Geodata Discovery Working Group

This is a Working Group started by the Public Geospatial Data Committee.

While OSGeo can consider hosting sets of public geodata, (and for the purposes of offering maintained packages of high-quality data for education and demonstration, it probably will), we can compile a set of best practises and references to good prior art for building and maintaining collections of data and metadata.

Focus

 * Metadata for collections of geographic information.
 * Providing best practise and prototypes for geodata search facilities
 * Help with providing input into the OSGeo repository/services at http://osgeo.telascience.org/
 * Providing 'catalog'/discovery/search services as part of OSGeo activities in promoting access to public domain and open licensed bodies of data.

Participants

 * Jo Walsh
 * Schuyler Erle
 * David Bitner
 * Perry Nacionales
 * Markus Neteler
 * Arnulf Christl
 * Bob Wang
 * Oscar Cantán
 * Stefan Keller
 * please add yourself

Existing (Meta) Search Projects and Related Efforts
Search Services:
 * (Meta) Data Catalogues / Data Repositories
 * Mapdex is "a global Index of 2,018 servers, serving 37,168 map services, containing over 400,000 GIS Layers, covering more than 4,000,000 columns!"
 * GeoTorrent hosts BitTorrents of shapefile/TIFF format data.
 * GeoNetwork "Find Interactive Maps, GIS datasets, Satellite Imagery and Related Applications"
 * DLESE Collection System offers a metadata repository and editor
 * Geo Meta Data Base (GMDB) metadata repository and editor based on ISO 19115 Metadata Core with XML export to ISO 19115 CH-Profile/GM03 (german only)
 * GDI Portals (country specific): US, UK, D, A, CH, LI, F, ...
 * (Meta) Search Engines:
 * geometa.info - search engine for geospatial services, data and documents combining structured and unstructured data (currently german only)
 * Google search using 'allinurl' parameter

Lists:
 * Web Services lists:
 * http://www.skylab-mobilesystems.com/ger/wms_serverlist.html simple WMS service URL list
 * http://www.refractions.net/white_papers/ogcsurvey/ Automated OGC Survey on the Web (WMF, WFS, ...)
 * http://geometa.info/search.jsp?query=type%3Awms WMS search engine
 * http://exploreourpla.net/maps/
 * US data servers:
 * http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/

Gazetteer Data
... basically placenames with coordinates ...


 * Geonames.org gazetteer (includes NGA GNS Gazetteer)
 * WorldWind Placenames (markusN can provide PERL to read this)

Vector data

 * VMAP0 - 1:1Mio, very generalised vector data for many features, around 70 layers
 * GSHHS - world coastlines, different scales available
 * TIGER/Line (USA) - street and addressing data for the US
 * RNF (Canada) - street and addressing data for Canada
 * OpenStreetMap - data available through a HTTP based XML interface. They've also been getting requests for shapefile and GML output of their data.

Raster data

 * DEM
 * SRTM V2
 * ETOPO2
 * TOPEX: SRTM30 (with GTOPO30 data for high latitudes where SRTM data are not available)
 * NOAA TCM LIDAR / IfSAR
 * Satellite Data
 * Landsat (OnEarth mirror already at telascience)
 * Blue Marble / Blue Marble Next Generation (mirror already at telascience)
 * ASTER (from GLCF)
 * MODIS (from NASA EDC)
 * USGS Urban Orthos (URL?)
 * Maps derived from Satellite Data
 * Nested Imagery Layer (Best of -- resolution -- with seamless zoom through multiple levels)
 * AVHRR Landuse Map from GLCF
 * natural earth
 * City lights
 * HydroSHEDS - Hydrological data and maps based on SHuttle Elevation Derivatives at multiple Scales

Wishlist for Public Datasets

 * Orthophotos
 * Possible sources:
 * http://www.fgdl.org/download/index.html
 * http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/

Search Protocols

 * GIS specific:
 * OGC's CSW 2.0 (work in progress...) (ISO/OGC's "ISO19115/ISO19119 Application Profile for CSW 2.0")
 * OGC's WFS (profile) serving (profiled) ISO 19115/19119 metadata format...?
 * and many more 'lean and mean' proposals on project level...
 * Related search protocols - possibly to be profiled or specialized by geoinformation requirements:
 * Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting 2.0 (OAI-PMH)
 * Search/Retrieve via URL (SRU/SRW)
 * OpenSearch proposal from A9
 * Z39.50 ANSI/NISO standard protocol
 * ebXML/ebRIM Messaging Service 2.0

Hosting Plan
(placeholder for an initial hosting plan sketch)