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ShareGeo

Discovering and Sharing Geospatial Data

http://edina.ac.uk/projects/sharegeo/

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Why Share Geospatial data?• Many decades of collection and use of geospatial data in a range of academic disciplines for research and teaching

•Considerable cost and time invested in geospatial data creation

•Potential for creating new datasets

•Increase the visibility of your research

•Create a record of your data

•Access derived licensed data

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Repository Technology

• Using DSpace 1.5.x and XMLUI (Manakin) with Postgres database

• Developed own theme using CSS

• Developed add on for statistics (who downloaded what dataset and how often)

• Authorisation library integrated with Digimap users (via UK federation)

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ShareGeo Overview

• Supports geospatial data derived from licensed materials as well as open-access data

• Access restricted to registered Digimap users because of IPR concerns over derived data from Ordnance Survey, BGS etc.

• Data can be for anywhere in the world

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Examples of Geospatial data in ShareGeo

Grids Boundaries

DTM

Derived OS data

GPSLand -use

Imagery

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What can you do with ShareGeo?

• Find: users can search for geo data using a variety of methods, including by map search interface

• Re-Use: users can download datasets for their own

use in GIS. • Share: users can contribute their own datasets for

sharing with other ShareGeo users

See GRADE project for historical information: http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/

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Current Statistics

Current Stats (Jan-July 09):• 2000 logins• 1000 unique users• 80 datasets deposited (though not many voluntarily)• 438 dataset downloads• Most popular datasets: Grid squares, DCW for UK and

Postcode Areas all downloaded more than 20 times

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Spatially Enabling ShareGeo

• Implemented Geo-Search functionality using the open source OpenLayers API with access to Google Maps

• Search ‘within’ or ‘intersecting’ a bounding box• Results of searches are shown graphically on a

map as bounding boxes• Searching done on a database table storing the

coordinate limits of the bounding box of the dataset

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ShareGeo Ingest Package

• The following file formats are accepted, packed in a zip archive with a maximum size limit of 1Gb uncompressed– Vector

• GML, KML(KMZ), Shapefile, MapInfo, E00

– Raster• ArcInfo GRID, Erdas Imagine, GeoTIFF/TFW

– Tabular• CVS with spatial columns

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ShareGeo Ingest Process

• Ingest process uses the open source software OGR/GDAL to read and validate submitted datasets

• Accepts zip files and then unpacks them to extract spatial datasets

• Extract bounding coordinates from dataset• Displays extracted extents on the map background and

allows users to modify them in case they are wrong• Extents and format information is automatically added to

the items metadata• Can add additional geographical information in the form

of named places (see Edinburgh DataShare for an example of specifying controlled place names)

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Access and Use Issues

• ShareGeo restricted to Digimap users therefore not ‘open’

• Control access to specific datasets based on users permissions - but we rely on users to be truthful when they submit a dataset.

• Still some confusion over what are the IPR rights to datasets – particularly evident when datasets are contributed

• Lack of community awareness• Alternative ‘commercial’ sites now appearing

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Future technical improvements

• Integrate with common desktop applications for ‘one-touch’ submission e.g. using SWORD

• Visualize actual data with plug-in application• Expose metadata either to search engines

(Google) directly or via Go-Geo• Provide data in other formats, including web-

services• Add features such as annotations, tagging and

ratings

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Future policy improvements

• Source more open data

• Create an ‘open access’ ShareGeo for unlicensed materials

• Measure and display re-use of data better

• Improve visibility of re-used of data e.g. in citations

• Seamless interoperability with Go-Geo metadata portal

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The End

• Big question is how to get community to contribute more data????

• More Info available at: http://edina.ac.uk/projects/sharegeo/index.shtml