AIP-6 SummaryEngineering Report

GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot, Phase 3

Version 1.0

Table of Contents1 Introduction................................................................................................................................32 AIP-6 activities..........................................................................................................................5

2.1 The major outcomes of AIP-6 are documented in:.............................................................52.2 Activity 1 Results: Increase Societal Benefit Area (SBA) use of GEOSS resources.........5

2.2.1 AIP-6 Videos prepared for the GEO Plenary...............................................................52.2.2 Water............................................................................................................................62.2.3 Agriculture / Disaster Management...........................................................................112.2.4 Energy........................................................................................................................12

2.3 Activity 2: Increase the availability of GEOSS resources................................................143.2.1 Water..........................................................................................................................143.2.2 GeoViQua..................................................................................................................163.2.3 Energy........................................................................................................................203.2.4 Highlights of AIP-6 UML Modeling Efforts.............................................................203.2.5 Data Sharing..............................................................................................................20

2.4 Activity 2: Focus on benefits and usability for Developing Countries............................234.2.1 AIP Capacity Building...............................................................................................23

3 AIP-6 Observations and Recommendations............................................................................253.1 AIP-6 Observations..........................................................................................................253.2 AIP-6 Recommendations..................................................................................................26

Annex: Responses to the AIP-6 Call for Participation..................................................................29Acronyms.......................................................................................................................................30References......................................................................................................................................31

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Summary of the Fifth Phase of the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-6)

1 IntroductionThe GEO Work Plan charges Task IN-05 “GEOSS Design and Interoperability,” to:

Manage the evolutionary technical architecture (design) of GEOSS and contributed Earth observation data and service resources. Promote GEOSS interoperability principles. Enable a sustainable GEOSS of value to the user supporting the development of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and GEOSS communication networks for the access to, and use of, Earth observations and related services.

The relevant IN-05 Priority Action for AIP is:

GEOSS Research and Prototyping: Execute and document Architecture Implementation Pilots (AIPs) and related research activities. Recommend improvements to the GEOSS architecture on the basis of AIPs’ outcomes.

AIP-6 has been developed in the context of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI), which has been established as a set of operational components of GEOSS. GEO Task IN-03 facilitates and supports the sustained operation, maintenance and enhancement of the GCI. While Task IN-03 ensures routine operations, it also aims at improving and maintaining the GCI as the architectural framework essential to implementing the GEOSS Data Sharing Principles. IN-03 supports the integration of new GCI capabilities and provides the resources needed for the discovery of, and access to, a core set of data and information across all Societal Benefit Areas. Task IN-05 and AIP in particular support IN-03 by executing development and research that results in designs for consideration to become operational in IN-03 and beyond.

AIP employs an “evolutionary development process” whereby the architecture, the delivered systems, and the stakeholders co-evolve. Stakeholder needs are reassessed with each iteration of the architecture; the architecture is used to guide each system as it moves through development, and appropriate versions are used to evaluate each system on delivery. The AIP Development process consists of a series of phases, e.g., phase 6 (AIP-6). The Master Schedule for AIP-6 is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 – Major Milestones of AIP-6

CFP Issued 9 Feb 2013CFP Response Due Date for Kickoff 15 March 2013Kickoff Workshop at the GEOSS Future Products Workshop in Washington DC, USA

28 – 29 March 2013

Results demonstrated at GEO Plenary and Ministerial Summit in Geneva, Switzerland

15 - 17 January 2014

Completion of AIP-6 activities February 2014

Statistics about AIP-6

Responses to the AIP-6 Call for Participation

o 18 responses were received from the AIP-6 CFP. As each response included multiple organizations, the responses contain contributions from over 100 organizations. (See the Annex)

AIP-6 was organized around four activities:o Increase Societal Benefit Area (SBA) use of GEOSS resources o Increase the availability of GEOSS resources

Distributed development was coordinated in weekly telecons/webex of the AIP plenary, telecons/webex of the Working Groups, and several online web-based collaboration tools

Interoperability Testing of deployed components was conducted over several months with results including screen captures recorded in 6 demonstrations (http://www.ogcnetwork.net/pub/ogcnetwork/GEOSS/AIP6/)

6 Engineering Reports were developed: this summary report and 3 SBA and 3 Technical (The Data Sharing report is part of this summary report).

Tutorials for enabling access to priority earth observation data via web services were developed with SIF leadership, and are published on the GEOSS Best Practices Wiki

AcknowledgmentsThis AIP-6 Summary ER provides a high level overview of the efforts of scores of GEOSS Members and Participating Organizations. Hundreds of individuals from those organizations have contributed to the development of the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot. Our collective contributions are making it possible to create and use GEOSS.

This report was written by Bart De Lathouwer from The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) with contributions from the AIP-6 participants.

OGC activities in AIP-6 was supported by the US Geological Survey.

2 AIP-6 activitiesAIP-6 increased the accessibility of Information for Societal Benefits (Water, Energy, Agriculture, Disasters Management), and increased the use of the data through promoting availability of new data services, clients (User Management and Authentication), and applications building on accomplishments of prior AIP phases. AIP-6 focused on enabling key global EO data sources with standard service interfaces and generalized clients, supporting brokered search, and supporting community publisher and user requirements through integration with the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI).AIP-6 was organized in four major activities. Activity #1 Increase GEOSS capacity to support several SBAs: Water, Disasters Management, Energy, Water and Agriculture. Activity #2 Increase the availability of GEOSS resources. Activity #3 Focus on benefits and usability for Developing Countries. Activity #4 Strengthen previous GEO results and technical achievements.

2.1 The major outcomes of AIP-6 are documented in: 6 Engineering Reports (ERs): this summary ER and a system engineering/modeling ER.

AIP-6 results webpage (www.ogcnetwork.net/pub/ogcnetwork/GEOSS/AIP6/index.html)

Data access tutorials available on the GEOSS Best Practices Wiki (http://wiki.ieee-earth.org/).

A set of 4 videos, referenced in Section 2.4, highlighting the outcomes of integration and architecture testing, as presented at the GEO Plenary in November 2012.

The AIP-6 Engineering Reports (ER) are:

SBA ERso Water  ERo Energy  ERo Agriculture   and Disasters Management   ER

Technical ERso Capacity Building  ERo Data Sharing ERo GCI Research by GeoViQua , GEOWOW, Water and Energy  ERo System Design  ER

2.2 Activity 1 Results: Increase Societal Benefit Area (SBA) use of GEOSS resources

Following are descriptions of the Societal Benefits contributed by AIP-6 participants with highlights of their valuable contributions towards Activity 1. The components are documented in no specific order.

2.2.1 AIP-6 Videos prepared for the GEO PlenaryA set of 4 videos developed during AIP-6 showcase the remarkable progress that has been made

in increasing access to priority earth observation resources and demonstrating the potential for exploitation of these resources by community-provided components. Eight videos (each 5 minutes long) were prepared for the GEO-X Plenary in January in Geneva to highlight the work performed by the AIP-6 teams:

2.2.2 WaterThis AIP-6 GEOSS Water Services Engineering Report (ER) provides a description of the contributed components and services to the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot 6 (AIP-6), in support of the GEO Work Plan 2012-20151 and Water Societal Benefit Area (SBA) communities.

The AIP, as a process, provides a phased delivery of components and services to GEOSS operations, with each phase consisting of:

Architecture refinement based on user interactions; Component deployment and interoperability testing; SBA-focused demonstrations.

This Engineering Report is one key result of the AIP-6 activities conducted from March to December 2013. As a result of work in AIP-6, the GEOSS Water Services demonstrations show greatly simplified, interactive discovery and access to tens of thousands of stream discharge time series descriptors and datasets worldwide, discoverable through a standards-based GEOSS “catalog of catalogs”. This addresses a significant subset of water data and web services. The AIP-6 Water Services demonstrations A separate Summary Engineering Report describes the overall process and results of AIP-6, and thereby provides a context for this Water SBA report.

2.2.2.1 Activity key driversThe GEOSS AIP2 (Task IN-05 of the GEO Work Plan) matures the process and infrastructure components for the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and the broader GEOSS architecture, as a mean of coordinating cross-disciplinary interoperability deployments.

In terms of the Water SBA strategic target3, GEO intends by 2015 to produce comprehensive sets of data and information products to support decision-making for efficient management of the world's water resources, based on coordinated, sustained observations of the water cycle on multiple scales.

More specific objectives for AIP-6 GEOSS Water Services include:

Developing and promoting consistent formats and practices supporting regional and national federation of water data in many countries;

Simplifying registration of water data in GEOSS;

Enabling distributed search, discovery and access across multiple community data portals using the GEOSS Portal (geoportal.org);

Enabling & engaging more Latin American countries;

1 GEO Work Plan 2012-2015 http://www.earthobservations.org/geoss_imp.php2 GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) http://www.ogcnetwork.net/AIpilot3 GEO Water SBA Strategic Target http://www.earthobservations.org/geoss_wa_tar.shtml

Facilitating easier workflows for finding data & models to study flooding and drought scenarios.

We have made significant progress in all these objectives. We did not reach demonstration capability in terms of flooding and drought scenarios, due to the need for more development work than could be completed in the time available, but this work should be ready for completion and demonstration in the AIP-7 Water SBA activity. Regarding the Latin American countries mentioned in this report, the water agencies in these countries were excited by the potential to publish water data with little additional technology and training, but data sharing policy remains a political hurdle to be managed.

Development for the water information scenario described in this report was a collaborative activity, with contributions from the many, representing these organizations and achievements:

Academic: University of Texas at Austin, Center for Research in Water Resources (CRWR) and

Center for Integrated Earth System Science (CIESS) – science lead and project management;

Brigham Young University (BYU), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering – liaison and outreach to Latin American countries; software development for improvements to the Consortium of Universities for Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) HydroServer and HydroDesktop;

University of Saskatchewan, Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS) – development and hosting of catalog and data services for Environment Canada’s network of precipitation monitors.

Regional and National Water Agencies: Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) –

coordinates and reports from Italy’s 21 regional water management agencies; Regional Agency for Environmental Protection in Emilia-Romagna (ARPA ER) –

regional water management agency in northern Italy; ported CUAHSI HydroServer to open-source software platforms, which are now deployed to each regional water management agency in Italy, as well as in Canada and New Zealand;

New Zealand National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) – coordinates and reports from New Zealand’s 16 regional water management agencies;

Horizons Regional Council (HRC) of New Zealand –regional water management agency in northern New Zealand, which implemented the data services conventions developed in this project;

Central American agencies – the national water management agencies of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala have begun to learn about and prepare for supporting WaterML 2 and relevant OGC web services, but depend on policy changes that block data sharing for national security purposes.

International Research Community U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Hydrological Sciences

Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center – provides soil moisture model outputs from Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS);

Community on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Water Portal (http://waterportal.ceos.org/), based at the University of Tokyo and funded by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA);

The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Italy – program direction for European Flood Awareness System (EFAS, http://www.efas.eu/) and Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS, http://www.globalfloods.eu/en/);

European Centre for Midrange Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) in UK – coordinated with JRC to produce WaterML data services for GloFAS flood forecast products.

Commercial Software Companies: Esri – major international GIS software company, developed interfaces for ArcGIS

Online (AGOL) web catalog and client mapping application to support federated search with GEOSS Portal; also developed insightful and compelling mapping applications integrating water data time series at specific sites, with global maps of continuous soil moisture;

Kisters – major international hydrologic engineering firm, coordinated with Esri on AGOL support for Kisters’ time series data analysis tools; provided observational time series data from WMO Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) in Koblenz, Germany;

The PYXIS Innovation – independent company that has developed a GIS web map viewer and analysis tool, supporting GEOSS integration and OGC data exchange standards.

We are also grateful for the extensive technical support on GEOSS architecture and resource registration provided by the GEO Secretariat in Geneva, the Italian Research Council Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research (CNR-IIA) and George Mason University in the U.S.As a result of work in AIP-6, the GEOSS Water Services demonstrations show greatly simplified, interactive discovery and access to tens of thousands of stream discharge time series descriptors and datasets worldwide, discoverable through a standards-based GEOSS “catalog of catalogs” (http://geoportal.org). This addresses a significant subset of water information (time series for stream flow and precipitation encoded as WaterML4) and web services (CSW5, WMS6, WFS7, SOS8). Further work is needed, as outlined below.

2.2.2.2 Improving access to global water information via GEOSS The AIP-6 Water SBA has the following objectives to make global water resources information available through GEOSS:

Stimulate development of regional / national approaches and conventions for federation of water information that would be practical for developed and developing nations.

Develop approaches for search, discovery and access to water information that make most use of mapping interfaces and other visualization aids.

4 OGC Water Markup Language (WaterML) version 2.0.1, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/waterml 5 OGC Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) version 2.0.2, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/specifications/catalog 6 OGC Web Map Service (WMS) version 1.3, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms 7 OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) version 2.0, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wfs 8 OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) version 2.0, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sos

Improve integration of web map clients, both open source and commercial, with the GEOSS infrastructure, including the Discovery and Access Broker (DAB), to provide more ways for users to interact with GEOSS. This will promote wider use and support among hydrology and other domain communities.

Provide recommendations on improving the GEOSS architecture’s ability to provide water information in an operational context.

Contribute to the development of standard catalogue services for water information sharing.

Provide support to the joint WMO/OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group (HDWG)9 in championing the adoption of standards that facilitate global information sharing such as WaterML 2.

Provide outreach to the broaden awareness of the importance water sharing in a global context.

We simplified the above list to the following tasks and scenarios: (1) improve the tools and processes for federating the regional and national picture to a global system (GEOSS), while demonstrating the benefits of an already operational federated regional water data within a country; (2) improve discovery and access to water resources data around the world; and (3) improve integration of gridded and time series data. These objectives are interdependent: the first greatly depends on the other two. How these have been addressed is discussed in context of the participants’ respective case studies.

2.2.2.3 Participant ExperiencesFederating regional water agencies in Italy, Improving discovery and access to precipitation data in Canada, Improving discovery and access to precipitation data in Latin America, Coordination of CEOS Water Portal with GEOSS, Developing support for WaterML within GloFAS , Coordination of non-GEOSS catalog with GEOSS catalog for distributed search, Integration of gridded and time series LDAS model outputs

2.2.2.4 System Model for Water Data Sharing

2.2.2.4.1 System architecture: main componentsThe system architecture for this project had the following requirements:

Provide a means of visualizing hundreds of thousands of stream gauges on a geographic map

Provide search capability to discover specific stream gauges by location, site name, or observed property

Enable search result to include heterogeneous data providers’ gauges (e.g., USGS, GRDC, etc)

Upon identifying the specific stream gauges of interest, enable access to the data services for that gauge

9 WMO/OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group, see wiki at http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/HydrologyDWG/WebHome

Data services should include a graph of data values over a selected time period; WaterML format for the same data; and tabular/CSV file download for the same data

2.2.2.5 Promoting international standards Underlying the above objectives is the need and importance of agreement among all participants on authoritative, international and institutionalized community standards for water data encodings and web services for data exchange. The core standards we focused on in AIP-6 were:

CUAHSI WaterML 1 and WaterOneFlow (WOF) Services OGC WaterML 2, OGC Web Feature Service (WFS), and OGC Catalog Service for the

Web (CSW)The initial CUAHSI standards are the result of a U.S. research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). They are mature and in wide use within the hydrology research community, the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies. But they have become superseded by OGC WaterML 2 and OGC web services, which are international standards widely supported by data providers and commercial software vendors worldwide. We are now encouraging all users of legacy WaterML 1.x and WOF to migrate to the more modular and robust OGC standards, for improved industry and institutional support globally. Still more work is needed to develop, promote and adopt international conventions for the specific data exchange requests (i.e., allowed parameters and values) between client applications and water data servers. The international standards do not define community domain-level application schemas, so this is work to be done within the OGC-WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group. Draft conventions have already been proposed and are under consideration, at the time of this writing (see Section Error: Reference source not found Future Work for more details).

2.2.2.6 Recommendations for international standards usage in water data exchange

Use OGC WaterML 2 for water-variable time series data (streamflow, precipitation, runoff, etc).

Use OGC WFS 2 for a feature layer of water data sites; one WFS service per data layer / producer.

Use OGC SOS 2 as the web data service for WaterML 2, but be prepared for the many sites running CUAHSI WaterOneFlow (WOF) web service for WaterML 1.x data.

Each data provider could install and manage a catalog registry of relevant time series descriptions (WFS feature layers), or use an established community catalog for that purpose (eg, CUAHSI HIS Central). This catalog should support OGC CSW 2.0.2 interface standard, which itself should be registered in GEOSS.

2.2.2.7 Recommendations for hydrologic community conventions for time series data exchange

Implementing standards for data exchange requires more than developing compliant server and client software; it also requires that these components follow consistent conventions for the exchange of requests and results. This level of convention is not appropriate to include in the general standard, but depends on each distinct end-user community’s desired workflows. Based

on our experience with several related projects now, we recommend a minimal set of feature attributes to characterize time series, as the essential content schema for each WFS map layer of services hosted by a given data provider:

• WaterMLURL for a REST call to a separate data service endpoint, that enables a time series to be queried from this location.

• GraphURL and DownloadURL for graphing or downloading the data (e.g., comma-separated-values or CSV format), if available.

• BeginDate of the data (the time of first information, using ISO 8601 time format).• EndDate of the data (make Null if this is current time).

o If the EndDate field is empty (null), this means the data service is a near-real-time feed, not just an historical dataset.

• Descriptor – text descriptor of this feature (e.g. Site name for gaging station, COMID for NHDPlus, etc)

• Source – text field that specifies the source of the data e.g. USGS, etc.

We ask the international hydrologic community to observe these sets of recommendations, in the interests of minimizing the programming effort and training needed to support everyone’s implementations of servers and client software.

2.2.3 Agriculture / Disaster ManagementThis phase develops and enhances a Remote-Sensing-based flood crop assessment. With the monitor, the followingare specific products to be produced routinely and operationally using time series satellite observations:(1) Remote-sensing-based flood-induced crop loss assessment geospatial community portal

(2) Global agricultural drought monitoring

Disasters affect all sectors. Agriculture is not immune to disasters. The damage to agriculture is often large scale. At different stages of a disaster, different type of information is expected. In pre-disaster, forecasting of imminent disasters and their likelihood would help in preparing for disasters. During disaster, distribution and degree of disaster damage are crucial for efficient allocating resources and providing needed aids in emergency response. After disaster, the recovery and related decision requires information about area and degree of damage and their sustaining effect.

In the phase, the community united together to focus on two scenarios: post-flood crop loss assessment and pre- and during drought agricultural drought monitoring. Earth Observations have been proved to be efficient technologies to monitor land cover and land use at large area. They are efficient in monitoring vegetation conditions (specifically crop monitoring for agriculture). The damage of crop due to disasters, like flooding and drought, can be estimated or monitored through monitoring their health indices derived from Earth Observations. Earth Observations used in the two scenarios are mainly observations and products from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Moderate resolution allows the quick monitoring and mapping of disaster and their severity in a manageable time while accuracy and performance are desirable with current technology.

Community information sharing and exchange is important to collaborate around a specific task that require synergy from different fields. In modern Web environment with maturing cyberinfrastructure, geospatial processing and data have been migrating into online cyberinfrastructure. Interoperation between different components and services is required to maximize the information sharing and exchange in times of disasters, to make better and proper decision to mediate the damage of disasters. Open standard and specifications are the backbone to allow such open interoperation among different venders, facilities, and institutions. Well-recognized OGC geospatial specifications and ISO/TC 211 standards are selected to support such interoperations in this phase. The following are questions and study themes facing agricultural/disaster communities. Therefore, they are deemed as the major focus of demonstration and collaboration during this phase.(1) How to efficiently use open standards and specifications to enable the extensive interoperation insupporting decisions for pre-, during, and post-disaster planning, preparation, responding, and assessment?(2) How to better enable discovery, access, and updating of metadata and quality of service to meet userrequirements?

2.2.3.1 7.1 Deployed ComponentsIn the designed crop condition monitor system, users can have choices of different clients to access and visualize the data and information served through geospatial Web services. Figure 5 shows the possible connections, activities, and clients. Users can access data through aggregated portals - GAMDFS and RF-CLASS. Users can derive maps, summary tables, or graphs from on-demand mapping, processing, and analyzing processes.

2.2.4 EnergyThe scenario builds on the achievements made during the GEOSS AIP-5 regarding the development of a Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) for the Energy Societal Benefit Area (SBA). During AIP-6 the consortium has focused on the following:

Enhancing the Catalog capabilities (geocatalog.webservice-energy.org) with a continuing effort on the GEOSS Helper Application approach, integration of GEO Data CORE and GEO No Monetary Charge label and data quality assessment of Catalog resources toward the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI).

Continue the Global Atlas data providers engagement (Currently 15 core data providers are part of the GSDI and 67 countries and more than 50 institutes and partners are involved in the initiative, for some of them by making their resources available in the GSDI

Expand progressively to other renewable energy resources to be part of the GSDI such as bioenergy, geothermal energy, and hydropower. This action has been carried out in close consultation with each renewable energy community, acting as an advisor to scope the datasets and services relevant for supporting the sectors.

Extending the Global Atlas WebGIS client (under www.irena.org/GlobalAtlas/) capabilities by adding tools for evaluating solar and wind potentials.

In partnership with the ECREEE regional center, a demonstrator has been deployed over the ECOWAS region demonstrating the use and benefits of the components developed in the GSDI for assisting countries in planning the expansion of renewable energy.

The Global Atlas initiative is relevant for the EN-01-C1 “Tools and Information for the Resource Assessment, Monitoring and Forecasting of Energy Sources (including solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, and biomass) and Geological Resources (including mineral and fossil resources, raw material and groundwater)” component sheet.

The initiative is relevant for two out of the six work plan priority actions of the GEO 2012-2015 Work Plan, namely:

Develop products and services required to assess countries' potential for energy production. Foster the use of Earth observation and information in energy-policy planning

Identify user needs for specific energy data sets (including solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, and biomass, geothermal)

2.2.4.1 The GEOSS Energy Community Portal www.webservice-energy.orgMore than one thousand OGC, Web Map Services (WMS), Web Feature Services (WFS) and Web Processing Services (WPS) as well as WebGIS Clients giving access to Solar, Wind, Bioenergy, Geothermal Energy, Elevation, Shadow and Environmental Impact Assessment maps, datasets and Algorithms. This Energy Community Portal is registered in the GEOSS Registry since 2009.

2.2.4.2 An OGC Catalog Service for the Web (CSW): (http://geocatalog.webservice-energy.org). During the AIP-5 framework MINES ParisTech has deployed an OGC CSW Catalog. This catalog offers a single access point for GEOSS users seeking data, datasets, services, maps, imageries, algorithms,… related to energy and environment relevant to all parts of the globe. The Webservice-energy catalog is built on the GeoNetwork catalog application (http://geonetwork-opensource.org/).

2.2.4.3 The Global Atlas WebGIS ClientThe Web based Geographic Information System (GIS) clinet of the Global Atlas links more than 1, 000 datasets referenced by the Webservice-Energy catalog. All the information in the Catalog can be accessed directly from the Global Atlas GIS interface.

The GIS interface enables users to visualize information on renewable energy resources, and to overlay additional information. These include, population density, topography, local infrastructure, land use and protected areas. The aim is to enable users to identify areas of interest for further prospection. The GIS interface will progressively integrate software and tools

that will allow advanced energy or economic calculations for assessing the technical and economic potential of renewable energy.

DemonstrationA video showcase summarizing the AIP-6 Global Atlas for Energy Scenario with a focus over the ECOWAS region has been presented in the framework of the 2014 GEO Geneva Ministerial Summit. Link to the Showcase description:http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/GEO-Ministerial-Showcase-Response-Energy-Global-Atlas-Final.pdf

2.3 Activity 2: Increase the availability of GEOSS resources

3.2.1 Water

2.3.1.1 Role of GEOSS in system architectureWe have now seen all the main components except for GEOSS. Most users just see the main GEOSS Portal browser interface, which has recently changed substantially, see Figure 1.

Figure 1. GEOSS Portal (www.geoportal.org)However, this portal is just the visible part of a substantial architecture called the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI). The GCI has multiple registries, a discovery and access broker framework, semantic tools, and more. Discussion about the GCI components is beyond the scope of this report; however, it is important for data producers wishing to register their service offerings in GEOSS to know where to direct their attention.

The GCI undergoes steady evolution as it is adapted to meet changing requirements and experience. At the time of this writing, data producers wishing to register catalog services, data services, community portals and other technologies, would normally register these capabilities using the GEOSS Registry Publication Portal (http://geossregistries.info/geosspub/), using the online forms to describe their data holdings. In the case of registrants having very large data holdings or complex system architectures requiring custom harvesting by the GCI, it may be recommended for such data producers to contact the Discovery and Access Broker (DAB) development team directly, at the Italian Research Council office in Florence. The DAB routinely harvests the content of the GEOSS Registry, but in some cases it may be better to bypass this step and harvest specific community catalogs due to their size, dynamic nature, or other complexities.

The DAB was initially developed by a European Commission FP7 project, EuroGEOSS Broker Framework. Further background on DAB and how to use it can be found here: http://www.eurogeoss.eu/.

3.2.2 GeoViQua

GeoViQua has 3 major scientific and technical objectives:

a) Provision of innovative tools to enhance the current infrastructure capability.GeoViQua’s major technical innovation will be searching and visualising tools for the commu-nity which communicate and exploit data quality information from GEOSS catalogues. The ac-tivities required to deliver this major objective are as follows:

1. Derive, extract and collect information about data quality from data, metadata, CAL/VAL processes including in-situ observations, provenance and end-users’ feedback

2. Encode and embed information on data quality and link it to data themselves. This process will include interfacing with standards and protocols, quality metrics and storage catalogues

3. Develop context-driven smart visualization of information on data quality (e.g., reveal in-formation and detail progressively) in 2D and 3D. A prototype has to be developed

4. Enable search and discovery over GEO Portal using information on data quality.

5. Enable the developed functionality over low bandwidth transmission and small screen de-vices (smart phones and PDA components).

b) Contribution to the GEO Label development. With its technical and scientific achievements, GeoViQua will significantly contribute to the definition design prototype development, and eval-uation of a strong GEO Label, which will allow users to query, explore and contribute to data quality information within a flexible and interoperable framework. GEO Label requirements will be defined (Work Package WP2), the label will be integrated with the components (WP6) and validated and applied in pilot cases (WP7) and disseminated to the community will be done (WP8). It will be completed in collaboration with the GEO task ST-09-02. The GEO Label deliv-erable will mature during the project and will crystallize on a final report about this.

c) Harmonization, exploitation and dissemination of project outputs. GeoViQua will secure last-ing impact for its deliverables through continuous and direct interaction with a number of rele-vant GEO tasks and user communities. A careful validation process will be conducted in collabo-ration with a number of communities of practice and standards committees to ensure that the project contributes effectively to the GEOSS GCI architecture. Collaboration with AIP will be on going. The solution will be transferred to the GCI.

2.3.2.1 Interoperability ArrangementsThe following specifications were followed in implementing and deploying data and Webprocessing services:(1) The user feedback system use its API and the GeoViQua project is working on getting sup-port for the creation of an Standards Working Group in OGC to standardize both the model and the protocol.(2) The GEO label API is in discussion in the Standards Interoperability Forum to be declared as a GEOSS interoperability arrangement.

2.3.2.2 Quality-enabled Discovery and Access BrokerThe Quality-enabled Discovery and Access Broker (DAB-Q) enables smart search and discovery functionalities using parameters relevant to GEO products extended to include Version: 1.0GCI Research and GeoViQua Integration Engineering ReportDate: 2014/02/24quality information. Quality information can be stated both by data producers and by datausers, resulting in two conceptually distinct data models, the Producer Quality Model(PQM) and the User Quality Model (UQM) (also known as User Feedback Model). Thesemodels together form the GeoViQua Quality Model, now in its final version 4.0(http://schemas.geoviqua.org).In the GeoViQua project, the following activities and goals were achieved:(1) Identify relevant properties (queryables) for quality-constrained queries(2) Define and implement the quality extension to CSW-ISO (CSW-Q interface)(3) Define and implement brokering logic, mapping and access to GeoViQua services(Feedback Catalog, Geolabel service, WMS-Q).The DAB-Q has implemented the following capabilities:(1) Feedback Catalog integration: discovery and upload of user feedback items to theFeedback Catalog; merging of discovered metadata records with related userfeedback items(2) Support to quality-related constraints: PQM constraints (Figure 6) and UQMconstraints (Figure 7)(3) WMS-Q integration: encoding quality information in a Web Map Service (WMS)(4) GEO label integration: insertion of GEO label link to all discovered records (in thegraphicOverview element).

2.3.2.3 Use of the GCIGEOSS Component and Service Registry (http://geossregistries.info/) was used to registerall deployed components, services, and data. GEO SS Portal mirror was used to integrate both systems during a GeoViQua workshop in the GEO-X Week. The GEOSS Portal can be used to discover the George Mason University Global Agricultural Drought Monitoring and Forecasting System that includes the scenario described here.

2.3.2.4 GCI Enhancements

2.3.2.4.1 Support GEOSS Web Portal 2.0The new GEOSS Web Portal (GWP) 2.0, developed by ESA, was released in January 2014 for the GEO Plenary Meeting in Geneva. During the development of the new GEOSS Web Portal, the GEO DAB provided support and, when needed, new developments to facilitate the GWP/GEO DAB interaction. This work was supported by the EC GEOWOW project.

2.3.2.4.2 Semantic FunctionalitiesGEO DAB was advanced to simplify the use of its semantic capabilities by providing a unique entry point to submit semantic and non-semantic queries [5].

depicts the graphical visualization of semantic assets provided through the GEO DAB. Users can browse the content of available semantic repositories using the graphical widget of the GWP, which in turn connects to the GEO DAB to retrieve the concepts and their relations. To do this, GEO DAB is connected with the SKOS repository hosted at the EC Joint Research Centre. Dur-ing the browsing phase, users can select one or more concepts to be used in subsequent queries in addition to the other available query constraints. GEO DAB provides a unique endpoint for the GWP to send user’s queries. This makes the GWP/GEO DAB interaction easier and more con-sistent.

2.3.2.4.3 Homogeneous Access InformationTo provide users with a consistent list of access options, for each discovered record, GEO DAB returns a consolidated and homogeneous list of access links to be displayed on the GWP. The list is composed of the following possible access types:1. Direct: this is a “one-click” access link, i.e. a link which directly download the data;2. Complex: this is the base URL of an access service; it is provided together with service proto-col and data identifier information so that client applications can build appropriate access re-quests to download the dataset;3. Service: this is the base URL of an access service; it is provided with the service protocol and can be used by client applications to get the list of available downloadable datasets.

Fast PreviewIn order to provide users with fast previews of discovered datasets, the GEO DAB adopts a

caching strategy specifically tailored to dataset preview and download. For harvested metadata, DAB generates previews at different zoom levels. When a user discovers one of these metadata, she/he can get an immediate preview accessing the GEO DAB Tile Service. This service re-trieves the pre-generated preview images and returns them to the user in the form of tiles at the required zoom level. depicts a screenshot of the GWP using the fast preview service for a Ba-thymetry dataset in the Mediterranean region.

2.3.2.4.4 GEO DAB RankingCurrently, GEO DAB serves more than 60 millions granule datasets1. An important aspect when dealing with such numbers is ranking. In fact, the most of users’ queries return result sets con-taining thousands of entries. If not ranked, such lists of records are almost unusable for users.

To address this issue, GEO DAB was enhanced by developing a ranking algorithm providing users with an ordered result set. The ranking algorithm takes into account a set of configurable ad hoc metrics in order to rank matching entries. Currently, four metrics are applied [4]:1. Data accessibility• Whether a matching resource is accessible with “one click”, meaning the returned record con-tains a clickable link that downloads the data (or the map). This considers three features:a) The presence of “access information” in the metadata describing the resource;b) The score provided by an online service run to test the actual resource accessibility;c) A preview service exists;2. GEOSS SBA Essential Variables• Whether a matching resource is an Essential Variables, as defined by the GEOSS SBAs. This considers the following SBAs, presently (more can/will be added):a) Climate SBA - Global Climate Observing System2;b) Biodiversity SBA - GEO BON3;c) Water/Ocean SBA - UNESCO4 and Southern Ocean ObservingSystem5.3. GEOSS Data Core• Whether a matching resource belongs to GEOSS Data Core;4. Metadata Completeness• Whether a matching resource is sufficiently described to allow evaluation.

2.3.2.4.5 GEO DAB APIsTo simplify the development of applications and clients (e.g. GEOSS Community Portals) ac-cessing GEOSS resources, a set of high-level client-side Open APIs (Application Program Inter-face) have been designed and developed along with documentation and usage examples. GEO DAB APIs are available online6 with documentation usage example for building online applica-tions accessing GEO DAB. The design criteria adopted to develop GEO DAB APIs are:

To expose the DAB functionalities (semantic discovery and dataset preview/access)hiding their complexityo Easy programming of most common operations Few concepts (classes) Default behavior and options

o Full interfaces and options available if needed depicts the conceptual model underpinning GEO DAB APIs

3.2.3 EnergyUse of the GCI: The WebService-Energy catalog operatad by MINES ParisTech Web Service Energy is integrated as a permanent resource in the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) through the GEO Discovery and Access Broker (GEO DAB). The catalog is accessed through a CSW/ISO interface. Assessment of the correctness of the integration has been successfully performed . As far as the metadata discovered via the GEO DAB, no bug was identified in the Broker middleware component (GEO DAB). The catalog is integrated in the operational GCI. Presently the catalog provides more than one thousand (1000) records with 62 GEOSS Data Core entries (01/02/2014).

3.2.4 Highlights of AIP-6 UML Modeling EffortsThe GEOSS Unified Modeling team engineering report provides the depiction and expresses the Reference Model of the Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) viewpoint using the Unified Modeling Language as the syntax. This is done by expressing each scenario of each GEOSS Societal Benefit Area in four of five viewpoints as described in ISO/IEC 10746:1996 Part 3 Reference Model ODP Architecture and description of the UML concepts and extensions provided in ISO/IEC 19793:2007.

This work was initiated in AIP-3 and focused on the Enterprise Viewpoints of the AIP-3 SBAs. In AIP-4, the team augmented the viewpoints to cover the Computational and Engineering Viewpoints, with plans to tackle the Technical Viewpoints in AIP-4. The technical viewpoint will be tackled in AIP-6.

The UML Engineering Team presents all Societal Benefit Area individual UML Reports of the Enterprise viewpoint - Air Quality and Health, Energy, Disaster Management, scenarios for Agriculture.

3.2.5 Data Sharing

2.3.5.1 Activity key driversThe key driver for Authentication and Single Sign-On is to allow GEOSS Data Providers that require registration and login to participate in GEOSS without putting an undue burden on the GEOSS Data Users to register multiple times and execute the login process repeatedly when trying to discover and access GEOSS resources. Therefore, the goal of having a GEOSS-wide federation for single sign-on was established.

The key driver for Use Metrics is to gather information about GEOSS resources being discovered and accessed so that GEOSS Data Providers and GEO can gain knowledge as to the use and implied value of GEOSS resources. These metrics are viewed as essential feedback to the value of GEOSS.

The key driver for GEOSS Data-CORE Compatible Licenses is to support the GEOSS Data

Providers that may have licenses associated with their resources, and who wish to have that licensing information be available to GEOSS users when they discover the licensed resources. The license information should be part of the metadata so that redistributions of the resources with the metadata will also make the licensing information available to the recipients of the redistributed resources.

2.3.5.2 Summary of AIP-6 effortsThe AIP-6 Data Sharing Guidelines Working Group (DSGWG) is responsible for the efforts related to User Authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO), Use Metrics, and GEOSS Data-CORE Compatible Licenses. These topics have each been identified as priority actions for 2013 by the GEO Infrastructure Implementation Board. Additionally, the Authentication and SSO effort, as well as the Use Metrics effort, have been identified as 2013 GEO Summit priorities. In addition to this AIP Engineering Report, the efforts of the AIP-6 DSGWG will result in contributions to data user and data provider guidelines and tutorials. These guidelines and tutorials will ultimately be published on the GEOSS Best Practices Wiki.

The work engaged in during AIP-6 enjoyed contributions by many individuals on behalf of many organizations. These efforts are captured in Table 1.

Table 1: AIP-6 DSGWG ContributorsName Area of Contribution AffiliationSteven F. Browdy SSO, Metrics, Licenses OMS Tech, Inc.; IEEEAndreas Matheus SSO Secure Dynamics; EC

COBWEB ProjectGEO Data Sharing Working Group (DSWG)

Metrics, Licenses GEO DSWG

Siri Jodha Singh Khalsa Licenses NSIDC, GEO SIFAlva Couch SSO Tufts University, CUHASI

In particular, the AIP-6 DSGWG offers a special thanks to the European Commission’s FP-7 funded COBWEB project. COBWEB contributed greatly to the Authentication and SSO effort by establishing a proof-of-concept SSO federation and by assisting others in deploying the software necessary to join the COBWEB federation.

2.3.5.3 Results Summary

2.3.5.3.1 Authentication and SSOThe primary result is the establishment and demonstration of a SSO federation as a proof of concept. This federation was established by the COBWEB project and included both COBWEB participants, as well as some outside participants. The federation was established as a SAML-2 federation that accepts certain OpenID visitors outside the SAML-2 federation. This is accomplished via a trusted gateway that takes trusted OpenID visitors and allows them to be seen as SAML-2 users within the SAML-2 federation.

Of all the use cases to be realized for Authentication and SSO, most have been implemented.

The use cases, identified for AIP-6, that still need to be implemented are:

Identification as "GEOSS User" During Registration

OpenID-Protected Data Access via SAML2 Authentication

2.3.5.3.2 Use MetricsThe use cases for this effort were written during AIP-6, and have been reviewed by the GEO DSWG. The DSWG also provided input regarding the specific metrics themselves. The agreed upon metrics do not capture any information related to identifying the individual GEOSS user or his associated organization. This is done to protect privacy. The fields of information to be collected are:

Data provider name

Dataset accessed

Date/time of access

"tags" were associated with the dataset (geossDataCore, geossAttribution, etc.)

License used for the dataset (N/A if none were used)

Cost to the GEOSS user for the dataset

Optional additional information

None of the use cases for Use Metrics were implemented during AIP-6 due to no AIP-6 participants volunteering to do this.

2.3.5.3.3 GEOSS Data-CORE Compatible LicensesThe licenses addressed during AIP-6 were identified for use by the DSWG and approved by the GEO Plenary. The licenses available to be used are just for GEOSS Data-CORE resources. This is due to the facts that the GEOSS Data-CORE only consists of registered resources that have no restrictions on use, and the current licenses and waivers accepted for use within GEOSS are targeted for open access, where no restrictions are allowed. The DSWG is currently working on a broader set of licenses that will handle more GEOSS Data Providers, specifically those that do not satisfy the requirements for the GEOSS Data-CORE.

The license fields currently defined to carry the licensing information about the resource will also be used for a broader set of licenses, but more fields may be added. These fields are:

License/waiver name - this will be a text field containing the common name of the li-cense or waiver (CC0, CC-BY, etc.).

License pointer - this will be a URL field that links to the actual license or waiver.

License logo - this will be a URL field that links to a graphical logo for the license or waiver.

Attribution text - this will be a text field that contains the actual words to be used by users/applications for attribution.

The defined license fields need to be realized as metadata fields for the GEOSS Data Provider to populate. This will allow the licensing information to be exposed to GEOSS users visually, as well as programs that automate metadata processing. The metadata standards that currently have the above license fields mapped to them are ISO-19115 and Dublin Core. There are more metadata standards that still need to be addressed.

2.3.5.4 Recommendations SummaryThe following key recommendations are based upon the AIP-6 work completed by the DSGWG.

2.4 Activity 2: Focus on benefits and usability for Developing Countries

4.2.1 AIP Capacity BuildingThe Capacity-Building SBA Component primary goal is educational.

The Capacity Building AIP6 has just started to support both data providers and data users by establishing a server code repository locus for GCI (GEOSS Common Infrastructure) and GeoDAB component software in the Best Practices Wiki located at http://wiki.ieee-earth.org/.

Recommendation 1: Continue developing Authentication and Single Sign-On so that all existing use cases are implemented, and so that the new ones are implemented to realize a GEOSS-wide SSO federation, including the necessary GCI components.

Recommendation 2: Expand Authentication and Single Sign-On so that authorization is handled along with authentication.

Recommendation 3: Develop a GCI component to control, manage, and store the Use Metrics information being provided by GEOSS Data Providers and the GCI, and to manage the reporting of Use Metrics to all interested.

Recommendation 4: Continue documenting the licensing metadata guidelines to handle the well-known metadata standards identified.

Recommendation 5: Work with the necessary GCI components to implement the recognition of the license information and its visibility to the GEOSS User.

Recommendation 6: Ensure that all guidelines and tutorials are published on the GEOSS Best Practices Wiki as soon as possible after completion of an activity. This will allow GEOSS Data Providers and GEOSS Users to learn more quickly about the evolution of GEOSS.

It will specify where to find resources, as links, that data providers and data users may follow in order to discover, upload or download GEOSS data and services.

According to the recommendations proposed by the GEOSS AIP-4, AIP-5 participants, a server

code repository will be deployed and made available for the GCI components software GeoTasks. GEOSS AIP-6 will leverage the lessons learned from both the AIP-4 and 5 approach and the AIP-3 use cases-driven scenarios in such a way to make more discoverable, accessible and usable the GEOSS components developed. Although we expect that it will be the responsibility of each GEOSS Users and or each Data Providers to keep up with the latest geospatial standard and interoperable interface, the Best Practices Wiki will be an additional resource in the challenge of becoming familiar to the GEOSS environment.

The Capacity Building AIP6 moved during the year 2013 on two levels: at one level, the Capacity Working Group continued with their biweekly activity and formulated two possible scenarios as its contribution for AIP7; at another level, the Capacity Building continued its operational outreach toward developing counties, particularly to Chile.

The outcome of the Capacity Building Working Group can be summarized by the following two scenarios. As mentioned previously, these two scenarios can be seen as propositive in their nature and subject of further discussion and refinement. We are a mean of new ideas and we want to avoid duplication of effort: so these scenarios must be seen as indicative of future directions, not exhaustive and operational scenarios.

2.4.1.1 Scenario OneCitizen Observatory/ Crowd sourcing Monitoring:The goal is to make available GEOSS web services and other GEOSS data-CORE from Data Providers, often supplier of a large volume of geospatial data, to people and GEOSS Users, specifically GEOSS Users from their mobile platforms. GEOSS Users will access, search and discover data and web services supplied by the Data Providers. GEOSS Users will also be allowed to contribute with data collected by their mobile devices, to the GEOSS web services through customized applications. The applications will work either in a browser or through other means (peer-to-peer or others). Applications that are open source and/or within an open source, interoperable framework will be welcomed and encouraged. Such open-source, interoperable applications will be tested in different environments and geographic regions so to encourage a varied feedback and a resilience in the GEOSS solutions recommended.The date will be stored into the cloud and other mediums as well as analyzed to detect pattern in the area of study. The topical areas are any of the nine Societal Benefit Areas ( agriculture, biodiversity, climate, disaster, ecosystems, energy, health, water, weather). Data Used: the GEOSS data-Core and other geospatial data coming from mobile sensor platforms.

2.4.1.2 Scenario Two:Capacity Building Metrics: listening to the GEOSS UserThe goal of this scenario is to start evaluating the performance of the data and web services with respect to one of the nine Societal Benefit Areas (agriculture, biodiversity, climate, disaster, ecosystems, energy, health, water, weather) in order to capture emerging GEOSS metrics, define more accurately the GEOSS User habits (by holding his/her privacy and anonymity), improve

the performance, use of GEOSS data and web services, formulating additional Capacity Building policies and supplying possible different business models to Data Providers.

This scenario does not want to replicate any of the scenarios proposed and underway in the AIP- Data Sharing Working Group: please refer to them if you want to explore the authorization and accessibility to specific data and web services provided by different Data Providers, Internet Identity Providers within the GEOSS Framework).

The development of a performance metrics will give operational insights into the efficiency of the customer service. It will include average speed of answer (ASA), average handle time (AHT), hold time, abandon rate, wrap-up time, count of downloads per month (ftp, downloads over web browser or others), and other parameters (for example, for social media, number of Facebook events, twitters, hash tags during an event).

Depending on the location-time of the data and web services used, medium used, desktop, mobile sensor platforms (some related to social media), and topical area, the Capacity Building Metric may change, although we expect that open source and interoperable interfaces are recommended, so to be used in different geographic regions and countries of the world.

As previously mentioned, we also worked to build capacity in developing counties, both in South America and in Africa (mainly South Africa). We made most improvements with Chile, particularly in the development of a national infrastructure and in the international collaboration with GEOSS. Capacity Building helped GEO Chile during many initiatives, from building web pages to develop reports, presentations and collaborations both nationally and internationally to test data and web services to access satellite data, and make Chilean web services registered to GEOSS GCI, accessible, searchable and discoverable. For 2014, the future of AIP7, we plan to continue to test Chilean web services and to further the reaching out of GEOSS in South America and other developing countries.

3 AIP-6 Observations and RecommendationsOne of the main outcomes of each phase of the Architecture Implementation Pilot is the opportunity to capture the usage observations and enhancement recommendations from the community based on their direct hands-on experience in using and contributing to GEOSS during the Pilot.

This section captures the highlights of the observations and recommendations from the AIP-6 participants.

3.1 AIP-6 ObservationsObservations from the AIP-6 participants revolve around 4 themes:

1. Observations on the visibility and awareness of AIP in GEOSS

a. Participants in AIP get recognition from their parent / hosting organizations for their valuable contribution and added value to AIP and for the increased knowledge they bring back.

2. Observations on GEOSS and the AIP-6 process

a. The success in integrating and exploiting data from multiple sources in AIP-6 demonstrated the potential of GEOSS for acting as the “hub” for discovery and accessing heterogeneous Earth Observation resources.

b. AIP-6 participants noted that the pilot experience was very encouraging and enabled them to learn of other organizations and their contributions and build stronger collaboration networks. In particular,

i. Participants noted that the weekly telecons help keep the project milestones on track, while providing a forum for open-dialogue on various subtasks. This open communication aspect is particularly important given the pure volunteer nature of the effort, where maintaining a continuum to contributions within the deadlines can be challenging at times.

ii. Participants indicated that, in some cases, the pilot process provided just the needed motivation to get some projects started/moved even if not completed in AIP-6.

iii. Participants appreciated how the pilot process supports capacity building, which is extremely important for the success of GEOSS.

c. The AIP-6 participants consider the tutorials developed with SIF leadership as key elements in enabling data providers to make their data/metadata available through GEOSS.

3. Observations from the perspective of the Exploitation Clients

a. Access to coverage type data coupled with tools that make data discovery, access and integration seamless, is a compelling way to promote the use of spatial data assets and a powerful method of streamlining delivery of content to decision makers.

4. Observations on resource registration

a. The GCI has multiple registries, a discovery and access broker framework, semantic tools, and more. Discussion about the GCI components is beyond the scope of this report; however, it is important for data producers wishing to register their service offerings in GEOSS to know where to direct their attention.

3.2 AIP-6 RecommendationsMany of the AIP-5 recommendations are still valid and still need further attention. This section captures some extra key recommendations that have emerged as a result of the hands-on experience of the AIP-6 participants in using and contributing to GEOSS in their domains/communities.

The recommendations revolve around 4 themes:

1. Recommendations for improving visibility and awareness of AIP in GEOSS

a. AIP-6 participants identified that AIP had little attention from the GEO plenary, whilst it prototypes the backbone for the GEOSS. Next AIP phase should:

i. Seek more support from the IIB

ii. Present the AIP ShowCases at GEO plenary and Sprint-to-Summit

iii. Do more outreach via Social Media and broader marketing activities

2. Recommendations for better leveraging of GEOSS and the AIP process

a. Awareness of the value of contributing to GEOSS needs to be increased. AIP-6 participants noted that many data producers focus on first supporting the needs of their primary community, and may in the process neglect to consider broader (end-user) communities. This potentially impacts the individuals’ willingness and time available to contribute to GEOSS.

b. Most element of the GEOSS architecture are in place and need to be further matured in the next phase.

c. It is recommended to increase the level of knowledge and involvement of government funded project that need to participate and (re)use the GEOSS resources.

d. For the next phases of AIP, it’s recommended to broaden the scope of the data producers to the wider (end-user) community and alternative sensor types (e.g. In-situ, UAV).

3. Recommendations for improving increased access to Information for Societal Benefits

a. AIP-6 participants identified areas to improve how GEOSS resources can be further exploited:

i. More exploitation tools/application clients/enabler components are needed to leverage the resources and infrastructure provided by GEOSS and to make it easier for users to use GEOSS resources with little additional effort.

ii. Increase awareness of GEOSS and GEOSS Resources to a wider end-user community.

iii. Increase the transfer of knowledge and good work of GEOSS

4. Recommendations for improving the GEOSS Common Infrastructurea. Clarification is needed on how the recommendations for GCI improvements are

passed to the appropriate parties for consideration in the next releases of the affected GCI components. AIP-6 participants favor a process where suggested improvements and discovered bugs are reported and prioritized. Such a process should be open to all GEOSS GCI and resource providers.

Annex: Responses to the AIP-6 Call for ParticipationListed below are the 25 responses to the Call for Participation in AIP-610. As each of the Responses included multiple organizations, the response represents contributions from over 40 organizations.

Lead Organi-zation

Overview of the Response (Section 1 of the response)

INCOSE Development of information, Computational, Engineering and Technology views for each SBA addressed in AIP5 and Solution Architecture recommen-dation for necessary components and their requirements.

COBWEB Project’s Access Management Federation

FCU Increase Satellite Images availability in GEOSS-using Formosat 2FCU Development of a New System Approach to Agricultural Land Use Sustain-

ability with Various InterfacesMINES Paris-Tech

Participation in the development of the scenario and provision of persistent operational services

MEDINA Seagrasses habitat suitability modelGEOWOW & EarthServer

GCI Research

CITI-SENSE Development of sensor-based Citizens' Observatory Community for improv-ing quality of life in cities FP7 project 308524

ITRI Disaster Management Platform with OGC OpenGeoSMS Standard and EO data on mobile

Esri utilitizing GEO-Core data sets found in the clearinghouse to create hosted Web Maps focused on SBAs. These Web Maps will be focused on bringing together various data sources from GCI

GeoViQua User Feedback System and GeoViQua Agriculture and Carbon ScenariosGEOSS Water Services

Implementation of a global registry of water data, map and modeling ser-vices

Compusult Societal Benefit Area Alignment and Support and Component and Service Contributions

NASA Geo-Social API for Product Discovery and Web Service SecurityAfriterra AIP Capacity BuildingGMU Disaster ManagementESSi Using small Unmanned Aerial Systems for agriculture monitoring and emer-

gency managementSAEON Development of a Regional Data Centre for Biodiversity in Africa

10 http://www.earthobservations.org/geoss_call_aip.shtml

AcronymsADC Architecture and Data CommitteeAIP-3 Architecture Implementation Pilot, Phase 3AIP-4 Architecture Implementation Pilot, Phase 4AIP-5 Architecture Implementation Pilot, Phase 5AIP-6 Architecture Implementation Pilot, Phase 6CFP Call for ParticipationCSR Component and Service RegistryDSTF Data Sharing Task ForceDSGWG Data Sharing Guidelines Working GroupER Engineering ReportESA European Space AgencyGCI GEOSS Common InfrastructureGCI-CT GCI Coordination TeamGEO Group on Earth ObservationsGEOSS Global Earth Observation System of SystemsGEOSS Data CORE GEOSS Data Collection of Open Resources for EveryoneGWP GEOSS Web PortalIOC Initial Operating CapabilityKML (formerly Keyhole Markup Language)OGC Open Geospatial ConsortiumOWS OGC Web ServicesSBA Societal Benefit AreasSIF Standards and Interoperability ForumSIR Standards and Interoperability RegistrySKOS Simple Knowledge Organizing SystemSoA Service Oriented ArchitectureSOS Sensor Observation Service (OGC)StP Sprint to PlenaryStS Sprint to SummitWCS Web Coverage Service (OGC)WFS Web Feature Service (WFS)WMS Web Map Service (OGC)WPS Web Processing Service (OGC)

References[DSTF2010] GEOSS Data Sharing Action Plan, November 2010

http://www.earthobservations.org/documents/geo_vii/07_GEOSS Data Sharing Action Plan Rev2.pdf

[UIC2011] GEO Task US-09-01a report to the UIC on Cross-SBA Analysis of Critical Earth Observations Priorities. http://sbageotask.larc.nasa.gov/Cross-SBA_Report_GEO_US0901a.pdf

[INCOSE] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/AIP5_INCOSE%20Response%20AIP-6.doc

[COBWEB]

http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/AIP6_CfP_COBWEB_response_final.doc

[FCU] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/CFP_aip6_for_responses_GISFCU.doc

[FCU] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/20130314_CFP_aip6_Agriculture_GIS%20FCU_for_responses.pdf

[MINES ParisTech] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/GEOSS-AIP-6-Energy-SBA-MINES-ParisTech-Global-Atlas-Response-FINAL.pdf

[MEDINA] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/MEDINA-AIP6-CFPResponse.pdf

[GEOWOW]

http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/GEOWOW_EarthServer_GCIResearchCFPResponse.pdf

CITI_SENSE http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/20130208_cfp_aip6_response_CITI-SENSE_final.pdf

ITRI http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/ITRI%20response%20AIP-6.doc

[Esri] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/EsriOGCAIP-6.pdf

[GeoViQua] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/20130208_cfp_aip6_GeoViQua_v2.doc

[GEOSS Water Services]

http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/AIP6_GEOSS_Water_Services_Proposal_final.pdf

[Compusult]

http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/20130315_cfp_aip6_Compusult_response_final.doc

[NASA] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/NASAAIP-6Response20130415.doc

[GMU] http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/GMU_CSISS_To_GEOSS_AIP-6_CFP_Response.doc

[USSi]

http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/cfp_aip6_template_for_responses_20130511_Final_5-16-2013v3.doc

[SAEON]

http://www.ogcnetwork.net/system/files/G37802AIP6SAEON_GEOBONOnePager.pdf