DIGGS – A DATA INTERCHANGE STANDARD FOR GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL DATA

DIGGS – Data Interchange for Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Specialists (http://www.diggsml.org) – is a developing international standard interchange format for geotechnical and geoenvironmental data. It is being developed under the auspices of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) through a collaboration of representatives and researchers from 11 State Departments of Transportation, the United Kingdom Highway Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, University of Florida, the Consortium of Organizations for Strong-Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS), and the geotechnical software industry. The goals of DIGGS are to:

• facilitate data exchange among different databases within an agency or organization;
• enable oversight and regulatory agencies to receive data from consultants in a standardized format;
• facilitate exchange of data among practitioners and researchers over the Internet;
• facilitate data QA/QC and promote preservation of valuable subsurface data and metadata;
• facilitate the exchange of data between software packages and providers; and
• promote the development of data analysis software products that are more standardized and compatible.

DIGGS consists of an XML schema  (Geographic Markup Language compliant) that defines surface, subsurface, and substructure features and the associated geological, geotechnical, geoenvironmental, and geophysical data that are obtained from field observations and field and laboratory tests. Version 1 of the DIGGS standard was developed by reconciling and integrating existing geotechnical and geoenvironmental data dictionaries developed by the Association of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Specialists in the United Kingdom (AGS; see http://www.ags.org.uk/datatransfer/intro.cfm), the University of Florida, Department of Civil Engineering, and by COSMOS, which developed a pilot XML-based exchange standard for its Geotechnical Virtual Data Center (GVDC; see https://geodata.cosmos-data.org). The current schema specifically handles borehole geologic and geophysical logs and deep foundations, including an extensive suite of associated in-situ and laboratory tests. The DIGGS structure is extensible, and planned expansion of DIGGS will ultimately cover a much wider range of geotechnical and geoenvironmental tests and features.

DIGGS version 1 is currently being reviewed by a wide group of stakeholders and is slated for public release in the fall of 2007. Concurrent with the release will also be a number of software tools to facilitate data translation and data display. Specifically, public domain software to translate AGS flat-files to DIGGS XML is in development by the DIGGS consortium, and web-based data previewers that will consume DIGGS XML and produce borehole geologic, geophysical and cone penetrometer graphic logs are in development by the COSMOS GVDC. Several commercial geoscience software developers, including gINT, EarthSoft (EQuIS), and Keynetix (HoleBASE) are also making their software compatible with DIGGS.