Spatial Data on the Web Working Group Charter
What are the best examples of data-driven Web applications you've ever seen? The updates to Open Street Map after the Haiti earthquake? The mapping of all 9,966,539 buildings in the Netherlands? The NHS Prescription data? Things like SF Park that help you 'park your car smarter' in San Francisco using real time data? The maps, satellite and street level images offered by search engines?
All these and many, many more data-driven applications have geospatial information (GI) at their core; it is a major element in defining context for knowledge that can then be exposed in many different ways to end users. The societal, economic and scientific benefits of integrating GI into commercial and institutional processes is potentially huge. Very often the common factor across multiple datasets is the location data, and maps are crucial in visualizing correlations between data sets that may otherwise be hidden.
Having a clear strategy as to how GI is best integrated with data on the Web is paramount. Commercial operators, including search engines, invest a great deal of time and effort in generating geographical databases which are mirrors to Web content with the geographical context often added manually or at best semi-automatically. This process would be substantially aided if data were published on the Web with the appropriate geographic information at the source, thus allowing discovery and access using the standard mechanisms of the Web.
'Geo' is not the only spatial data. In healthcare, for example, polygons may represent pathology tissue segmentation extractions that can be subjected to spatial analysis. Whilst prioritizing geospatial use cases, in so far as is practical, the WG will take account of the needs of other users of spatial technologies.
The term coverage is used to describe a feature whose properties vary with space and / or time; for example, the variation of air temperature within a given geographic region, or the variation of flow rate with time at a hydrological monitoring station.
The Linking Geospatial Data workshop recognized that many relevant standards already exist. These include informal 'community standards' that enjoy widespread adoption (GeoJSON being the prime example) and others for which the formal standardization process has not been completed. Where standards have been completed there are competing ideas and engineers are often unsure which ones to adopt. With these factors in mind, the mission of the Spatial Data on the Web working group is to clarify and formalize the relevant standards landscape. In particular:
- to determine how spatial information can best be integrated with other data on the Web;
- to determine how machines and people can discover that different facts in different datasets relate to the same place, especially when 'place' is expressed in different ways and at different levels of granularity;
- to identify and assess existing methods and tools and then create a set of best practices for their use;
- where desirable, to complete the standardization of informal technologies already in widespread use.
The Spatial Data on the Web Working Group is part of the Data Activity and is explicitly chartered to work in collaboration with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) as described in Dependencies & Liaisons.
| End date | 7 October 2018 |
|---|---|
| Confidentiality | Proceedings are public |
| Initial Chairs | Kerry Taylor, Australian National University Ed Parsons, Google |
| Team Contacts (FTE %: 20) |
Francois Daoust |
| Usual Meeting Schedule | Teleconferences: weekly Face-to-face: twice annually, ideally alternating between an OGC TC and W3C's TPAC |
Scope
The scope of the Spatial Data on the Web Working Group, SDWWG, is Web technologies as they may be applied to location. Where relevant, it will promote Linked Data using the 5 Stars of Linked Data paradigm, but this will not be to the exclusion of other technologies.
Out of Scope
The Spatial Data on the Web Working Group must be mindful of the needs of front end Web developers, however, it will not develop any geospatial or map rendering technologies. In other words, this WG is focused specifically on the intersection of the issues facing OGC and W3C members.
Deliverables
The following deliverables are expected to be developed as standards through collaboration with the Open Geospatial Consortium's Geosemantics Domain Working Group, as described below, and to be jointly branded by both standards bodies.
The titles of the deliverables are not final; the two Working Groups will have to decide on the final titles as well as the structures of the documents. The Working Groups may also decide to merge some deliverables into one document or produce several documents that together constitute one of the deliverables.
The superscripts OGC, W3C indicate the standards body whose members have particular expertise in a given area.
- Use Cases and Requirements (Note)
A document setting out the range of problems that the working groups are trying to solve.
- Spatial Data on the Web Best Practices (Note)
This will include:
- an agreed spatial ontology conformant to the ISO 19107 abstract model and based on existing available ontologies such as GeoSPARQL, NeoGeo and the ISA Core Location vocabularyOGC, W3C;
- advice on use of URIs as identifiers in GI systemsW3C;
- advice on providing different levels of metadata for different usage scenarios (from broad sweep metadata to metadata about individual coordinates in a polygon)OGC;
- develop advice on, or possibly define, RESTful APIs to return data in a variety of formats including those defined elsewhere, such as GeoJSON, GeoJSON-LD and TopoJSONOGC, W3C.
- Time Ontology in OWL (Recommendation)W3C, OGC
The WG will work with the authors of the existing Time Ontology in OWL to complete the development of this widely used ontology through to Recommendation status. Further requirements already identified in the geospatial community will be taken into account.
- Semantic Sensor Network Vocabulary (Recommendation)OGC, W3C
The WG will work with the members of the former Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group to develop its ontology into a formal Recommendation, noting the work to split the ontology into smaller sections to offer simplified access.
- Coverage in Linked Data (Recommendation)OGC
The WG will develop a formal Recommendation for expressing discrete coverage data conformant to the ISO 19123 abstract model. Existing standard and de facto ontologies will be examined for applicability; these will include the RDF Data Cube. The Recommendation will include provision for describing the subset of coverages that are simple timeseries datasets - where a time-varying property is measured at a fixed location. OGC's WaterML 2 Part 1 - Timeseries will be used as an initial basis.
Given that coverage data can often be extremely large in size, publication of the individual data points as Linked Data may not always be appropriate. The Recommendation will include provision for describing an entire coverage dataset and subsets thereof published in more compact formats using Linked Data. For example where a third party wishes to annotate a subset of a large coverage dataset or a data provider wishes to publish a large coverage dataset in smaller subsets to support convenient reuse.
Where deliverables build on prior work, any variance developed by the Spatial Data on the Web WG will be backwards compatible with the existing work. The aim is to formalize existing work, not to replace or compete with it.
Subject to its capacity, the working groups may choose to develop additional relevant vocabularies and specifications in response to community demand. For example: a standard method for converting between spatial ontologies; methods to access a subset of a large dataset in terms of its spatial component. Such additional work may be carried out by one or other WG independently of the other.
Best Practice Success Criteria
To advance to Proposed Recommendation, evidence will be adduced that each of the best practices have been followed or recommended in at least two environments.
Vocabulary Success Criteria
To advance to Proposed Recommendation, evidence will be adduced that each term in the vocabulary has been used in multiple environments. This will be most strictly applied to terms developed by the WG, less strictly to terms originating from the prior work whose use or otherwise may not be knowable.
Milestones
| Note: See changes from this initial schedule on the group home page. | ||||||
| Deliverable | FPWD | LC | CR | PR | Rec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use Cases and Requirements | March 2014 | June 2015 | ||||
| Best Practices | June 2015 | December 2015 | March 2016 | July 2016 | September 2016 | |
| Time Ontology in OWL | June 2015 | December 2015 | March 2016 | July 2016 | October 2016 | |
| Semantic Sensor Network | July 2015 | March 2016 | June 2016 | October 2016 | December 2016 | |
| Coverage in Linked Data | September 2015 | March 2016 | July 2016 | September 2016 | December 2016 | |
Timeline View Summary
- December 2014: First teleconference
- March 2015: First face-to-face meeting
- March 2015: UCR First Public Working Draft
- June 2015: Best Practices & Time Ontology FPWD
- July 2015: SSN & Coverage to FPWD
- December 2015: Best Practices & Time Ontology to Last Call
- March 2016: Best Practices & Time Ontology to Candidate Recommendation, SSN & Coverage to Last Call
- Summer/Fall 2016: All standards to Proposed Recommendation
- December 2016: All standards to Recommendation