Digital Gazetteers in the UK : the geo-X-walk Project at EDINA
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Transcript of Digital Gazetteers in the UK : the geo-X-walk Project at EDINA
Digital Gazetteers in the UK : the geo-X-walk Project at
EDINA
Presented by: Andy Corbett (Development Engineer)
James S Reid (Project manager)
18.7.02
Roadmap
•Context - JISC , EDINA & gazetteers
•Gazetteer Content
•Technical and Implementation Issues
•The future...
EDINAEDINA*
(Edinburgh Data and Information Access) •a JISC-funded national datacentre based at the University of Edinburgh,Scotland
• offers the UK tertiary education and research community networked access to a library of data, information and research resources.
•services are available free of charge to members of UK tertiary education institutions for academic use, although institutional subscription and end-user registration are required for most services.
•30+ services - bibliographic,MPS and geo
•Service focus + development project-to-full service strand
* "Edina" is also the ancient and poetic name for Edinburgh, Scotland. Robert Burns wrote "Address To Edinburgh", which begins, "Edina! Scotia's darling seat!"
The JISC Information Environment is…
• a national digital library... for higher and further education
• a managed collection of resources
• a distributed resource supporting learning and research in the UK
• heterogeneous… bibliographic, images, data, video, geo-spatial, etc.
• an information environment that enables people to discover, access and use a wide variety of quality assured resources
• simple underlying functional model of the Information Environment - discover, access, use, publish
JISC are interested in applying this model to geographic information and
also desire to look for ways to enable geographic searching of the Information Environment
The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is the strategic advisory committee for the UK
academic sector.
geo-X-walk - a gazetteer service
• Digital Gazetteer - An electronic list of geographic features together with their associated spatial location
• Digital Gazetteer Service - A network-addressable middle-ware server supporting geographic referencing and searching
• aim: develop a demonstrator gazetteer service suitable for extension to full service
• a shared service within the JISC IE
• phase II demonstrator project - commenced June 2002
• builds on the ideas of the ADL
• similar to the ADL approach (Linda Hill et al)
• structural model: metadata model v. hierarchical thesaurus
• emphasis on implicit spatial relationships over explicitly stated relationships
• represent objects by correct geometry
• feature type thesaurus important
• merge data from various sources
• comprehensive description but with small set of core elements– temporal aspects of names, footprints, relationships, …– document source, spatial accuracy/scale of footprint
• technically challenging and many data related issues….
geo-X-walk : Overview
Reference use
Information server
Information server
Searching
Geo-parsing &indexing
The geo-X-walkServer
Assist information services with searching
• geographic searching is an important and powerful information retrieval facility
• need to support a full range of geographic search options
• more efficient to map a user view to native spatial coding scheme
• use implicit spatial relationships to ‘cross-walk’ between geographies
• machine to machine interaction (m2m)
Geo-parsing and indexing
• increasing demand from data providers, archives, libraries, and museums to support geographic searching
• BUT large number of information resources NOT geographically indexed
• assist in the geo-referencing of information objects– parse documents, metadata records etc. to identify geographic names,
features and other geographies– semi automatic indexing
• ideally everyone should use standard spatial coding scheme – why? Because wide variety of geographies exist which change over time!– geographic coordinates preferred choice i.e GB National Grid /lat long– convert into geographic 'footprints’
Reference Use - Example queries
What is at grid ref. NT 258 728?
Where is Ormskirk?
What is the county town of Shropshire?
List me all places ending with ‘chester’
What parishes fall within the Lake District National Park?
On what river is Liverpool situated?
Which Roman roads pass through Leicestershire? By what alternative names
has York been known?
Anticipated uses of gazetteer service
• Reference source for researchers, libraries and museums
• Assist metadata creators– Convert different geographic identifiers to standard coding scheme– Geo-parser for semi-automatic indexing– Facilities to resolve variant names etc.
• Provide services with means to support full range of spatial searching– no need to hold data to resolve spatial query
• Interest outside academic sector
Roadmap (reprise)
•Gazetteer Content
•Technical and Implementation Issues
•The future...
Edina Gazetteer
• 4 ‘M’s:– Multi-source
– Multi-scale
– Metadata model
– Multi-problem!
• ‘Near contemporary’ focus
•Boundary data - EDINA UKBORDERS service
•Contemporary places - Ordnance Survey•1:50,000 (medium scale) Placename
Gazetteer •1:1250 (large scale,cartographic) Land-
line product
•Additional features - range of OS products•miscellaneous ‘special’ gazetteers
•e.g. GB Waypoints•a gazetteer of Cold War sites in the UK
Major Issues of:
Complexity
Feature Typing
Positional accuracy
Alternative Names
Time stamping
Data incompleteness
Before we started...
Boundary Complexity•Over digitisation => thousands of points in a geometry•‘Region’ polygons (i.e. > 1 polygon)•Different sources, different scales - which is ‘correct’?
Placename Problems•Cartographic vs geographical placement•Feature typing - high proportion of ‘miscellaneous’ features•Placename changes through time•Alternate names e.g. multilingual representations
Licensing•Stakeholder involvement•Terms and conditions of use
In particular...
Boundaries in Fife, Scotland
Gazetteer Architecture
• ADL Model
• Modified ADL Feature Type Thesaurus
• Ingres Relational Database
• Spatial Searching
•Continue database population
•Benchmarking alternative implementations - bespoke/Oracle/Laser-scan
•Interfaces - human:machine / machine:machine
•Data issues - rights to data / limitations of use
The Future
A going away thought
http://edina.ac.uk
EDINAData LibraryGeorge SquareUniversity of EdinburghEH8 9LJScotland,UK
Tel: +44 (0)131 651 1383Fax: +44 (0)131 650 3308James [email protected]
Contacts and More Info @
EDINA http://edina.ac.ukData LibraryGeorge SquareUniversity of EdinburghEH8 9LJScotland,UK
Tel: +44 (0)131 651 1383Fax: +44 (0)131 650 3308James S [email protected]
Contacts and More Info @
Geo-spatial data“data that have some form of spatial or geo-graphic reference that enables them to be located in two- or three-dimensional space”
Statistical Account of Scotland
NUMBER XIII.
PARISH OF CULLEN.
(COUNTY OF BANFF, SYNOD OF ABERDEEN, PRESBYTERY OF FORDYCE.)
By the Rev. Mr. ROBERT GRANT.
Royalty, Extent, Climate, etc.
CULLEN, as appears from old charters, was originallycalled Inverculan, because it stands upon the bank ofthe Burn of Cullen, which, at the N. end of the town, fallsinto the sea: but now it is known by the name of Cullen on-ly. Cullen is a royal burgh, formerly a constabulary, ofwhich the Earl of Findlater was hereditary constable. Theset, as it is called, of the council, consists of 19, in which num-ber are included the Earl of Findlater, hereditary preses, 3bailies, a treasurer, a dean-of-guild, and 13 counsellors. Theparish extends from the sea fouthward, about 2 English milesin length.
JISC Information Environment
Portal
Content providers
End-user
Go-Geo! Portal
Broker/Aggregator
Authentication
Authorisation
Collect’n Desc
Service Desc
Resolver
Inst’n Profile
Shared services
Portal
Provision layer
Fusion layer
Presentationlayer
geo-X-walk
Example application
Go-Geo! Portal
Gazetteer Server
geo-X-walk
geo-X-walk
Geo-parser Server
ContentProvider 1
ContentProvider 2
ContentProvider 3
ContentProvider 4
customised requests
crosswalk spatialcomponent
geo-parse records (exp)
initiate search('Edinburgh')
return resultset
content spatiallyindexed
content not spatially indexed
content providerprofiles
JISC IE