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

Existing meta projects and related efforts

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
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
US data servers
- http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/

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)
- 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/

Hosting Plan

(placeholder for an initial hosting plan sketch)