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Activity Plan
In recent years, environmental domain feature models have been established by a number of sub-domain groups. However, there is no best practice or standard methodology to encode documents containing links between and among domain features, such as a rivers, aquifers, or soils, and observational data about those features. A common approach to encoding such links is required to allow cross-domain and cross-system sharing and interoperability of such linked information.
The Environmental Linked Feature Interoperability Experiment (ELFIE) will bring interested stakeholders together around the shared goal of providing a best practice for encoding documents expressing links between hydrologic and related features from models including but not limited to HY_Features, GWML2, and SoilIEML as well as observations and related content from a variety of observations and monitoring standards. The IE will produce an OGC engineering report summarizing the overall cross-domain inter-standard findings and recommendations for a best practice and/or standard to follow. This report will include encoded examples that should feed future linked-data encoding implementation standard development in one or more related standards working groups. To keep scope limited, this IE will not test service interfaces or processing capabilities that would necessarily exist to create or consume the data and documents being tested. The IE is informed by a number of existing systems, examples included with use cases, that offer or could offer services that would benefit from a linked feature data-encoding best practice.
The OGC members who are initiators of this Interoperability Experiment are:
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U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
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Land Information New Zealand
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BRGM
The following OGC member organizations will participate in the ELFIE
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U.S. Geological Survey
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Landcare Research (NZ) Ltd
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Land Information New Zealand
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BRGM
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Natural Resources Canada
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ESRI
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Tumbling Walls
The objectives of the ELFIE include:
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Demonstrate the use of existing and pending OGC standards for the encoding of environmental observation data in an integrated dataset of features linked according to ReSTful and Linked Data principles.
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Prepare an OGC engineering report summarizing the group’s findings with the intention of future development of the relevant policies, best practices or implementation standards.
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Provide draft linked data encodings to be considered by relevant standards working groups.
The ability to encode documents containing links between and among monitoring sites and environmental domain features in a common way will enable automation and lines of inquiry that are not possible without manual intervention today. Currently, people hand-curate links between these sorts of features in ad-hoc organization-specific ways that preclude use by others.
Recent development of feature (see section 2.5 of the OGC Reference Model) and observation models specific to a domain (field of study, see here for more) such as HY_Features, WaterML2, GroundwaterML2, and SoilIEML has created opportunities for unprecedented software reuse and cross-system information sharing within their respective domains. However, a reusable approach to encode documents that use these information models in cross-disciplinary applications, is not apparent given existing encodings, implementation standards, and best practices. This interoperability experiment seeks to establish and test a common approach for encoding documents that use these existing data models.
The linked open data paradigm presents numerous challenges that the community is working to solve. This IE seeks to identify and address issues related to how to encode linked-data documents using OGC feature and observation data models for entity and link types. The IE will not address issues related to the internet architecture required to support the use cases; although the engineering report will describe best practices adopted and issues encountered (ex: multiple representations/encodings of the same real world object and content negotiation). However, run-time handling of URL redirection, URL structure, and any temporal variation of link nature of existence will not be addressed directly in the IE.
In order to focus this IE, only environmental domain models concerning landscape interactions with the hydrologic cycle will be considered. To ensure the IE outcomes are relevant, important enterprise requirements within and among the considered domains will be used. The following use cases encompass the scope that may be included, the IE will refine and focus these as it progresses.
- River Monitoring and Flooding
Stream gages linked to the river features they monitor, observational data, and related information products.
Example System: North American WaterWatch, ESRI Live Stream Gage Project
- Irrigation
Wells linked to to aquifers, soils that are irrigated well water, watersheds that the soil-water contributes to, and water quality monitoring downstream. Water and soil (geo)chemistry and other water quality measurements should be in scope.
Example Systems: NZ IDI
- GW/SW Impacts
Watersheds linked to a gaining or losing stream and an aquifer as well as the wells and stream gages that monitor them. All types of surface and groundwater bodies should be in scope.
Example Systems:USGS Site Service , BRGM (tracing, drainage, hydrogeounit database) + French surface reference river network.
- Hydrologic Drought
Link water demand to water uses to a water supply.
Example Systems: U.S. Drought Monitor, BRGM : national well database, ground water status predictivity within certain regions (SWE input to hydrogeologic models : precipitation, stream gage, piezometer)
- Water Quality
For Water Quality, we need to be able to tie precipitation and streamflow to predicted and measured pollutant loadings to a surface or sub-surface waterbody. This needs to be done by leveraging upstream and/or downstream searching for linked data as well as being able to tie other landscape characteristics to help with the loading predictions. This will help with establishing permit limits, Total Maximum Daily Loads, water quality assessments, and effectiveness monitoring.
Example Systems: Water Quality Portal, French (reference river network & watersheds, watershed WPS, streamgages & water quality stations).
The ELFIE will test one hypothesis for each of the use cases described above: that existing practices and semi-automated linked data encodings can be used to encode documents that would satisfy the use cases above.
The approach taken in ELFIE will be limited in contrast to recent IEs concerning environmental information models. ELFIE will focus on 1) linked data documents that contain collections of linked features and related observations and 2) feature or observation representation documents that contain links to related features or observations. With regard to the OGC Reference Model, the IE seeks to understand how features (geospatial information) can be linked to each other in fully dereferenced documents or by reference through use of HTTP URIs. ELFIE will not seek to solve problems regarding network architecture for resolving links or systems design and governance for applications that store and retrieving links or concept relationships.
For each use case, experimental documents will be crafted to test the hypothesis. Successes, difficulties, and missing capabilities will be reported on. These results will be used to inform future work on standards and/or best practices.
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Define specific technical criteria to test hypothesis
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Refine use cases and select source data
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Select and/or draft linked data encodings to be used
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Encode documents for each use case
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Evaluate documents against predefined criteria
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Write engineering report
The encoded documents will be demonstrated through creation of rendered web pages containing the features linked by the documents. A potential implementation of this is through Markdown with embedded plots and/or maps generated by a script that is based on the linked data document. This demonstration will show how such encodings could be used to assemble such integrated resources automatically.
The following components will be developed as part of ELFIE. Primary responsibility of each component as agreed by participants is included.
| Description | Implementor(s) |
| Define evaluation criteria | All |
| Use Case 1) River Monitoring | USGS, ESRI, Dewberry |
| Use Case 2) Irrigation | HRC, LRNZ |
| Use Case 3) GW/SW Impacts | BRGM, USGS, NRCan |
| Use Case 4) Hydrologic Drought | USGS, BRGM |
| Use Case 6) Water quality | BRGM |
| Linked Data Encodings HY_Features | Dewberry, BRGM |
| Linked Data Encodings SoilIEML | LRNZ, BRGM |
| Linked Data Encodings WaterML2 | Dewberry |
| Linked Data Encodings GWML2 | NRCan, BRGM |
| Linked Data Encodings O&M | BRGM |
| Linked Data Encodings Environmental Monitoring Facility | BRGM |
| Encode Documents | All |
| Evaluate Documents | All |
| Engineering Report | All |
Evaluation of the resulting documents will be done through inspection and analysis of required information to satisfy the use cases. Specific technical criteria defining what satisfaction means will be established early on in the IE.
All deliverables for the project will be in the form of OGC engineering reports and static content hosted on a public OGC GitHub project.
An engineering report will summarize the overall IE and the group’s findings. The IE will be managed using GitHub issues, wiki, pages, and general code repository functionality. It is the intention of the IE Initiators that all project artifacts be made public through this repository upon IE conclusion.
Given that the IE demonstration will be static content, they will be made available as public web content hosted using GitHub public hosting capabilities. While embedded links in encoded documents may not persist, the data visualizations and other content for demonstration purposes will be rendered into static html and/or checked into the project repository.
Startup
Late March 2017 - Activity Plan Submission
April 2017 - Anticipated OGC Architecture Board Approval
Execution
May 2017 - Formal kickoff after 30-day participant notification period
June 2017 - Use Cases Finalized, face to face at HDWG and Summer TC
September 2017 - Evaluation complete, demonstration at fall TC
December 2017 - IE complete, final document submitted
The initiative manager will be David Blodgett with support from Jim Kreft (USGS) and the Initiative Technical Lead will be Byron Cochrane with support from Rob Deakin (LINZ). Sylvain Grellet and Mickael Beaufils will take part from from the French BRGM. Boyan Brodaric and Eric Boisvert will take part from Natural Resources Canada.
The following resources will be available:
| Staffing | Each initiating and participating organization will provide adequate staff resources to support their defined responsibilities for the duration of the IE. |
| Hardware | Initiating organizations will provide hardware as needed to support the IE. Resources associated with the OGC github organization are requested to house the IE’s work |
| Software | Initiating organizations will provide software as needed to support the IE. Resources associated with the OGC github organization are requested to house the IE’s work. |
| Other Resources | Participants in the IE are self-funded. All expenses incurred in carrying out the IE will be assumed by the participating agencies within their regular line-of-business. |