Basic roles in a crowd-sourced OGC SDI

Spatial data infrastructures (SDI) are starting to tap the knowledge and energy of collaborating communities - and move data production and update operations to local levels, closest to source. But what are the basic roles people can play in this collaborative environment?

It turns out the basic operations for this kind of "GeoSynchronization" (from OGC) are simple - updates are published by one data source, reviewed by another and followed by others. When you organize geoRSS feeds for the task you get three basic roles in a crowd-sourced SDI -

Publisher - Makes changes to content. Generates feature changes , submits them for review via a Change Feed. Changes include adding, deleting or updating features. When a change is accepted or rejected Publisher is notified via a Resolution Feed.

Reviewer - Approves changes submitted by Publishers, subscribed to a Change Feed. When the Reviewer receives a change, they can then use an application to review and 'accept' or 'reject'. GeoSynchronization Services (GSS) can then apply accepted changes to any registered OGC WFS via WFS Transactions.

Follower - Can use standard RSS reader to get updates on any device. When changes to servers are accepted GSS announces them to Followers via the Replication Feed. A Follower subscribed to these event notifications will receive appropriate updates in the form of RSS or GeoRSS entries.

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- Jeff