Geodata Discovery Working Group
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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:
Public Datasets for Possible Mirroring or Distribution
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
- 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)