GEOSCIENCE DATA MANAGMENT AND DISSEMINATION IN CANADA

Canada has a federated government system with provinces, territories and the Federal government operating geological surveys. National coordination of geological activities and, to some degree of geoscience data, is managed by the National Geological Surveys Committee (NGSC).

Over the last decade, Canada has had a variety of national data harmonization initiatives. The Canadian Geoscience Knowledge Network (CGKN) was initiated in 1998 and some services remain but are not being updated. The GeoConnections initiative was initiated in 1999 to develop the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI). GeoConnections has focused primarily on geographic data but also addresses thematic data such as geology.

Canada continues to be actively involved in the establishment of geoscience data standards. Starting in the mid-90s, the National Geological Data Model was developed in partnership with the USA. More recently, Canada is actively involved in the development of the IUGS/CGI GeoSciML data exchange standard. The GeoSciML schema is a leading edge GML schema that has been adopted by geological surveys throughout the world. It is currently the leading geosceince data exchange standard and GeoSciML has been adopted by OneGeology.

After several years of inactivity, renewed working-level interest in sharing geoscience data management best practice resulted in a Canadian geoscience data management workshop in Sept. 2011.