Geosyncronization 1.0 SWG

GeoSynchronization Service
Agile spatial data infrastructures based on OGC standards allow content provider organizations to deploy increasingly efficient networks capable of responding to dynamic requirements for using geospatial or location referenced content. In this context, content provider organizations are being more and more called upon to deliver current, timely and verified data over the World Wide Web.
 
In order to satisfy these requirements, content providers must collaborate with outside entities to collect new data and/or update their existing data holdings. This may, for example, mean synchronizing their data with closest-to-source providers as might be the case between municipal, state/provincial and/or federal levels of government. This may also mean crowd-sourcing (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing) their data production or supporting volunteer geographic information (VGI). Crowd-sourcing or VGI has proven to be a very effective mechanism for emergency management / disaster relief situations as is evidenced by the response to the Haiti earthquake of 12-JAN-2010.
 
Regardless of the nature of the collaboration, there is a need for a service to mediate the interaction between data providers and outside entities acting as data collectors. The service must support data entry with validation, notification of changes to interested parties and allow replication of the data provider's features.
 
A Geosynchronization service, deployed by a data provider, sits between the features a provider offers via a WFS and data collectors. It allows data collectors to submit new data or make modifications to existing features without directly affecting the features in the provider's data store(s) until validation has been applied thus ensuring that the data published by the provider is of high quality.
 
The concept of a GeoSynchronization service was developed during the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) Interoperability Pilot project. The CGDI-IP project was an activity developed by GeoConnections in collaboration with the OGC's Interoperability Program to test the feasibility of using open, standards-based technology to improve the management and dissemination of geospatial data in Canada. In particular, this project demonstrated that technology from multiple vendors based on the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Feature Service (WFS) standard could interoperate to provide access to the most current and authoritative data; thereby maintaining currency, avoiding unnecessary versioning and minimizing duplication of the data. The main development of CGDI-IP was conducted from April 2007 to January 2008. The initial concept was further enhanced during the OGC Web Service Phase 5 project, a project in Canada with the Ministries of Natural Resources Québec and Transport Québec and several projects with Army TEC in the United-States. All the projects tested and extended the concepts of a federated Geosynchronization system.
 
Purpose of the Standards Working Group
The purpose of the Geosynchronization Service SWG is to produce a version 1.0.0 implementation standard.
Scope of Work
The SWG shall review and edit the "OWS-7 Engineering Report -- Geosynchronization service" to produce a version 1.0 implementation standard. The review shall be both a technical and editorial review. The items that need to be addressed by the SWG include:

1. Update 10-069r2 to conform to the latest OGC document directives including the Modular Specifications Policy.
2. Add an abstract test suite.
3. Validate all schemas and examples.
4. Address any other technical and/or editorial issues that arise during the review period.

Only those change requests and comments submitted through the formal process as identified in the Policy and Procedures shall be addressed.  Any items suggested through emails, vocal discussions, etc. will be outside of the scope of this SWG untilsubmitted as a formal CR.
What is out of scope?
As describe in Clause 1, the Geosynchronization service has been under development since 2007 and has been tested in a good number of test beds and projects.
 
As a result, the scope of work shall be tightly confined to the current contents of OGC 10-069r2 and aspects of the service not already described in OGC 10-069r2 shall be out of scope.
 
In other words, the feature list shall be limited to what is already described in the OWS-7 engineering report.
Existing Work as a Starting Point
The starting point for this implementation standard shall be OGC 10-069r2.
How it is to be Determined when the Work of the SWG has been Completed
The Geosynchronization Service SWG shall be dissolved after the following three milestones have been achieved:

•  
  1. The SWG has reviewed and edited 10-069r2 to produce a V1.0 candidate standard.
  2. SWG membership approves a recommendation to submit the document to the TC for consideration as an OGC Adopted Standard.
  3. The candidate standard has been approved by the OGC Technical and Planning Committees as an Adopted OGC standard.

Description of deliverables
There shall be two deliverables:

1. A document containing a list of proposed changes resulting from the review period and the disposition of each CR.
2. A V1.0 candidate standard.

IPR Policy for this SWG
The IPR Policy for the Geosyncronization SWG will be RAND and Royalty Free.
Anticipated Audience
Any organization that has a requirement for mediating changes to content in a distributed or federated environment.
Other informative information about the work of this SWG
Similar or applicable standards work (OGC and elsewhere).
The following standards and projects may be relevant to the SWG's planned work, although none currently provide all the functionality anticipated by this committee's deliverables:

• IETF RFC 4287, The Atom Syndication Format
• IETF RFC 5023, The Atom Publishing Protocol
• OGC 06-050r2, An Introduction to GeoRSS: A Standards Based Approach for Geo-enabling RSS feeds
• OpenGIS Web Feature Service (WFS) Implementation Specification V1.0, V1.1, V2.0
• OpenGIS Filter Encoding Implementation Specificatons V1.0, V1.1, V2.0
• OpenGIS GML Simple Features Profile V1.0 and V2.0
• Open Search v1.0 (Draft 4)
• Open Street Maps (http://www.openstreetmaps.org)

Details of the first meeting
The first meeting of the committee will be held by telephone conference call at —AM EDT on 22 Sept. 2010. Call-in information will be provided to the SWG's e-mail list and on the portal calendar in advance of the meeting.
Projected on-going meeting schedule
The work of the committee will be carried out primarily by email and conference calls, possibly every two weeks, with face-to-face meetings perhaps during each of the OGC TC meetings.
Supporters of the Proposal
The following people support this proposal and are committed to the Charter and projected meeting schedule.
 

Name

Email

Organization

Boisvert, Eric

Eric [dot] Boisvert [at] RNCan-NRCan [dot] gc [dot] ca

Natural Resources Canada

Fegeas, Robin

rfegeas [at] usgs [dot] gov

U.S. Geological Survey

Goldstein, Nuke

ngoldstein [at] thecarbonproject [dot] com

The Carbon Project

Harrison, Jeff

jharrison [at] thecarbonproject [dot] com

The Carbon Project

Keighan, Edric

ekeighan [at] cubewerx [dot] com

CubeWerx Inc.

Mattson, Mark

mmattson [at] thecarbonproject [dot] com

The Carbon Project

Métivier, Romain

romain [dot] metivier [at] mrnf [dot] gouv [dot] qc [dot] ca

Ministère des resources naturelles et de la faune du Québec (MRNF)

Poulin, Gaetan

gaetan [dot] poulin [at] mtq [dot] gouv [dot] qc [dot] ca
 

Ministère des transports du Québec (MTQ)

Stowe, Glenn

gstowe [at] cubewerx [dot] com
 

CubeWerx Inc.

Vretanos, Panagiotis (Peter) A.

pvretano [at] cubewerx [dot] com
 

CubeWerx Inc.

David, Wesloh

David [dot] G [dot] Wesloh [at] nga [dot] mil

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

 
Convener(s)
Panagiotis (Peter) A. Vretanos (CubeWerx Inc.)
Jeff Harrison (The Carbon Project)