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
• please add yourself

Existing and related projects

• 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

Public Datasets for Possible Mirroring or Distribution

• Gazetteer Data (basically placenames with coordinates)
  • NGA GNS Gazetteer
  • WorldWind Placenames (markusN can provide PERL to read this)
  • Geonames.org gazetteer

• 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)
  • Satellite Data
    • Landsat (OnEarth mirror already at telascience)
    • Blue Marble / Blue Marble Next Generation (mirror already at telascience)
    • ASTER
    • MODIS
  • Maps derived from Satellite Data
    • AVHRR Landuse Map from GLCF
    • natural earth
    • City lights

Hosting Plan

(placeholder for an initial hosting plan sketch)

See Also

• Geodata Packaging Working Group
• Geodata Licensing Working Group
• WMS Tile Caching proposal