U.S. GEOSCIENCE INFORMATION NETWORK (GIN) AND CONVERGENCE TOWARDS GLOBAL DATA INTEGRATION IN THE GEOSCIENCES

Efforts around the world are converging towards creation of an integrated global digital data network for the geosciences based on common standards and protocols for data discovery and access, and a shared vision of distributed, web-based, open source, interoperable data integration. The Geosciences Information Network (GIN; http://usgin.org) is linking databases and web services in the U.S. state geological surveys (AASG) and the USGS. The USGS Council on Data Integration has validated GIN as a step towards linking data resources from its four branches – geology, geography, water, and biology. GIN is being implemented as the data exchange mechanism for the U.S. DOE-funded National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) which will establish data nodes for every state in the U.S. and populate the system with large volumes of state-specific data, creating the infrastructure for a national network.

Critical system components include standardized Catalog Service for the Web (CSW - ISO 19115 profile) to register and discover resources, web map services to display georeferenced images, and feature services to transport data, using OGC service components to obtain results in a standard format. The GIN project is participating in the Energistics’ consortium’s Metadata Standards Working Group, to develop a petroleum industry profile that is compatible with metadata services for other geoscience domains.

The OneGeology (1G, www.onegeology.org) initiative to make accessible online digital geologic map data for the world has 116 participating countries, providing over 120 map services from 46 nations using OGC WMS (Web Map Service) and WFS (Web Feature Service) through a dynamic web portal. OneGeology–Europe (1G-E, www.onegeology-europe.eu/) is a European Union project in which 26 national geological surveys and organizations are collaborating to build a continent-wide geoscience data network. Emerging practices from the global project, 1G, and the regional initiatives 1G-E, and GIN, provide a foundation to create a comprehensive global digital data network of geoscience (and geospatial) information. The next step is providing structured data for geoscience features using OGC WFS's utilizing GeoSciML as the data transport schema.

This material is based upon work supported in part by the U.S. DOE-GTP and the NSF.