CEOS WGISS Subgroups Meeting

Osaka, Japan  9 - 12 March 1999

Edward King (Edward.King@eoc.csiro.au)

Introduction

The following is a summary of the WGISS subgroup meetings that I attended in March 1999.  Meetings of three separate subgroups (Network, Access and Data) were held concurrently over a period of four days.  My principle focus was the Access subgroup, though I did attend some of the Network subgroup sessions and the joint Access/Data sessions.  Below I provide a brief summary of the meetings I attended.

There is a substantial volume of supporting documentation in the form of  approximately 50 speaker’s handouts, viewgraphs, and other giveaways which it is not practical to provide with this report.  I hold these here in a folder and they are referred to in the text as Attachments.  Anyone interested in viewing any of these documents should contact me and I will try and provide copies or a verbal summary.  Viewgraphs for several of the presentations were available electronically and links to these are included in this document where possible.  The depth of coverage that a presentation receives below depends to a degree on how important I felt it was for our work, and also on whether or not an electronic version was provided.

Much of the material presented is also also available on a NASDA/CEOS web page:

Day 1, 9 March

AS meeting - logistics for meeting. Attachment A

Leadership handover- Terry Fisher - Ken McDonald nominated as chair, Paul Kopp vice-chair, both unopposed.

Dean Kuo - Attachment Q
Define schema : Customers have differnt needs: We need some way of defining the relationships between the different metadata standards, because we will never be able to create a single one which accomodates all users, or which we can all agree on.

If we can do live translations between metadata standards, then we do NOT need duplicate copies of catalogues.

Starting points

Other Issues


Questions:
    tcp/ip, odbc, java, z39.50, dce - possible mechanisms
    Yonsook Enloe - what is defn of transport?
    Lola Olsen - look at DLR thesaurus
    Paul Kopp - how does AI/fuzzy logic impact on this?
    Janet Hylton - don't forget ZIG is thinking about interoperability issues

CINTEX Meeting at the CEOS Access Subgroup - Yonsook Enloe
March 9, 1999  9am – 5pm

Agenda

1. Introduction  -- yonsook 10 min
2. Collection Manual update – Janet Hylton – 30 min
3. Global Node Design – George Percivall – 15 min
4. INFEO Status – 40 min

5. Status of Implementations LUNCH

6. Federation Management teams

7. Implementers Workshop – yonsook – 15 minutes

8. OpenGIS  --  1hr

9. The many flavors of CIP 10. Any other news to share?


Janet Hylton - Collection maual update
Viewgraphs
George Percivall - Global Node Design
Viewgraphs

multiple retrieval managers working with CIP know about local collections but need to be able to discover other collections in ICS - could be global node, or robot,.... chose global node

CIP Introduction - Attachment D
INFEO status- Maurice KleinGebbink& Harrie Hazewinkel from jrc
Attachment G for viewgraphs of this talk.

1. one month operational testing has shown that

2. the INFEO system is not yet mature enough to go into operation

3. Organisations can get the MWND s/w on an "as-is" basis (ie without support)

already 24 organisations have obtained the s/w
http://operations.ceo.org
 

Harrie:
mwnd - middleware node
mcf - monitor and control facility

architecture

INFEO summary - Harrie Attachment R INFEO installation Hardware requirements
    mwnd - ultra 2 256 mb 8 Gb
    mcf - ultra 1 256 mb 4 gb
    build - ultra 1 256 mb g4gb - can be shared  with MCF
    gateways - ultra 1 256 mb 4 gb
Probably a couple of machines are needed - no porting outside sun is done yet(!)
No bechmarking yet.  no need, it is so slow (bench mark still running)

Software requirements
    solaris, CDE, patches - comes with hardware
    oracle - supplied
    netscape - supplied (appache could be possible)
    sub systems will be supplied.

Maurice Klein Gebbink - Attachment G for viewgraphs
cip-odbc gateways
see figure 1.
current installations - figure 2

Catalogue Status - incidental testing

Issues Organisations to be connected also contacts need to be made with the environmental and oceanographic communities

Status of implementations

1. Maurice - INFEO developments

Attachment H for viewgraphs.

2. Ken McDonald - NASA CIP prototype (Attachment C)

3.Jim Closs (Yonsook Enloe) EOSDIS V0 WWW Gateway

4. Ben Burford - NASDA Report (Attachment E)

Federation Management Teams
Valids - Lola Olsen (for Jim Closs)

CINTEX federation helpdesk Yonsook Enloe (for Jim Closs)

Collections Management - Janet Hylton

 Viewgraphs


Harrie Hazewinkel - System Monitoring & Testing - Attachment I

George Percivall - Information (doc) management and tech. Support

Yonsook Enloe - Implementors Workshop

Implementers Workshop Topics
Proposed Dates :  June 1-2
ESRIN – Frascati, Italy

Topics List:

1. Identify what doesn’t work as expected in the INFEO software release
2. Identify problems in the installation/configuration (build environment/bin version)
3. Monitoring & Control Facility
4. Application Stubs
5. INFEO light version
6. INFEO dependencies on hardware & software (Solaris & Oracle, etc.)
7. Performance issues with INFEO
8. CIP Gateways (ODBC, custom built, etc.)
9. Collections Management overview
10.  Implementation differences from the spec
11.  Performance issues with CIP spec
12.  Operational problems
13.  Identify solutions to identified problems
14.  Work out a plan to solve the problems

A lot to cover in two days!

OpenGIS 

Status - Yonsook Enloe

Response to OGC RFP6 Catalog Services
1st submission due Nov 1998
1. EOGEO team

2. Distributed catalog system (DCS) NIMA

Catalog Response (NIMA & EO GEO team) design - George Percivall
Viewgraphs

Requires:

Three major inputs;
    FGDC GEO profile
    CEOS Catalog Interoperability Protocol (CIP)

    NIMA Geospatial and Imagery access services (GIAS)
 

EO/GEO Team

International Collaborative Effort

EO/GEO proposal Approach to Convergence Conclusion

The many Flavours of CIP

CCSDS Panel 2 Discussion
 Spec. is too EO specific. Needs EO features moved to an appendix.
Unclear to me what the resolution of this issue was!

Day 2, 10 March

Joint Access, Network and Data Subgroup Session

O. Ochiai CII Task Team Report - Attachment J

D. DesJardins - CEOSNet
Performance monitoring - comprehensive hourly testing to virtually all CEOS sites....
Next generation Internet - specialised high performance research and education network.  There are presently 5 such networks in the US. They can only be used for Research & Education and pilot projects and will (eventually) be connected to international high-performance networks, probably via STAR-Tap in Chicago - approval of meritorious projects is required to enable routing.  The only analogous European system is the Trans-European-Network (TEN-xx)

G. Szejwach - IGBP Status Report - Attachment K.
                    - IGBP Data Integration Project - Attachment L.

Takashi Moriyama - WGISS Chair Report on CEOS Plenary & IGOS Activities - Attachment M

Yonsook Enloe (on behalf of Clive Best) - WWW TT Activities Report - Attachment N
Agenda - Attachment O

Web technology tracking site - http://webtech.ceos.org

EOGEO-99 - for the first time an E-commerce session was held & many were impressed by the breadth of products on offer.
                    - wrap up session notes - Attachment P

URL for EOGEO papers is http://www.ceo.org/eogeo99/agenda.html

EOGEO-00  (week before Easter) 17-19 April, London.  Subgroup meeting 11-14 April (Week before EOGEO)

Suresh -  Report of EOGEO Technology Update


Data Access TT, George Percivall -
Viewgraphs

Proposal to WGISS to set up Data Services TT



Richard Chinman - DODS, Attachment S
Viewgraphs

Uses WWW transport mechanism to transport and locate data over the internet

Ramachandran Suresh - DIAL

Catalog And Data Services allow:

Data services include: DIAL does not provide ordering features - only direct access to data.

Current systems generally have separate catalogue and data systems
Catalogue services are based on metadata and are database driven.
Data grabules themselves are not generally part of the the catalogue database.
Should data services require all data to be online?
Do data services include data  analysis features?
What impacts do standards have on data services (do they hinder/facilitate data provision)?
New technologies such as ORDBMS can store data and metadata together - eg Oracle 8 can store files up to 2Gb in size.

V0 IMS-DIAL Integration Project

DIAL is a web based package of tools to organise data and metadata.
V0 is an operational system linking several data centres with a uniform search interface.
The integrated system is a powerful means of integrating catalogue and data services.

The V0 protocol is:

DIAL designed to work with heterogenous types of remote sensing data and the distribution has a total size of about 8 Mb. It currently supports: Making Dial a V0 server will: The procedure to make DIAL visible to a V0 client: V0 DIAL software tools that assist in this include tools to: NOTE: DIAL V2.1 (hot off the press) CD available from EAK at EOC, or soon from GSFC (ref?)


Terry Fisher - OGDI (Open Geospatial Data Interface)
Viewgraphs

The afternoon concluded with a discussion about what the Data Access TT would do, what its name should be, how to present it to WGISS for formal ratification, and who would be involved and actively contribute.  All this will presumably be summarised by George Percivall (or someone else with a strong interest) and presented to WGISS (and maybe the next SG meetings).

Day 3, 11 March

Lola Olsen - Introduction to the IDN Session


Node Report - various developments from several nodes generally describing themselves as "under resourced" or "lacking in human resources".
NASDA IDN Report, Attachment AH.
Dean Kuo demonstrated prototype keyword search translator.  UNEP appears to be the most active external IDN site at present.

Beatriz Belino - JGOFS - Joint Global Ocean Flux S.... presented a summary of the JGOFS data system and its interactions with IDN

Sobue - GOIN affilliation to CEOS
Viewgraphs


Ken McDonald - IGOS Pilot Projects, Stuart Doescher - GOFC data set, Attachment AG

GOFC - goals defined by IGOS SIT
Data volume analysis

Possible dates for next meeting - probably 13th September in Charlottesville.
Next year 11 April - 14 April 2000, UCL London (next to EOGEO)

Browse TT - O.Ochiai & Ben Burford
 Viewgraphs
Attachment U - Browse Guidelines Document

Guidelines Documents - Brian Thomas - Attachment AB

Three different Guidelines documents

Catalogue:

Auxilliary Data Reference Document: Format Guidelines: Interim URL (likely to change very soon):  http://www.eos.co.uk/ceos-wgiss
The NOAA HyperNews URL is something like (but not quite): http://hypernews.noaa.gov/HyperNews/get/virtual.html

Future Development:


Ken McDonald - Future Directions

Day 4, 12 March

Hitachi & Quickbird - T.Kodaira - Attachment V, W

Hitachi is a provider of rremote sensing systems and GIS, including:

Participant in Earthwatch with Ball Aerospace, Hitachi,Worldview, CTA, Telespazio

Plan is to distribute low cost imagery from low cost satellite with timely delivery via the internet.  It will be a global operation but Hitachi will provide services particularly for the Asian region.
The high resolution imager will provide 1-3m resolution imagery.
Imaging modes:

Wavelengths: Fore and aft +/- 30 degrees permits along track stereo imaging.

Orbview-3 Kuzuoka, IMI    Attachment Z
A series of low cost satellite systems, Resolutions: Orbview-1/10km  Orbview-2/1km  Orbview-3/1m,4m  Orbview-4/1m,4m,8m
Launch via Pegasus from under an aircraft. A Japanese ground station will permit acquisition, processing and supply of data to be targeted and timely for users in Asia, and Japan in particular. 

R. Clemens, Space Imaging - IKONOS, Attachment(s) X

IKONOS flight vehicle 1.  Ready for launch on Athena.  Launch by end of June.
Space Imaging appear to be a data provider - it is not clear from this presentation whether they actually build and launch their own spacecraft.  There certainly seems to be an emphasis on image processing.  Three ground stations around the world.


 SPOT & LANDSAT - M. Higashi, RESTEC, Attachment Y

RESTEC - Nonprofit foundation working with NASDA which acts as a data distribution arm.

OGIS - S. Shimada, Hitachi, Attachment AF

Web specialist - Si3co project (Spatial Information Infrastructure Interoperability Consortium)
Viewgraphs: Part1 Part2



Agency Reports

Paul Kopp - CNES - Attachment AA
    Note also Polder brochure and sample CD (Attachment AD, AE)
Daniele Dietrich - DLR - Attachment AC
Terry Fisher - CCRS - Overview of CEONet, Attachment AI
Takeshi Sasada/Satoko Horiyama - NASDA Agency Report - Attachment AJ



Miscellaneous other documents available during the meeting