, we are refining the categories and breaking them down
Tanya and Liz were discussing this already at the early stages
We started with top level only at early stages, but now would like sub-categories and to map to local ontologies
We already have a lot of terms from ontologies, could we create subclasses based on what we have in the other ontologies? We guaranteee that the categories that we are making result in a successful search
Create subclasses of 3 term, then map between them?
Tanya and Kathrin can exchange ideas
ACTION: Tanya will try to find list of sub-terms that we had earlier and forward it to the group, Kathrin will feed into process, Ned and rest of group will give input
** See Tanya's separate email "Global ontology suggested sub-terms"
----------
Hi Ned and Katherine,
In regards to refining the global ontolotgy terms (for coastal erosion), I referred to our earlier notes from October 2, 2007:
workshop1.science.oregonstate.edu/cv
If you recall, we arrived at the current 3 super terms in the end by adopting terms from the USGS controlled vocabulary for coastal erosion:
mrib.usgs.gov/user/cch/meta/hot_topics.txt
Since this controlled vocabulary is fairly well developed, I would suggest that we select our new subterms for the global ontology from the "next level down" on this list.
Does this sound like a good approach to you guys? To give you an idea of what this looks like in a more simplified view take a look at the following:
Agents_of_Coastal_Change
- Natural_Processes
- Human_Activities
- Sediment_Budget
Effects_of_Coastal_Change
- Barrier_Island_Migration
- Emergence
- Flooding
- Habitat_Alteration
- Saltwater_Intrusion
- Shoaling
- Shoreline_Accretion
- Shoreline_Erosion
- Submergence
Human_Responses_to_Coastal_Change
- Disaster_Recovery_and_Reconstruction
- Emergency_Response
- Legislation
- Mitigation_Strategies
- Policy
- Preparedness
The above only goes down one level, but it gets us pretty close to Yassine's suggestion of 15 terms in the 2nd level of the global ontology. Of course, these are not terms I am wedded to - so any suggested changes that you folks have are most welcome.
let me know what you think,
Tanya
-----------------
-- (2) Improving local ontologies --
ACTION: We need to have last look at local ontologies to check quality of relationships and themes. We may need to remove some themes as there may be too many.
- What criteria to use? relevance-relevance? Probably redundancy in the terms, and relationships can be messy sometimes (need to make sure that that is true). We need to provide new links between local and global ontologies.
ACTION: Split into 2 groups for refining of CMRC and OCA local ontologies respectively. OCA group will do separate Skype call or email exchanges.
ACTION: Thursday, June 12th works for local OCA email exchange between Tanya, Dawn, and Liz, and they will follow up with a late afternoon Skype conference call hosted by Dawn, if necessary
-- (3) Enabling Web mapping using MapServer
Question for OCA team regarding GeoNetwork server (e.g., server failed during IODE workshop in Belgium in February). That was close to a period of server transition for OCMP, but it should be up and stable now. Tanya just upgraded to GeoNetwork 2.2 and still needs to migrate metadata (can do this by end of day). Will use same keywords as defined in the ontologies, use the same URI string, just the keyword name, not the whole URI.
- Tanya will send URL for new
- There is a WMS set up, not very many layers yet. MIDA has WMS layers enabled and will soon tune it.
- will synch layers in GeoNetwork with WMS
- storing URLs to WMS in metadata - a sticking point. Where to store WMS URL within GeoNetwork (look into online resource - Yassine will send Tanya the exact section that talks about that)
- Current prototype has URL of WMS in the registry of atlases, so may not need to have the URL in the metadata. The name of the layer is key and should be stored according to instructions in online resource of GeoNetwork
Prototype does not do mapping yet, just metadata return. Mapping interface not as important. We talked about WCS at first. We need to get WCS up and running. WMS as a second stage can be discussed at the workshop. There are no huge interoperability needs at WMS side anyway.
Is prototype still pointing to MIDA records exclusively? Yes, needs to be reconfigured to point to true OCA metadata.
-- (4) Integrating the VLIZ atlas: Creating an ontology for VLIZ Atlas, etc. --
VLIZ is Belgium organization of Simon Claus
Interested to see if we could integrate boundary layers such as EEZ in interop prototype; worth doing in context of EEA conference. To have a third partner from Europe would be very good, should foster further enthusiasm.
Send URL for atlas, could we create a couple of keywords for the mainly base maps and layers
Wisconsin missing terms and developing a full-blown ontology, and they are quite far ahead in terms of coastal erosion theme. Would not be hard to bring up to speed, has a bunch of metadata lined up.
CMRC will mentor VLIZ, OCA will mentor Wisconsin Sea Grant
Adding terms to global ontology - everyone should be involved in that, both sides, US and Europe. We should add a new theme to the global ontology about admin boundaries and related. This is in addition to coastal erosion. You always needs those coastline, admin boundaries anyway.
ACTION: "administrative boundaries" is a good term to start of with - sufficiently restrictive that everyone knows what it means and can develop keywords based on this such as:
- country boundaries
- EEZ
- territorial sea for US?
Luis is the only one who has access to the global ontology. You can always download and make changes and send back to Luis to upload it.
Luis suggests putting this into MMI ontology registry (http://marinemetadata.org:9600/registry)
using the MMI services such as ontology registry, so you could have an ontology, change it, and then re-register it to MMI registry.
Locally, have a local ontology copy, work on it and then upload it
Host global ontology on CMRC server but then register it on MMI
Luis just sent email of 3 ontologies (2 local and 1 global) to assist
------------
Here is a screenshot of the 3 super terms and coa and mida term. Thoughts:
I think we need to define better what is Agent, Effect and Human Response. For example we have coa:Bathymetry under agent and mida:Bathymetry under effects. Is this an issue ?
------------
(4.1) Improving MMI ontology registry to meet ICAN needs [Luis]
- with another group coming into the interop prototype, where are they going to register their ontology?
registry of ontologies and registry of CSWs - we can search on an ontology to help create the user interface
- how to add another atlas? we need their name, their CSW, their ontology, and their ontology mapping, but we need a file or registry to know who are the atlases currently in. Right now this is just a text file on the CMRC server specifying all of the participating atlases. So this is not hard coded, which is good.
We might consider putting this text file in a place that all can access, and possibly in XML format.
(4.2) improvements on the user interface [Luis]
- one request to decrease width of the interface a bit (by 100-150 pixels). Too wide for some of our smaller screens. Perhaps just shrink map a bit.
- If we add sub-terms to global ontology, we might consider a drop-down menu. But it is straightforward to fix the size of the list. Needs to be a scrollable multi-list so that people can select many themes at once.
- Bounding Box Issue: If you do a search on any area with bounding boxes and no results are obtained, we should put a popup saying no records were found. Problem with bounding boxes must be with CSW in GeoNetwork. Known bugs page?
- Also check coordinates as stored in metadata. They must be stored in lat/long. It's possible that they could have been blank by mistake. Or check the SRS so that metadata record is indeed correctly chosen.
-- (5) Other issues --
Anyone familiar with a javascript to create an HMTL tree. Instead of a mere list of keywords, it would be nice to have a hierarchy of keywords. Any available libraries for creating trees?
If so, please send to the list
Follow ICAN workshop and EEA conference plans at
ican.science.oregonstate.edu
Should probably due weekly conference calls from here on in
Next call would be June 18, 19, or 20. Yassine will schedule this further, next week after we see how things are progressing.
Let's schedule in a standard TIME, which will be 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m.
Meeting 20071219
Participants: Declan, Yassine, Tanya
Notes
- we discussed the status of the GeoNetwork installations, the Atlas Ontologies and the Prototype Interface.
- Both MIDA and OCA are in a similar position with regards to their GeoNetwork installations. OCA has moved the installation to it's final destination server, which is currently only accessible internally, but which should allow external access by early January. Both MIDA and OCA need to migrate appropriate metadata into their respective GeoNetwork installations. We discussed keeping the number of metadata records small and roughly parallel in numbers, so as to minimize future work with any revisions to keywords and URIs.
- Yassine showed the early stages of the functional prototype interface. Currently the prototype can perform a query on the ontologies of both Atlases (MIDA and OCA), and return keywords from each Atlas associated with the super-terms being used in the search interface. From here it is a (still to be coded) next step to connecting directly to the metadata in the respective GeoNetwork installations, once that metadata is in place.
- In addition to needing to populate GeoNetwork with metadata, both MIDA and OCA need to take another joint look at the super-ontology, and come up with subcategory terms for each of the 3 existing super-terms. This will enable the search interface of the Prototype to present a user with the option of a more refined search (eg. via a tree of terms), which in turn will lead to more specific search results. So this task (creating sub-categories for the super-ontology) will be one of the tasks that both MIDA and OCA should work on in the new year.
Since many people will be/are gone for the holidays, we figured that we would sort out the next conference call via email after the new year, with the second week of January being the first likely productive opportunity for a call.
Merry Christmas, Eid Mubarak, and Happy New Year!
Meeting 20071113
Participants: Liz, Declan, Yassine, Tanya, Luis
Notes
Interface discussion
--------------------------
web interface will have server registry that contains csw endpoints and the ontology related to the csw
the interface also knows about the super ontology
first screen
----------------
professional logo
search interface with keywords from global theme ontololgy
second screen
--------------------
list of results related to keyword that the user submitted.
each result will have thumbnail, title, description, link to full metadata, and link to WMS
Will we have an integrated map interface with data overlay from Ireland and Oregon? (perhaps in second phase)
Lat/Long WGS84 - common projection to support for WMS
Third screen
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A simple WMS that will display a single dataset over base layers, with
no additional functionality.
In second phase we may choose to have an integrated map interface with
data overlay from Ireland and Oregon, with some basic functionality.
Lat/Long WGS84 - common projection to support for WMS
Building the interface:
-----------------------
Yassine is experimenting with Jena 2's inference engine:
jena.sourceforge.net/inference
Luis will send Yassine an example for importing multiple ontologies into Jena 2
MIDA is taking the lead in the prototype interface:
- Liz will work on the graphic aspects of the interface
- Yassine will work on the inference issues that generate the multiple quries to the CSW servers
- Declan will work on the CSW responses
We'd tentatively like to have a prototype up and testable by Christmas
Next conference call meeting is Nov 28th.
Meeting 20071031
Participants: Liz, Declan, Yassine, Tanya, Luis
Agenda
- ontologies status
- status of CSW /GeoNetwork implementation
- URI encodings in ISO. Summary of comments here:
General Comments
- The ontologies will be cleaned in the next weeks
- Tanya will test a CSW client in the next weeks
- Agreement on URIs encoding. See proposal 3 here.
- Discussion started about the web interface. It should have a query form and the results could be displayed as records, each record containing a tile, information and a thumbnail. There could an option “add this layer”. The areas are small compare to the a world map, so it will be difficult to displays oregon and an ireland layers in the same map. A world coast line was identified to be used as a common layer. A page in the wiki will be opened to continue this discussion.
Meeting 20071017
Participants: Liz, Declan, Iban, Tanya, Roy, Eoin, Luis
Agenda
- status of CSW /GeoNetwork implementation
- URI encodings in CSW, WMS and WFS
- review semantic mediation steps
- discuss ontology status and mapping
Notes for discussion were posted here: http://workshop1.science.oregonstate.edu/node/81
General Comments
- Tanya was able to get Metadata into Geonetwork, but still haven’t tested the CSW service.
- Agreed to put URIs inside CSW responses. Will check how SeadataNet is doing it and discuss it via email.
- Semantic mediation steps looks good. CSW will contain metadata about WMS. This metadata will contain the URIs. We will not be concern in the near future about WFS and WMS exposing URIs.
- Discussed ontology experiences. The ontologies currently contain more than what is needed and not all the terms will be map to the super ontology. This is OK if the mapped terms are currently representing available layers. Also one term could be mapped to more than 2 super terms.
- Portal task will begin in 2-3 weeks. Before that we will not need to access CSW. Firewall problems could be resolve then.
Meeting 20071003
Participants: Liz, Declan, Iban, Tanya, Roy, Eoin
General Comments
We had a short but good discussion on choosing the super terms, referencing the summary email from yesterday. In the end we chose to revert to using the three from the USGS controlled vocabulary:
- Agents_of_Coastal_Change
- Effects_of_Coastal_Change
- Human_Responses_to_Coastal_Change
It was great to have Roy on the line to say that he liked the clarity of these terms. We wanted to request that Luis create a new ontology from these so that Liz and Tanya can begin mapping the respective Atlas terms to that ontology.
Meeting 20070912
Participants: Liz, Tanya, Yassine, Luis, Iban, Declan
General Comments
- Creation of the ontologies took about 3 days. Problem cleaning the terms, creating the hierarchy and manually creating them in Protege.
- USGS hazard ontology is more geophysical and lacks of demographics.
- Main topics that we know we could have data for are: human responses and coastal vulnerability. The later could be further subdivide into shoreline types and different demographics.
