National Earth Science Infrastructure Program

Why is Data Interoperability Important?Organisations that are data custodians have differing infrastructure to host, serve and compute data. For historical and internal business requirements each database can have its own format, properties and content styles or vocabularies. This makes it difficult to collaborate and share data across numerous government agencies and research organisations. Interoperability is concerned with making data easily discoverable, accessible and usable. That is, data is easy to find and is provided in a well understood, community-agreed format that allows it to be combined with other data sources of the same type. AuScope Grid eliminates barriers to data sharing, interoperability and cross-organisational collaboration by developing a suite of tools that permits users across multiple organisations in Australia to access spatial data in public archives.

What is AuScope Grid?AuScope Grid is a geoscience information infrastructure that provides seamless, fully integrated access to data and tools from a wide range of Australian government and research organisations to researchers, industry and the wider community. With seamless access to data held by geological surveys, universities and the AuScope data acquisition program, there is now a wealth of new and existing data available for researchers. More than a Discovery Portal, the infrastructure includes web services for direct access from you research tools, be it a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) package, your own research algorithms or even your organisation’s Virtual Laboratories.

What is the AuScope Discovery Portal?The AuScope Discovery Portal developed for AuScope Grid provides a web based interface for searching and accessing data, information, imagery, services and applications connected to the grid. It allows users to discover, browse, save, and process geospatial information from earth science data sources around Australia. Hyperspectral, borehole, global navigation satellite, geodesy, mineral occurrence and geology data are all available through the portal.

What is the Spatial Information Services Stack? AuScope Grid is powered by the Spatial Information Services Stack (SISS) to enable this interoperability. The Spatial Information Services Stack (SISS) is an open source suite of tools that implements best practices in data interoperability and information sharing. Based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and international geosciences standards, SISS is compatible with a broad range of commonly used GIS, web mapping and software libraries. The SISS has been deployed in multiple Australian government agencies and research organisations; various web portals and other client applications have been developed to utilise the infrastructure. For more information, visit http://siss.auscope.org/.

AuScope Grid and Interoperability

AuScope borehole data connected to QGIS desktop software.

Borehole data available on the AuScope Discovery Portal.

Contacts AuScope Grid and InteroperabilityDr Robert WoodcockRobert.Woodcock@csiro.au+61 2 6216 7121