Towards the Open Geospatial Web

Towards the Open Geospatial Web – Chris Holmes

“ Architectures of Participation” – Coined by Tim O’Reilly

An “Architecture of Participation” is both social and technical , leveraging the skills and energy of users as much as possible to cooperate in building something bigger than any single person or organization could alone .

Architectures of Participation Software: The first domain to see benefits The process can be applied to other fields

Geospatial Data

Creation Sharing

OpenStreetMaps++

Geo Data Creation…

Crowd sourced creation and maintenance of GIS layers

Towards cooperation between Citizens, Governments, NGOs and Companies

Primary Goal “…the sources, systems, network linkages, standards, and institutional issues involved in delivering spatially-related data from many different sources to the widest possible group of potential users at affordable costs.”

Geo Data Sharing…

– Groot & McLaughlin 2000

The Success of SDIs?

Compelling Initiative

User at the Center

User Responsibility

No Barriers or Difficulty

Factors for Success

Contribute to Compelling Initiative.

Mandated law != useful

Few real users

No recognition

No reward for the effort

Try again in five years?

vs.

Quickly add data to quality map

Ease of customization

Recognition: Shared, emailed, blogged about…

Indexed & Searchable

Contribute to Compelling Initiative

Consumers ≠ Producers

Data from “official” sources

Metadata takes training

GIS Professionals Only

Users as Contributors

Consumers = Producers

Everyone encouraged to contribute

Community members grow in to experts

Even used for ‘real GIS’ …it’s easier than INSPIRE

Maps

SDI Contributing: Data

Hardware

Software

Metadata

Metadata Training

A Catalog to Register On

Contributing Data to Google…

Barriers to Entry…

Browser

Metadata

Training

Server Hardware

WMS Software

Sharing Agreements

Catalog Registration

Does user contribution alone make an SDI?

Let commercial players run SDI?

SDI’s are a public good

Commercial players have profit motive

Commercial players seek monopoly

DANGER: Governments are handing over data

without opening it to anyone else!

Towards the Open Geo Web

Inclusive Infrastructure

Single “Geo Web” Project

Unlimited Potential

Build on existing Architectures

of Participation

Principles: Towards the Open Geo Web

Not just policies,

requirements & mandates

Align incentives to create

a single Geospatial Web

GIS Professionals: MIA?

Current Geo Web of Microsoft and Google is focused on consumer applications

Powered by GIS Pros, but in a black box

GIS pros should be at the center of the Open Geo Web

Align incentives to make it much easier for experts to participate

Compelling Initiative?

User at the Center?

User Responsibility?

No Barriers or Difficulty?

Geo Web for GIS Pros?

Put GIS Pros back at the center Unite the worlds of the GIS Professional and the amateur ‘Neo Geographer’ so all can cooperate to build something bigger than either group could alone.

NeoGeo and GIS Cooperation

Identify and correct mistakes

More creative visualizations

Finding and evaluating data

Living data, constantly evolving

Aligning Incentives

Goal is Pro and Amateur working on the same infrastucture, with compatible tools

Each doing what they already do, but naturally benefitting one another

Give each compelling reason to contribute to shared infrastructure

Must satisfy all that current tools do, and go beyond

Beyond Portals

Web Portals went out of fashion in 2001

‘ GeoWeb Node’ = GeoPortal 2.0

GeoPortal goal: find existing data

GeoWeb Node goal: increase creation and sharing of data

End goal of both is easier to find and use data

No more Aquariums!

Join the Web!

A Geo Web Node

GeoServer Evolution

Started with the Data, first sharing, then creation

Working on the User, and their maps

Metadata will evolve out of Data and User

GeoPortal: Metadata -> User -> Data

GeoWeb Node: Data -> User -> Metadata

GeoServer Data: Rooted in Data Access PostGIS Oracle Spatial DB2 ArcSDE MySQL

GeoServer Data: Spreading to the Geo Web Google Earth Virtual Earth Google Maps NASA WorldWind Yahoo! Maps

GeoServer Data: Integrated GeoWeb Viewer

GeoServer Data: GeoWeb Acceleration

GeoServer Data: Searchable by Google

GeoServer Data: Editing

GeoServer Data: Versioning

GeoServer User: Easy upload Choose File Geofile.shp Upload

GeoServer User: Online Styling

GeoServer User: Map collaboration

Create a ‘view’ of existing data on a node

Annotate it spatially

Add in remote data, from other nodes

Restyle and annotate another user’s view

Set permissions for other users to contribute to your data

Easy ‘embeds’, share your map on blog or webpage, on Google Maps or Google Earth

GeoServer User: User accounts

User statistics

Comments, ratings, tags

Collaborative Filtering

Rankings of best ‘views’ and data sets contributed

Highest rated, most viewed, most shared

GeoServer Metadata: Data about the data

Derive from user actions

Don’t require metadata to put out data

Wiki type editing of metadata

Automatically available with the Catalog standards

Where to put these nodes?

Everywhere!

Anywhere you might put a portal

Anywhere you have an ‘Enterprise GIS System’

Anywhere people share data with each other

Handling all these use cases will evolve GeoWeb nodes to be truly useful

Proprietary vs. Open Source Nodes

Implementation of standards is the most important

Open Source has advantages

Keep vendors honest with standards

Technical innovation by all

Increasing returns on investment

Open vs Closed Geo Data

Most important thing is that data is accessible in all open formats

But the Geo Web will be built on Open Data

Google has proven this

An open base will lead to more contributions on top

Official vs. User-contributed Data

One Infrastructure

Limited User Permissions

Optional Commenting & Rating

The future is users

Geo Participation

GIS Professionals

Amateur Neo Geographers

Anyone with a locative device

Technology & Community

The Future: Beyond Portals

My GeoWeb Goal Let’s build a Geo Web that’s so compelling and easy-to-use that everyone: Citizens, Governments, NGO’s and Companies all naturally collaborate towards the same infrastructure for public good.

What you can do: