Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
James Reid
EDINA National Data Centre
University of Edinburgh
October 2006
Geographic image: © 2005 Clark Labs.
Scoping a Geospatial Repository
for Academic Deposit and
Extraction
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
JISC: Digital Repositories Programme
 June 2005 JISC £4m programme
 Aim of encouraging growth of repositories in UK universities
and colleges
 Programme consists of 25 projects exploring role and
operation of projects
 Focus on how repositories can assist academic researchers
both to do and share work more easily
 Open access is key driver plus growing demand for outputs
of publicly-funded research to be freely available on the
web
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
Vision
(aspirational)
 Reusability
 Managed, quality
controlled
 Streamlined
access
 Curation &
preservation
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
JUNE 2005
Project Work ProgrammeAPRIL 2007
1
Formal
Repositories
Establish user
based evidence for
the requirements
and functionality of
a repository
capable of
managing licensed
geospatial assets
•Automatic data
validation
•More ‘traditional’
geo friendly views
on to data
•Automated
(partial) metadata
completion
2
Informal geospatial
data-sharing
Investigate and make an
assessment of informal
mechanisms for
geospatial data sharing
•Informal geodata-sharing
survey
•Compile use-cases of
informal geo-data-sharing
from sites
•Classification of existing
informal repositories
•Informal ‘demonstrator’
setup
3
4
DRM
Digital rights issues when we consider
the reuse of derived
geospatial data
concerns over data
ownership, IPR and
copyright are
commonplace
•AHRC legal report
and framework for
geospatial data
sharing
Institutional vs
media-centric
(geospatial)
repositories
Debate over
institutional
repository – one
size fits all?
Cultural aspects of
allegiance to
discipline not
institution
•Audit & review of
geospatial data
within institutional
repositories
•SWOT of
institutional v
media-centric
repositories
5
Interoperability
Interoperability
issues – how could a
geospatial repository
interact within JISC
IE, how could it
make its assets
available to the Grid
/ eScience
community
•SWOT analysis of
interoperability
issues within
repositories
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
Tentative Conclusions
There appears to be a genuine desire and demand, at least at
an expressive level, for the establishment of a formal
national geospatial data repository.
This demand however is not fully realised due to uncertainties
relating to the IPR and digital rights (policy) issues that
cloud all discussions of geospatial data reuse in the UK.
The main interim conclusion is that the legal uncertainties as
highlighted by the work of the AHRC partners needs to be
taken forward and used to improve the ability of the
research community to fully exploit its prior endeavours.
Alternatively, existing licensing contexts can be exploited, but
will restrict the breadth of the audience that can be
serviced.
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
Issues – Content Packaging
 Consider a geospatial data asset deposited into a repository,
it’s more than one file:





GML and associated schema!
proprietary vector format plus cartographic representation detail
geodatabase
raster with header file
Data set metadata and IPR info
 What is best method to package data?
 In eLibrary world the Metadata Encoding and Transmission
Standard (METS) and IMS content package (IMS CP) and
MPEG-21 DIDL for repository objects
 What direction is the GI industry taking with content
packaging?
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
Issues – GML for archiving?
 If content packaging is about asking ‘best’ method to package
data, next question is about content being packaged.
 “Permanent access” requirements:
 profiles and application schemas widely understood and
supported, avoid requiring “digital archaeology”
 Role of GML : current focus is as transfer format
 Assessing formats for preservation: sustainability v. quality v.
functionality
 How to handle proprietary formats?
 Spatial databases pose special challenge
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
Issues – Persistent Identifiers
 Once a geospatial data asset is deposited within a repository,
there is a need to be able to persistently identify this asset
 Particular repository softwares use particular schemes e.g.
Fedora uses ‘info’ URI scheme
 Requirement to ensure identifier is actionable
 What about version management?
 OpenURL Resolvers? Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for handle
schemes? UUIDs? URI, URN, URL, URC!!!! A N Other?
Interoperability? Persistence?
 What direction is GI industry taking with persistent identifiers?
Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction
Issues – more!



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Data citation
Data2article citation
Data lifecycles
Feature types
 … (add your own pet concern)