News

• (7/7/07) The report from the task group first workshop is already available. Final Report in html

Introduction

The aim of this task group is the creation of an interoperability framework and possibly and infrastructure where different biodiversity geospatial applications can comunicate and produce new results. There are a lot of biodiversity geospatial data providers, from occurrence data to migration routes, distributions, itineraries, etc. There is also several projects working on analytical tools to use this data. But all these systems do not interoperate! Every system is created as a kind of silo, and the consumption of its data or results is not done in a very efficient way. By using OGC and TDWG standards we aim at solving the interoperability problems among these services and move forward to a Biodiversity Geospatial Web where all services can be chained in a workflow where the results from one can be fed into the next and where the services or data can be easily discovered.

The task group will achieve this mainly through the creation of a software prototype where different standards are used and document at the same time the problems encountered in the process. All the code and documentation created in the process is available as Open Source.

Check out our first workshop to see what we have already done.

People interested

The following list of people have expressed an interest in joining the group to keep informed about it or to collaborate with it. It would be nice if everybody could add some notes detailing what they are working on below their name and what their interest is this group, for example as a data or as an analysis provider. If they can include links to their actual projects that will also be nice to see what they have.

A name for the task group

We need a name for the task group, and I will say a logo and a moto. Here are the ideas people had expressed until now:

• SubStandards task group (Dave Vieglais): The idea of name (in my own understanding, Javier, is that this is not about discussing standards but rather using them)
• Geospatial Application and Interoperability Task Group (Patricia Mergen): The idea is to work on Geospatial application and to test interoperability among them and also with TDWG standards and applications from the other subgroups. I am in favor of a name like BioGeo Interoperability Task Group.
• The BioGeo? Interoperability Task Group (Tim Sutton): A group whose task is to promote interoperability among Biodiversity Geospatial Applications to enable a future BioGeo? Spatial Data Infrastructure (BioGeoSDI?)

Charter

We need a charter to be able to be an official TDWG task group. Patricia Mergen started creating one but we need extensive editing so that it represents the interest and goals of the different people that we want to participate. My idea (Javier de la Torre) is to have this ready in less than 2 weeks. The editing of the charter is done in its own page, please follow the next link:

GeoAppInterCharter

WorkShops?

• InteroperabilityWorkshop1

Use Case Scenarios

Use case scenarios are used to define the priorities when creating prototype software as part of the interoperability workshops. Ideally the use case scenarios should be incremental to allow achieving them incrementally.

Simple-short term use case scenarios

1. NicheAnalysisProcess: Carrying out an fundamental ecological niche analysis
2. Providing ItineraryServices as visualisation tool for data quality checking
3. Serving DiGIR?-style data over OGC standards

Complex-Long term use case scenarios

To have complex use cases we need to have a vision towards a Biodiversity Geospatial Data Infrastructure. This is a network of services with different components that will be reuse to satisfy several use cases. Go to the BioGeoSDIVision page to see this infraestructure.

Following find a list of complex Processes that involes several components.

1. ComplexNicheAnalysisProcess: Using distributed OGC services be able to do the BEST model possible by using as much data as possible, with the better quality, with the better environmental layers, in different softwares, in different algorithms, using supercomputer centres, etc...

Available Presentations and outreach

• BiogeoSDIworkshopPresentationAtOGC.pdf: Presentation of the BioGeoSDI? Workshop at the 61st OGC Technical Committee in Paris (2007-07-11)
• http://www.slideshare.net/simon/implications-of-openid-google-tech-talk/

Community Resources

• You can subscribe to our mailinglist (biogeosdi@listsREMOVE-THIS.tdwg.org) at http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/biogeosdi
• You can join us on IRC at #biogeosdi on irc.freenode.net
• You can view the IRC logs online.
• Subversion repository is located at https://biogeosdi.ecoforge.net/svn (Use your TDWG credentials). If you have problems checking in, contact Dave V.
• BiogeoSDIworkshopPresentationAtOGC.pdf: Presentation of the BioGeoSDI? workshop at the OGC TC in Paris