Data Archiving & Distribution

Activities

Call for Comments on Geographic Information Standards

The scope of ISO TC/211 is standardization in the field of digital geographic information. This work aims to establish a structured set of standards for information concerning objects or phenomena that are directly or indirectly associated with a location relative to the Earth. These standards may specify, for geographic information, methods, tools and services for data management (including definition and description), acquiring, processing, analyzing, accessing, presenting and transferring such data in digital/electronic form between different users, systems and locations. The work shall link to appropriate standards for information technology and data where possible, and provide a framework for the development of sector-specific applications using geographic data.

The Data Archiving and Distribution Technical Committee, in conjunction with the Data Fusion Technical Committee, is coordinating the IEEE GRSS’s comments on the standards development of ISO TC/211 Geographic Information/Geomatics. The makeup, scope, and other details of TC 211 can be found at www.isotc211.org.

Call for comments on ISO TS 19101-2: Geographic information – Reference Model – Imagery

The objective of this Technical Specification is the coordinated development of standards that allow the benefits of distributed geographic image processing to be realized in an environment of heterogeneous IT resources and multiple organizational domains. This Technical Specification defines an information system for geographic imagery based on the Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), International Standard ISO/IEC 10746-1. The ultimate challenge is to enable the geographic imagery collected from different sources to become an integrated digital representation of the Earth widely accessible for humanities critical decisions.

The standards that emerge from this process have potential benefits and ramifications for image processing, automatic feature detection, data mining, data preservation, and the utilization of geographic imagery in decision support systems, while addressing accessibility, intellectual property and privacy issues.

The reference model for geographic imagery uses 4 of the 5 “viewpoints” described in the RM-ODP. The purpose of a viewpoint is to bring together those pieces of information relevant to some particular area of concern during the design of a system. The viewpoints used are:

  1. The enterprise viewpoint: A viewpoint on the system and its environment that focuses on the purpose, scope and policies for the system as well as the typical actors and their business activities.
  2. The information viewpoint: A viewpoint on the system and its environment that focuses on the semantics of the information and information processing performed. This view provides schemas describing data structures and the progressive addition of value to the resulting products.
  3. The computational viewpoint: A viewpoint on the system and its environment that enables distribution through functional decomposition of the system into objects which interact at interfaces. This viewpoint addresses services in an abstract approach, i.e., independent of hardware computing hosts and networks.
  4. The engineering viewpoint: A viewpoint on the system and its environment that focuses on the mechanisms and functions required to support distributed interaction between objects in the system.

The following portions of the document are probably most in need of input:

  1. The generic view of geographic imagery systems needs to be expanded to incorporate novel sensors and processing streams.
  2. The general feature model for geographic imagery is also biased towards traditional optical systems
  3. Sections dealing with application of imagery in decision support systems need further input.

The document is currently in working draft form. By the end of the July 2004 it will become a Committee Draft and the process for submitting comments will become more formal and time consuming. For this reason we are asking interested GRS-S members to make their comments to the IEEE liaison to the 19101-2 Project by July 23rd at the latest. Please send comments, along with your name, organization, and IEEE membership number to:

Siri Jodha Singh Khalsa, Ph.D.
IEEE GRSS Liaison to the 19101-2 Project
Space Sciences Sector, L-3 GSI
449 UCB / 1540 30th St.
Boulder, CO 80309
U.S.A.
303-492-1445
303-492-2468 (fax)
sjsk@nsidc.org