Data Made Discoverable with GeoIQ
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“We really saw this with our response to Haiti where folks were contributing through OpenStreetMap and other tools to make products available and a lot of non-GIS professionals were able to help solve some difficult problems,” Gorman said.
Another big problem is that vital information piles up and becomes inaccessible. In Afghanistan this is particularly the case.
In Afghanistan, FortiusOne got people to contribute their data to the GeoIQ appliances they had delivered into the field, running disconnected. Their impetus was their desire to get that data on top of ½ meter satellite imagery. The data contribution was indexed and is now discoverable and can be harvested by others.
“We had 30 different NGOs contributing public domain information into that project and all that data was discoverable, reusable and remixable, and we got it out of the digital junkyards,” said Gorman.
Another big problem cited by several of the Marine units was that information collected on the ground by combat units was largely lost -- about 90% of it lost between troop rotations.
“We found the same thing in a variety of different government organizations that a lot of field collected data ends up being used as a one-off or it's not shared or it ends up in the digital junkyard,” said Gorman. “When data is submitted from the field, GeoIQ allows it to be archived with metadata automatically attached to it, without the user having to contribute a lot. Having that all indexed and discoverable by the next group that comes in has been very beneficial.”
The next problem specifically addressed in Afghanistan that also has a broader reach is information gathering should be across geographic lines and not just purely on functional lines. This is where a geospatial approach is particularly helpful.
The field information is more critical to those in the field than those in the office. When data gets lost it can't be used. Once it is in the GeoIQ system it is automatically archived and indexed and can then be discovered. Gorman noted that GeoIQ's influence is not limited to only discovery within GeoIQ, it can locate federated information sitting in other platforms as well. Information can be federated out and information sitting in other repositories and databases can be federated in. It also makes that information available through web-based APIs. While a non-technical person can do a search, discover information, download and use it, developers can access information through APIs
to create their own applications and solutions with the data. FortiusOne offers a web services API for both GeoIQ Finder and Maker as well as a search API for doing the federated discovery. They are also currently adding a variety of OGC services.
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/64. The public comment period closes on 14 April, 2010.
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) seeks public comment on the draft OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Common Encoding Standard Version 2.0. The SWE Common standard provides a common data encoding that is used throughout the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards suite. More precisely, the SWE Common model is used to define the representation, nature, structure and encoding of sensor related data.
The proposed OGC SWE Common 2.0 standard and information on submitting comments on this document are available at
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) seeks public comment on the draft OGC Table Joining Service (TJS) Interface Standard. This standard defines an interface for services that provide the ability to join attribute data stored in one database on a network with the corresponding geometry (points, lines, or polygons) stored in another network accessible database.
The proposed OGC TJS 1.0 standard and information on submitting comments on this document are available at
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) seeks public comment on the draft OGC Web Coverage Services (WCS) Interface Standard Version 2.0. The OGC WCS standard supports electronic retrieval of geospatial data as "coverages" -- that is, digital geospatial information representing space/time-varying phenomena such as satellite imagery or digital elevation models.
The WCS standard defines a standard interface and operations that enable interoperable access to single or multi-dimensional geospatial coverages. Services implementing this standard provide an interface with a standard set of operations for accessing original or derived sets of geospatial coverage information. An important aspect of the WCS standard is that it allows access and retrieval of raw, unprocessed imagery, which is often required by rendering and processing services. Further information about WCS can be found at the WCS Service page (
The proposed OGC WCS 2.0 standard and information on submitting comments on this document are available at
GeoEye, Inc. announced it selected Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, a major operating unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation (Bethesda, Md., NYSE: LMT) to build GeoEye-2, the Company's next-generation, high-resolution Earth-imaging satellite system. Lockheed has already begun purchasing long-lead material and labor for the design, engineering and manufacturing of the satellite and the associated command and control system.
ESRI will conduct a free, live training seminar this month that will demonstrate Job Tracking for ArcGIS (JTX), ESRI's software for tracking project information and simplifying workflows.
Getting Started with JTX to Manage Workflow will air on Thursday, March 18, 2010, at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific time; noon, 2:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. Eastern time; and 4:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m. UTC/GMT.
You can find the full GISCafe event calendar here.