Exploiting spatial data infrastructures for

rural mobility

Michael GOULD1, Robin S. SMITH

1,3, Karel CHARVAT

2

1Geospatial Partners s.r.l., Via G. Boni, 39, 20144 Milano, Italy

Tel: +34 655475333, Email: gould@geospatialpartners.com 2WirelessInfo, Cholinská 1048/19, 784 01 Litovel, Czech Republic

Tel: +42 0604617327, Email: charvat@wirelessinfo.cz 3The Informatics Collaboratory of the Social Sciences (ICOSS), University of Sheffield, 219

Portobello Sheffield S1 4DP

Abstract: Rural mobility and collaboration are being aided by innovative location-

based services allowing information delivery to remote areas, customised to user

profiles including real-time geolocation. Growth in this services sector is supported

by conformance to emerging international geospatial standards, which allow services

interoperability through open interfaces rather than on dictating single specifications.

These standards have become the glue holding together Spatial Data Infrastructures,

which support mobile services by providing users on-line access to terabytes of data,

some updated in near real-time. While these services already have been

demonstrated to a limited degree, the novelty for the near future is the user’s ability

to contribute personal data to the infrastructure and not only consume official data

from it. These location-based personal data contributions will be made, to a large

extent, in collaborative on-line environments, as will be demonstrated in the C@R

Collaborative Working Environments project.

1. Introduction

Traditionally rural mobility was defined with respect to physical access to amenities of

interest. To access water it was requisite to live within walking distance of a river or a well,

but then over time technological innovation brought water to households via horse drawn

cart, and then pipes. Something similar has happened for access to information, from

dependence on periodic community contact (church, regional market) to gain information in

daily or weekly doses, to today’s situation where information arrives over the airwaves to

nearly any location where an individual rural resident lives or works. However, the fact that

information comes easily to the rural user (here we assume universal coverage, obviously

still a problem in many rural areas) does not mean that distance, or more precisely location,

is dead as was posited by Cairncross [1]. This is because more and more of the information

received is not for mass consumption but rather has been filtered by user profile and by

current position on the Earth at a specific time.

Information, unlike water, can be infinitely customised to personal needs or context:

going beyond radio and television broadcast to individual data stream provision. Today a

group of rural workers can each receive customised information depending upon who they

are --age, experience, linguistic abilities, job category, special interface needs (e.g. hearing

impaired)—in addition to their location to a resolution of a few metres. This paper

describes innovations allowing rural users to be located on demand or be able to locate

other physical resources, colleagues, potential clients in a context-sensitive manner within

an open environment. Part of the infrastructure that makes this possible is an open

geospatial infrastructure that is held together by adherence to international standards at the

interface level. These interface standards permit the creation of a limitless array of value-

added location-based services, helping make rural life more mobile and, thus, rewarding,

and helping also to grow the rural information society. These are among the objectives of

the newly awarded Collaborative @ Rural (C@R) integrated project funded under the IST

Collaborative Working Environments programme. One of the novelties of C@R is the

design and implementation of mobile user data production and sharing mechanisms, so that

information can be not only consumed from official sources but also contributed from local

and specialised knowledge. For one simple example, why consult a national weather portal

to check on a local temperature, when you can have free access to a network of temperature

sensor data collected by residents of that local area? These networks are becoming

possible, in part thanks to geospatial standards which help guarantee interoperability.

1.1 Geospatial standards

To support the creation of innovative rural mobility information architectures and

platforms, several families of open international standards have emerged over the past

decade. The main de jure standards come from ISO Technical Committee 211 and from the

European counterpart CEN TC287, both devoted to geomatics/geographic information. In

addition a related family of de facto industry specifications has emerged over the past

decade from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), a membership organisation of more

than 300 industrial, government and academic partners. OGC has released specifications for

traditional desktop applications, for geo-web services, and for location-based services.

Taken together, these standards allow ICT experts to develop interoperable geolocation-

based solutions for specific information communities, such as is the rural collaborative

working environment (CWE) community. This information community, like all others,

maintains its own special ontologies, user needs, thresholds for quality of service, etc.

Within these common characteristics ICT tools can be both diverse and interoperable,

allowing for the assembly of tailor-made applications on the basis of web service discovery

and composition, extension of base software through plug-ins, open source (collaborative)

development methodology, as well as providing a multiplier effect due to physical or virtual

collaboration.

Rural mobility is supported by standards-based client and server technologies, allowing

for users in the field (experts or ordinary rural citizens) to carry appropriate technology (for

example ordinary 3G handsets) which is capable of accessing huge amounts of geolocation

data on demand. Geospatial data servers storing terabytes of Earth observation satellite

imagery, detailed cartography containing multiple layers of data --cadastral, topography,

soils, water resources-- are being implemented across Europe and are becoming more

widely available thanks to two key factors combining to create the European Spatial Data

Infrastructure [2]. The first factor is the use of standards-based interfaces (defined by OGC)

which isolate users from unnecessary details for connecting to data sources.

The second factor is a gradual positive change in politics regarding the easing of

pricing and licensing restrictions of government-collected and managed geospatial data.

This is opening the door to a new world of possible value-added services built on top of

these geospatial data, and since it is the local rural residents themselves who best know a

geographical region, it is they who are ideally positioned to contribute expert knowledge to

their piece of the puzzle that, when fully assembled following agreed rules (standards) will

form the rural theme or layer of these Spatial Data infrastructures. Traditionally users are

given read-only access to geolocation data, but soon they will have the ability to add to that

data by sketching on special transparent community layers overlaying the base data, or by

submitting GPS-tagged photos and point data ('here is where I saw a particular rare bird').

This creates, over time, a dual data infrastructure: periodically updated official base data, on

which more frequently updated (even real-time) local knowledge data may be integrated

and shared.

2. Spatial Data Infrastructures

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related spatial applications are data-

centric in the sense that they rely on the input and constant maintenance of large

quantities of basic spatial data, on top of which integrators and end users produce

value-added thematic geographic information for the purpose of decision-making. A

typical GIS workflow can be simplified as consisting of three components: 1) data

entry and reformatting, 2) data processing (geoprocessing), and 3) presentation of

results to the user. In practice this apparently simple workflow is constrained by two

key factors. The first is limited interoperability among GIS components, because

most are tightly coupled to specific data formats or to other software, complicating

the task of integrating components from multiple vendors. The second is that the

basic spatial data necessary to begin geoprocessing are in many cases not readily

available, because they are poorly documented, outdated, are too expensive, or are

available under restrictive licensing conditions. This second factor has been seriously

limiting the ability of government employees, researchers and businesses to exploit

geographic information, unnecessarily incrementing project costs and, thus,

negatively affecting the economy.

Many government administrations have recognized this critical problem and have

initiated coordinated actions to facilitate the discovery and sharing of spatial data,

creating the institutional basis for Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) [3]. The Global

Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) initiative (www.gsdi.org) defines SDI as a

coordinated series of agreements on technology standards, institutional

arrangements, and policies that enable the discovery and facilitate the availability of

and access to spatial data. The SDI, once agreed upon and implemented, serves to

connect GIS and other spatial data users to myriad spatial data sources, the majority

held in the public sector.

In 1990 the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) was created and in

1994 then president Clinton asked it (Executive Order 12906) to establish a national

SDI in conjunction with organizations from State, local and tribal governments, the

academic community, and the private sector. Three years later the European Umbrella

Organization for Geographic Information (EUROGI) was created with the mission to

develop a unified European approach to the use of geographic technologies (a mission

far from complete). More recently, the European Community launched the

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative for the creation

of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure, based on a Framework Directive (European

legislation) defining how European member states should facilitate discovery and

access to integrated and interoperable spatial information services and their

respective data sources. As the number of national SDIs increased, to include in 2004

about half the nations worldwide [4], [5], the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure

(GSDI) Association was created to promote international cooperation and

collaboration in support of local, national and international SDI developments.

The basic creation and management principles of SDI apply to all spatial

jurisdictions in a spatial hierarchy, from municipalities to regions, states, nations and

international areas. Béjar et al. [6] show how each SDI at each level in the hierarchy

can be created in accordance with its thematic (e.g. soils, transportation) and

geographical coverage (e.g. municipality, nation), following international standard

processes and interfaces, to help ensure that the SDIs fit like puzzle pieces, both

geographically and vertically (thematically). This harmonization exercise is

necessary to allow for spatial data discovery and exploitation crossing jurisdictional

boundaries, in the case of response to flooding or forest fires, just to name two cross-

border applications.

2.1 SDI essential components

Although SDIs are primarily institutional collaboration frameworks, they also define

and implement heterogeneous distributed information systems, consisting of four

main software components linked via Internet. These components are: 1) metadata

editors and associated catalogue services, 2) spatial data stores or databases, 3) client

applications for user search and access to spatial data, and 4) middleware or

intermediate geoprocessing services which assist the user in finding and in

transforming spatial data for use at the client side application.

Figure 1 summarizes the essential technology components, as generally accepted

within the GI standards organisations Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

(www.opengeospatial.org) and ISO Technical Committee 211 (www.isotc211.org),

and synthesized by the FGDC and NASA. The architecture can be interpreted as a

traditional 3-tier client-middleware-server model, where GI applications seek spatial

data content that are discovered and then possibly transformed or processed by

middle services before presentation by the client application. The architecture also

may be interpreted using the web services ‘publish-find-bind’ triangle model [7]

whereby spatial data content (and service) offers are published to catalogue servers,

which are later queried to discover (find) data or services, and to then bind to (and

execute) them.

Regardless of the conceptual model adopted, what is common among most all

SDIs is the primary goal of providing discovery and access to spatial data. Discovery

is based on the documentation of datasets to be shared, in the sense of metadata

following international standards such as ISO 19115/19139. Metadata describing the

content, geographic and temporal coverage, authorship, access and use details, and

other attributes of a dataset are created within GIS applications, or externally using

specialized text editors. The metadata files created in standard XML formats, are then

sent to some data catalogue server, that in many cases is located at a central node of

the SDI but in principle may be distributed anywhere on the network.

Users wishing to discover spatial data sources normally access catalogue

search interfaces via web applications called geoportals [8], examples of which may

be found at http://www.geo-one-stop.gov/ and http://eu-geoportal.jrc.it/. The

geoportal is an interface façade, both hiding the implementation details of the

underlying query mechanisms, and inviting participation in the SDI community. In

addition to discovery queries, the geoportal also normally provides free access to

quick looks or small samples of datasets that are discovered. This spatial data

visualization is frequently implemented as software employing Web Map Service

(WMS) software interfaces [9] allowing for integration of heterogeneous client and

server products from multiple vendors, commercial or otherwise. WMS-based

services receive a request for a certain spatial data layer and for a certain

geographical extent, convert the data (in vector or raster format internally) to create a

bitmap (standard MIME formats such as JPEG, GIF, PNG) and then deliver the image

to the web client.

More sophisticated spatial data (web) services are becoming available, many

of which also following de jure ISO standards and de facto specifications from

organizations such as OGC, OASIS, and W3C. These include services providing

concrete functionality such as coordinate transformation, basic image processing and

treatment, and basic geostatistics.

Figure 1. High-level SDI architecture, taken from the FGDC-NASA Geospatial

Interoperability Reference Model (GIRM), [10].

3. User data and collaboration

The collaborative spatial data infrastructure extends previous research work and starts new

model of spatial decision based on eCollaboration principles. The new eCollaboration Web

service, building of rural SDI and collaborative decision introduces new concepts of

collaborative and virtual work, where all stakeholders (farmers, foresters, tourist providers,

government) can share online spatial data and participate on decision and management

processes..

The solutions could be materialised in the system for facilitation of interactions between

different groups of stakeholders in the spatial decision processes. Themes covered include

assessing the demand for, and the costs and benefits of services; enhancing service

accountability, provision of information and feedback from service users; developing

collaboration across different levels of decision providers and data users, with a focus on

“front-office” and back office arrangements to improve efficiency and service delivery;

strategies for skills development.

Collaborative spatial data infrastructure addresses this issue by providing a new solution

based on online involvement of all interested groups in decision process following

innovative models. This approach is multilevel and multi-stakeholder. It is based on a

combination of utilisation of existing data infrastructure, existing tools and completely new

principles of good SDI governance [Ch1 ].

The collaborative decision

• eCollaboration tools for creation of shared workspaces, spatial data sharing,

multimedia communication, workflow management, and messaging.

• Collaborative Geoprocessing which support the development of decision frameworks,

the gathering of inputs from stakeholders, the analysis of these inputs as well as the

rating and ranking of alternatives based on collaboratively agreed decision frameworks,

• Geoservices tools supporting: public spatial data access, sharing the spatial data

between different level of users, tools supporting distribution of the data, Web access

to spatial data in combination with geoprocesing, tools for utilising distributed spatial

data for decision support, modelling tools, and the visualisation of outputs from

analysis.

To adapt the current methods, new structures for spatial decision could be promoted by

encouraging citizens and establishing forms of vertical and/or horizontal co-ordination

among the institutional parties involved in decision and management process. These

flexible forms of governance makes it possible to exploit local synergies and, notably, to

ensure continuity in regional development. [Ch2 ]

The C@r system will be built on experience from previous ICT projects, but also on the

base of OGC and INSPIRE standardisation effort. It will join best experience from ICT

technologies, but also from planning and decision processes.

The objective of collaborative environment will be that it:

• Enables collective work across widely dispersed physical locations

• Provides a single point workspace for all participants of decision process

• Provides a managed approach to stakeholder handoffs

• Exposes cost and performance threats at an early stage and mitigates those effects

through higher visibility

• Provides a formal structure to define internal and external workflows and approval

paths

• Maintains key event status and change record information

The Collaborative Environment has to be implemented as a collection of services and actors

involved. It shows at a glance all the services which form the system architecture and put in

evidence how those services relate to the human actors, intended as service requestors and

service owners. From the user point of view the interface to these services should be user-

friendly and intuitively composed, in order to facilitate usage of the system by wide

community of stakeholders, with different education level. Behind the user interface the

services should be able to cooperate with each other. The main services to be implemented

within the C@r system are described in the text to follow.

• The Job Management service is in charge of running jobs. The jobs are usually run

on different resources, and can be run directly by the user or can be part of a chain

process. For this reason it should be possible to call the service both by an actor and

by other services.

• The workflow management is one of the services that can talk with the Job

Management service.

• The Data Providing service is essential to order and deliver data, and should expose

the following interface to the actor:

• Order Data

• Retrieve Data

In ordering e.g. SDI the actor should be able to choose, at least, the type of data, the period

of time and the interested geographic area. It is also possible that the Data providing service

will be a part of the chain.

Data Catalogue service should be callable from both the actors and other services. The

Data Catalogue service is in charge of querying the available catalogue to find data and it

should also be possible to preview the data found. This service is in charge of managing

data in order to transform them in a format that can be easily visualized. This service could

be directly callable by the human actor. In addition it could be part of a chain of service. In

any case the interfaces that this service should expose are:

• Convert data

• Send data in visual format

• Display data

Application Management service is foreseen to manage the diverse user applications. The

user applications are intended as any executable program, coming from the human actor,

used to analyse data and to produce results. The Application Management service is in

charge of permitting to the user to execute the following operations:

• Store and record the user application

• Select the user application

Resource Discovery service is in charge of automatically discovering resources within the

collaborative environment i.e. this service is responsible to find the resources where it is

possible to run a job. The interfaces that this service should expose are related to

discovering of available resources.

Data Discovery service is in charge of automatically discovering relevant data. The data

mentioned here are the one stored in the data repository. The interface that this service

should expose is:

• Discover available data

Communication services will support synchronous an asynchronous communication, and

among the mostly used are:

• Mailing

• Messaging

• Teleconferencing

• Videoconferencing

End user (client)

End user (client)

Encoder

Encoder

Encoder

Streaming

media server

Web server

presentation file

End user (client)

As example of such solution could be mentioned Open Agriculture Service (OAS) Platform

for eCollaboration in agriculture and forestry developed in Voice project [Ch3], which

support more effective access of farmers, farming services organisation, forest owners and

forest service organisations to the services based on Earth observation data. By providing

the opportunity of services composition, OAS Prototype allows easier provision of existing

services and, in some way, the creation of new ones. In particular, the prototype will give

an easier access to EO data.

OAS Prototype Overview

The OAS Collaborative Environment implements services to ease the access of farmers,

VAO’s (Value Adding Organisations), data and application providers, by providing an open

and collaborative environment. The prototype also demonstrated the possibility to compose

different services from different service providers (e.g., VAO, map server, etc) and data

from different data sources (e.g., map server, EO / non EO data catalogues) in order to

provide, in a transparent manner, a composite service to the final user.

References

[1] Cairncross, F., The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives,

ISBN: 0875848060, Harvard Business School Press, 1997.

[ ] Smith, R.S. Digital Participation and Access in UK Local Government. In Roche, S. et Caron, C (Ed)

Sociétés, Organisations et SIG. Paris, Hermès, ISBN: 2746209616, 2005, pp. 229-254.

[ ] Smith, R.S. Theories of Digital Participation (Ch. 3). In Campagna M. (Ed.) GIS for Sustainable

Development. London; CRC/Taylor Francis, ISBN: 0849330513, 2005, pp37-53.

[ ] Smith, R.S. and Craglia, M. Digital Participation and Access to Geographic Information: a case study of

UK local government. URISA Journal, Special Issue: Access and Participatory Approaches (APA) II, 15, pp.

49-54, 2003.

[ 6] Béjar, R., Gallardo, P., Gould, M., Muro, P., Nogueras, J., and J. Zarazaga. A high level architecture for

national SDI: The Spanish case. EC-GI&GIS Workshop, Warsaw, June 2004. http://www.ec-

gis.org/Workshops/10ec-gis/ (accessed 4 April 2006)

[ 8] Bernard, L., I. Kanellopoulos, A. Annoni, and P. Smits. The European geoportal — one step towards the

establishment of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29(1),

pp. 15–31, 205.

[ 5] Crompvoets, J., Bregt, A., Rajabifard, A., and Williamson, I. Assessing the worldwide status of national

spatial data clearinghouses. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 18, pp. 665-689, 2004.

[ 2] EC (Commission of The European Communities), 2004. Proposal for a Directive of the European

Parliament and of the Council establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community

(INSPIRE), COM(2004) 516, Available online at: http://inspire.jrc.it/proposal/EN.pdf (accessed 24 April

2006).

[ 10] FGDC. The Geospatial Interoperability Reference Model, version 1.1. Federal Geographic Data

Committee, Geospatial Applications Interoperability (GAI) Working Group. 2003.

http://gai.fgdc.gov/girm/v1.1/ (accessed 24 April 2006).

[ 7] Gottschalk, K., S. Graham, S. Krueger, J. Snell. Introduction to web services architecture. IBM Systems

Journal 41(2), 2002.

http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/sj/412/gottschalk.html (accessed 24 April 2002)

[ ] GSDI. Spatial Data Infrastructure Cookbook (English version 2.0). Global Spatial Data Infrastructure

(GSDI) Association. 2004. http://www.gsdi.org/gsdicookbookindex.asp (accessed 24 April 2006)

[ 4] Masser, I. GIS Worlds; Creating Spatial Data Infrastructures (Redlands, California: ESRI Press), 2005.

[ 9] OGC, OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) implementation specification, version 1.3. Open Geospatial

Consortium, Wayland, Massachusetts, 2005.

http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=14416 (accessed 24 April 2006)

[3 ] van Loenen, B. and B.C. Kok (Eds.), 2004. Spatial data infrastructure and policy development in Europe

and the United States (Delft: Delft University Press, 2004).

[Ch1 ] Charvat, K., Kocab, M., Valdova, I., Cajtham, T., Konecny, M., Stanek, K, Holy, S., and S. Kafka.

Geospatial Web Data Sharing in Agriculture, The 5th Conference of the European Federation for Information

Technology in Agriculture, Food and Environment, and The 3rd World Congress on Computers in

Agriculture and Natural Resources, July 25-28, 2005, Vila Real, Portugal

[ Ch2] Charvat, K. New Web Based Services in Implementation of Agricultural and Environmental Policies

and Programmes, CELK conference May 2005, Budapest.

[ Ch3] Karel Charvát, Paola Betti, Luigi Fusco, Joost van Bemmelen, Petr Horak, Pavel Gnip, Maris Alberts

Open Agriculture Services, IST Africa, Pretoria May 2006