CarbonCloud®

GEOINT 2011 Tech Talk Discusses the Rise of Geospatial Collaboration

2011-12-02T04:43:00.019-05:00

I travelled to San Antonio recently for GEOINT 2011 - a fantastic event that attracted over 4,400 attendees, exhibitors and leadership from the defense, intelligence and homeland security communities. During the Symposium I had a chance to present at the GEOINT 2011 Tech Talks and highlight the potential of 'GeoSynchronization and Geospatial Enterprise Collaboration'.

The Carbon Project's Tech Talk focused on how knowledge about the Earth and the activities on it rarely comes from one source, the movement to geospatial crowd-sourcing and the need for 'geospatial enterprises' to collaborate and share in real-time. To meet these challenges we highlighted four GEOINT collaboration scenarios based on GeoSynchronization and emerging OGC standards -

- Mobile Geo-Apps for Android that put the power of GEOINT into the hands of users.
- Using CarbonCloud Sync to 'Plug and Play' with any OGC WFS service in seconds.
- 'Initializing' online services with open Geodata Bulk Transfer (GBT) GML tools.
- Sharing automatic updates from GIS using our 'SDE Watcher' for ESRI databases.

I even had the chance to pull our Android 'GeoSync' app out of my pocket and show how we were connecting to three different services live, including WFS from CubeWerx ;-). Check it out on GEOINTv.

- Jeff

Carbon Project Demonstrates Android App for Geospatial Crowd-Sourcing [Video]

2011-11-29T13:43:00.009-05:00

A new Android app from The Carbon Project is set to make geospatial crowd-sourcing based on international standards almost as easy as using Twitter.

In the video above Mark Mattson from The Carbon Project shows the basic functions of this easy-to-use app for CarbonCloud Sync. The app lets enterprises receive crowd-sourced mapping updates from users on Android smartphones - and then sends the updates to the CarbonCloud GeoSynchronization Service and many OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) in real-time. The app is unique because not only can real-time updates come from many sources, the geospatial data can also come from almost anywhere. This is unlike many systems today which store data centrally. The demo above uses WFS provided by CubeWerx.

We've recently featured this Android 'GeoSync' app in demos at the Army Geospatial Center, NGA, OGC meetings in Boulder, GEOINT 2011 in San Antonio and many other places - and we're getting great feedback. Check it out and let us know what you think.

- Jeff

Geospatial Collaboration and Interoperability Goes Mobile

2011-10-17T13:12:00.025-05:00

Interoperable Android app updating GEOINT

In today's world knowledge about the Earth and the activities on it rarely comes from one source, and it's constantly changing. For example, Army units may transfer in and out of areas. Military personnel need to work in collaboration with coalition partners and non-governmental organizations. In addition, there are growing geospatial crowd-sourcing communities adding updates every day. In this environment a new generation of interoperability and collaboration is vital. But current mobile apps for geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) are often 'stovepiped' - in other words they often work with one vendor or online service only, and usually store geospatial data centrally. What's needed are easy-to-use, interoperable mobile geo-apps that put the power of GEOINT into the hands of users. With these geo-apps users can connect to dynamic data networks and create a sharable geospatial foundation in real time.

Here at The Carbon Project we've been working on this challenge and rolling out a new generation of CarbonCloud Sync Android apps built on standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC). These geo-apps support collaborative, dynamic GEOINT data networks - and enable information and updates to be shared enterprise to enterprise, vertically and horizontally, and from tactical to national levels in real time. Enterprises also have the ability to 'plug-and-play' with any standards-based data service in seconds (via OGC WFS) and manage communities of users as information and collaboration needs change.

With these easy-to-use apps enterprises can get answers to critical questions, including:

- Where are the refugees & where do we need to send relief supplies?
- Where is the damage? Where should we send our rescue teams?
- Is the road open? And for how long?
- Can I see just the updates for next week over this hotspot?

CarbonCloud Sync mobile apps help by allowing enterprises to receive geospatial updates from many sources, validating them if needed, and then instantly sharing them with the people that need them. With this new capability enterprises gain the power of mobile GEOINT collaboration and interoperability - and needed insight about our rapidly changing world.

- Jeff

GEOINT data services shown above provided by CubeWerx WFS

Group demonstrates open access & update for geonames

2011-08-07T13:26:00.009-05:00

Access to consistent, reliable and local geographic names information is essential for understanding communities and geosocial dynamics. In many situations, ‘geonames’ provide one of the most important keys for referencing and accessing a variety of other information. Geonames databases, called Gazetteers, are used to represent place-names - and an interagency group recently came together to demonstrate new ways to share this important resource using online web services.

The demonstration was hosted at USGS and highlighted the ability to deliver data from both US domestic and foreign place-name databases using ‘Web Feature Services for Gazetteers’ (called WFS-G). The WFS-G services provided easy, real-time access to both domestic and foreign place-name databases from common geospatial clients - a primary goal for the WFS-G effort.

The OGC developed the Web Feature Service (WFS) to enable geographic feature data sharing and updating across a standard web-based interface - and the group highlighted its work on a profile of WFS to support geonames. It's also interesting to note that the WFS-G profile traces its legacy to the OGC Geospatial Fusion Services (GFS) initiative where an OGC Gazetteer interface was defined and eventually published as an OGC Discussion Paper. The latest version of WFS-G builds on this work and specifies a minimum set of feature types and operations needed for gazetteer services and includes collections of geonames that can be related to each other in vocabularies of geographic places – much like terms in a thesaurus. The information model was demonstrated as a Geographic Markup Language (GML) application schema and is based on ISO 19112 (‘Spatial Referencing by Geographic Identifiers’).

The foreign and domestic gazetteer databases combined contained about nine million names records – and were developed separately and thus don’t share a common model or schema. Any attempt to fit both into a unified database would be costly and difficult – but the WFS-G allowed geonames access from both data sets in a common geospatial client (in this case Gaia and others). The USGS service also supported WFS Transactions (WFS-T) and GeoSynchronization to show the potential for trusted stewards to update geonames. WFS-G implementing the standards demonstrated are being deployed as operational services now – and the future holds the potential for advancing open WFS-G standards, WFS-T and GeoSynchronization as a means for trusted stewards to update geonames and even easier WFS-G access using web browsers and mobile technology.

- Jeff

Note - WFS-G provided by CubeWerx, Gaia provided by The Carbon Project

The Carbon Project Awarded U.S. Patent for P2P Geosocial Data Sharing

2011-04-13T10:14:00.012-05:00

The Carbon Project today announced the award of a United States patent for the technology behind its next-generation Geosocial Networking® infrastructures.

The patent has 14 claims covering a broad range of search and distribution functions for location-based content that take place in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. The patent claims encompass The Carbon Project's methods for searching, obtaining and distributing geospatial information directly between applications in P2P networks, including addresses, coordinates, street maps, satellite images, geospatial features, geographically referenced notes and digital media such as photographs.

The technology can support a wide variety of new applications and services in areas such as local advertising, Geosocial Networking®, emergency response, geospatial intelligence and others on fixed and mobile peer devices.

The market for location-based applications and services is poised to explode in the next few years and we're very pleased with the addition of this United States patent to our growing portfolio of intellectual property. This patent strengthens our competitive position, offers protection to The Carbon Project's clients and partners, and positions the company well in the location-based applications and services market.

About The Carbon Project

The Carbon Project is a high-energy software and technology company pioneering Geosocial Networking and cloud computing solutions to solve tomorrow's challenges, today. The company is a Microsoft Certified Partner, an ESRI Business Partner and a CubeWerx Strategic Partner that provides geosocial, Gov 2.0 and spatial data infrastructure (SDI) solutions to meet commercial, national security, infrastructure and environmental challenges. The Carbon Project is a privately owned company backed by individual investors. For more information please visit http://www.thecarbonproject.com/

The Carbon Project and Geosocial Networking are registered trademarks of Carbon Project, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their owners.

Building on the Cloud for Geospatial Collaboration

2011-03-08T09:54:00.004-05:00

I travelled down to NCGIS 2011 in Raleigh, North Carolina recently to give some presentations in the "Techpertise" track - what a fantastic event! The panels and audiences for each session were outstanding, and the event had an air of 'innovation' around it.

One of my talks focused on "Building on the Azure Cloud" and discussed Cloud computing "Buzzword Basics" (IAAS, PAAS, etc.), how we build on Microsoft Azure and provided examples of the Cloud in action with the WFS geonames prototype and CarbonCloud Sync. But my favorite aspect of the session was discussing how Cloud computing can turn local data resources into scalable open geospatial services - ready to meet real-time collaboration challenges.

Think about it - when people are collaborating work doesn’t happen at steady pace. Computing resource needs change in real-time. This is especially true for geosocial transactions - consider Haiti, snowstorms, floods, fires and even recent social ‘revolutions’ around the world. What the Cloud means is that local data provider resources can turn into scalable open geospatial services - able to accept geosocial updates from many sources and distribute them to the people and systems that need them in real-time.

I also discussed how Microsoft Azure is ideal for startups and small companies - allowing them to battle established 'monsters' in the industry and compete. For example, it was straightforward to port an application like CarbonCloud Sync to the Azure Cloud - saving a startup like ours lots of time and money.

You can check out the presentation here (and I'll post it on SlideShare soon).

- Jeff

From Shapefiles to GeoSynchronization – ‘Pretty Damn Cool’

2011-02-09T06:21:00.020-05:00

In our visits with folks over the last few months we’re finding growing interest in geospatial collaboration and interoperability. They see value in new technologies like GeoSynchronization that allow them to get updates from many sources, validate them if required, and syndicate them to the people and systems that need them through real-time feeds. But local, county, state, provincial and federal organizations still have a job to do. They have to get current data updates out, meet deadlines and work with systems they have today. For geospatial data production this often means using ESRI Shapefiles, a popular geospatial data format for GIS software.

So how do we bridge the gap between a future environment of online services like GeoSynchronization and current Shapefile-based production methods – and do it so organizations get the benefits without disrupting current processes? The answer lies in transforming Shapefiles into GeoSynchronizable transactions that can be used by any web service implementing open geospatial (OGC) standards. Here’s an example from our recent NSDI grant work with the State of Arkansas in the US.

Currently, Arkansas state GIS receives a drop of Shapefiles-based road data from over 70 counties about every month. These files are ingested into the state-level view, including all provided data and updates, and state personnel use their GIS systems to assess what's changed. To help speed up this process we’ve extended our CarbonCloud Sync services and clients to accommodate current workflows and data sources, while maintaining GeoSynchronization capabilities and benefits. We do this by -

Reading the county Road Centerline Shapefiles into a new application called the GSS Change Validator,
Comparing them against existing state data on an ArcGIS Web Feature Service (with GML),
Automatically determining what’s changed,
Generating change-based transactions for the county roads data. In other words, is it an Insert/Update/Delete? (the example above shows a Road as an 'Insert' transaction),
Then sending the updates to the people and systems that need them through CarbonCloud Sync (including federal-level web services if needed).

This approach meets the needs of state data production organizations and the GeoSynchronization vision of the CAP grant - it also has the benefit of providing a very quick assessment of what’s new in each county.

When we showed the approach to a community group recently we received responses like “this will save us lots of time and money” and “pretty damn cool”. In the next few weeks we’ll break down more details of how it works, how other sources can be converted into geosynchronizable transactions and notifications, and how the approach can help other communities move to syndicated networks of real-time geospatial updates.

- Jeff

Vote - Geospatial Platform should specify open standards

2010-12-18T07:47:00.005-05:00

Recently the US Government released its "Roadmap" for a new Geospatial Platform - and then asked for feedback on IdeaScale.

I took a look and noted the Roadmap states the GeoPlatform “will be established as a service-oriented architecture based upon common, secure, interoperable and scalable open-standards based technologies.” The Roadmap also says that through the FGDC, standards that shall be evaluated for adoption by the Federal Government include: Geospatial data publication standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the International Organization of Standardization (ISO), the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) L1 committee, and the FGDC including but not limited to the Web Services (features, map, processing, coverage, etc.).

This is a laudable objective and will provide increased transparency and collaboration capability for the Geospatial Platform. However, the Government should consider specifying which standards are to be implemented on a “sooner rather than later” basis. Advance guidance to the US technology community will help it better understand where potential investment, development and implementation may be needed. In addition, guidance on open-standards based technologies should clearly state that client applications and ingestion technology, as well as services and data, must implement the specified open-standards to participate in the geospatial platform. This will avoid interoperability problems, defacto stovepipes and lack of usability.

You can vote on the idea too - Geoplatform IdeaScale

Standards group advances geospatial collaboration

2010-11-28T15:39:00.013-05:00

Frequently, geospatial data providers must collaborate with many organizations to collect new data and/or update their existing data holdings. For example, when federal agencies want to synchronize with geodata updates coming from 'closest-to-source' publishers such as local or state providers. Another case is when content providers are crowd-sourcing their data updates or supporting volunteer geographic information (VGI).

In these situations there's a need for an open interface to services that mediate the interaction between geospatial data providers, the content repositories, and the external entities acting as data publishers. The service must support data publishing with validation, replication of the data content submitted to multiple repositories and notification of changes to interested parties who may be following along.

To meet this challenge the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) just announced the formation of a GeoSynchronization Service Standards Working Group (SWG). The OGC Candidate GeoSynchronization Service Standard describes an open standard interface to an online service that allows publishers to propose changes to be made to a data provider's geospatial features (such as data about points of interest, property lines, city population, vehicle locations, etc.). A change proposal can be made to create new data or to modify/delete existing data. Proposed changes are reviewed (either manually or automatically) and are either accepted or rejected. Accepted changes are applied to the appropriate repositories. The service can also notify people or systems that are following along with the updates. GeoSynchronization Services use the ATOM protocol to connect to different geospatial services and messages based on ATOM format encodings.

Initial Charter Members of the new standards activity were CubeWerx and The Carbon Project, joined by the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC), U.S. Geological Survey, GeoConnections - Natural Resources Canada, Ministère des resources naturelles et de la faune du Québec (MRNF), and the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

Data providers make imagery access easy

2010-11-26T16:40:00.009-05:00

I travelled down to GEOINT 2010 in New Orleans earlier this month - a fantastic event. If you're in 'geospatial' you needed to be there.

The symposium had plenty of discussion on open source GEOINT, geo-apps, emerging sensors and platforms, warfighter feedback, increased focus on human geography and lots of other topics. However, just like GEOINT Tech Days earlier this year something in the crowd has changed yet again. This time not only have both military and commercial organizations taken the lead in evangelizing standards-based online services like WMS, WFS - they've gone ahead and deployed some of the most powerful web mapping services ever seen. The result is easy, nearly instant access to an unprecedented amount of imagery.

This struck me especially strongly since I ran the first GEOINT interop demo in 2004 when some established vendors said access via open standard mapping services was a 'smoke & mirrors' trick. They were wrong - and boy did GEOINT 2010 prove it.

What's next? I'd say users will want even more 'easy access' interoperable geospatial services - and new apps to use them. In addition, seamless integration between partners, civilian, federal and international agencies are capabilities users will likely want more of as part of open source GEOINT - plus the ability to use cloud-based services to contribute and validate crowd-sourced updates. It's also likely they'll benefit from the speed, power and collaboration capabilities of new services like WMTS - the open standard for fast web mapping being advanced by folks like the OGC wizards at CubeWerx.

One thing is certain - once users get a taste of easy access the GEOINT world will never be the same.

The Carbon Project Selected by U.S. Army Geospatial Center for GeoSynchronization Contract

2010-10-18T09:52:00.004-05:00

The Carbon Project today announced that it was selected by the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC) for a Geospatial Applications and Services support contract. This contract includes 1 base year with 1 option year and provides support services to enhance the capabilities of systems using geospatial data and open standards. The contract continues cutting-edge GeoSynchronization efforts and includes development of geospatially enabled applications which improve Army capabilities, enhance geospatial GeoSynchronization, enhance the capabilities of systems using geospatial data, and improve the functioning of the Army Geospatial Enterprise. The Carbon Project is proud to be chosen for this important geospatial applications and services contract. We have been supporting the Army Geospatial Center since 2009 as a part of work based on Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) standards, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. For more information please contact jharrison@TheCarbonProject.com or visit http://www.thecarbonproject.com/. About The Carbon Project The Carbon Project is a high-energy software and technology company specializing in Geosocial Networking® and cloud computing solutions to solve tomorrow's challenges, today. The company is an ESRI Business Partner and CubeWerx Strategic Partner that provides geosocial, Gov 2.0 and spatial data infrastructure (SDI) solutions to meet commercial, national security, infrastructure and environmental challenges. The company’s program management, systems and software engineering expertise focuses on collaborative systems engineering and open standards-based software - saving customers time and money. The Carbon Project is a privately owned company backed by individual investors.

OGC Standards Officially Endorsed by US Federal Geographic Data Committee

2010-10-12T14:50:00.004-05:00

In a press announcement today from the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) - The US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Steering Committee has officially endorsed a group of OGC standards along with other standards developed externally to FGDC. These standards play an important role in enabling interoperability as part of the Geospatial Platform for GeoOneStop, place-based initiatives, and other potential future programs of the FGDC.

The Steering Committee endorsed standards from the OGC, ISO TC211 and ANSI (INCITS L1) standards development organizations - including Web Map Server (WMS), Web Feature Server (WFS), Web Map Tile Service (WMTS), Geography Markup Language (GML) and many others.

"OGC's interface and encoding standards are an essential part of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. They play a key role in providing technical interoperability among geospatial systems used at all levels of government," said Ivan DeLoatch, Executive Director of the FGDC. "We encourage government agencies to include these standards, as well as FGDC's data standards, in the language of software and data procurement documents."

The FGDC Standards Working Group will revisit the list every year as part of its standards life-cycle management activities.

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is an interagency committee that promotes the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data on a national basis. This nationwide data publishing effort is known as the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). The NSDI is a physical, organizational, and virtual network designed to enable the development and sharing of this nation's digital geographic information resources. FGDC activities are administered through the FGDC Secretariat, hosted by the U.S. Geological Survey.

USGS map service gets rid of aerial image "mess"

2010-09-29T06:40:00.014-05:00

As the WMS Song says (to the tune of the Beatles "Let it Be") -

"When I need aerial images, I've got to download some files

Oh, what a mess, WMS.

And that weird image format, doesn't load in my GIS

Oh, what a mess, WMS.

...Get rid of this mess, WMS"

USGS has taken this advice to heart and deployed a great web mapping service (WMS) that makes it easier for citizens to access the geographic data it produces and manages - especially aerial images. The map service is called the National Map Seamless Server and it's taking aerial image access to a new level.

The Seamless WMS provides orthoimagery (images processed to overlay on maps) of major U.S. urban areas, streets, bridges, buildings, sidewalks, streams and more at 3-inch, 6-inch, 1-foot, and 2.5-foot spatial resolutions. This means objects roughly these sizes are identifiable on the ground. Because of its detail - better than Bing or Yahoo! in the "Georgetown" area of DC above - the imagery can provide a critical tool for resource managers, city planners, emergency responders, open data digitizers and others. And it's served in an open standard interface (WMS) that's not controlled by any one organization or group like Google - so the official data can be shared all over the Net.

Overlayed on top of the High Resolution Orthoimagery WMS above are Roads from the USGS Framework Web Map and Feature Services - styled to provide an easy reference for Georgetown streets. The free spatial data infrastructure (SDI) platform Gaia is used for access and map display.

Yep, the USGS Seamless WMS helps "get rid of the mess"...

- Jeff

Gaia app simplifies geonames access

2010-09-22T09:38:00.008-05:00

Access to consistent, reliable and local geographic names information is essential for understanding communities and geosocial dynamics. In many situations, geographic names provide one of the most important keys for referencing and accessing a variety of other information. Geonames databases, called Gazetteers, are an information resource for representing places, groups of people and cultures - and one of the best ways to share this resource with others is through online web services like the Web Feature Service - Gazetteer (WFS-G).

But if you think about the way technology is evolving there needs to be a kind of separation of usability from the standard web services like WFS-G. Think about iPhone apps - they're very focused software tools. You want to access news, you just open an app that goes to FoxNews (or whatever). Very focused tools reduce user operations to get what the user wants - and hide the underlying web services.

The prototype WFS-G Extender for Gaia is similar - very focused on a simple task - getting answers to questions from a WFS-G. All you need to do is click one button to access the WFS-G and get the information you need. You don't need to worry about complicated GIS layers - just click, click done.

For example, lets say you want to find "Universities" in a gazetteer. In response to your search multiple Gazetteer Features are returned from the Prototype WFS-G - and displayed in a user-friendly format as lists and notes - done. You can also exercise complex "Parent-Child" relationships in the WFS-G GMLsf schema to check if the geoname is part of a larger geosocial construct - like seeing that Los Angeles County is the "Parent" to the university above. You can also see that a more extensive set of geonames features were displayed as a WFS Layer in Gaia for reference, but most people will not want to see this geospatial information - they just want the answer to the question.

In future articles we'll look at how to update Geonames using the same simple approach. The Gaia WFS-G Extender is based on the Gaia Extenders API and CarbonTools PRO, and the Prototype WFS-G is provided by CubeWerx.

- Jeff

The WMS Song

2010-09-08T17:30:00.004-05:00

The WMS Song is an instant classic! Someone needs to post the lyrics...

GeoSynch Presentation at 2010 ESRI User Conference

2010-08-17T14:49:00.004-05:00

This is our GeoSynchronization presentation for the Atmosphere and Environment ’2.0’ Panel at the 2010 ESRI User Conference in San Diego. A great session with lots of good feedback and discussion! (Please note - you might have to view the SlideShare on full-screen mode to see some of the map graphics - apologies)

Web language for geology promotes data sharing

2010-08-14T08:37:00.005-05:00

Access to consistent, reliable and local geology information is essential for understanding our planet and managing resources. Since this information is so important, there's growing global interest in sharing geology information across standard web service interfaces that are not controlled by any one organization or group. To meet this challenge efforts such as OneGeology, as well as national and state/provincial mapping agencies, are embracing OGC Web Map Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) to ensure geology and mineral resource information is open and accessible to all.

WMS and WFS define open standards for retrieving maps and geographic features across the Web using platform-independent calls - and 116 countries are now participating in the OneGeology WMS/WFS network with over 40 WMS and 8 WFS deployed. There's even a profile of Geography Markup Language (GML) for WFS designed specifically to support geology called GeoSciML. A quick example of WMS/WFS/GeoSciML data sharing in Australia is shown above in Gaia. In the future, we'll likely see the use of WFS Transactions (WFS-T) and possibly geosynchronization to update geology data - making it possible for anyone to contribute to the infrastructure of earth information - regardless of underlying databases.

With growing global interest in sharing geology and mineral resources information - and with the recognition that one of the best ways to maintain this information is locally, closest to the people that know it - WFS and WMS like those coming online now are a key collaborative technology for representing the earth and its resources.

Web map services show Russia fires

2010-08-11T06:04:00.003-05:00

As Muscovites choked under blankets of thick smoke in the first week of August 2010, web map services (WMS) from NASA showed the extent of wildfires across western Russia. The view above in the Gaia SDI Platform was made today using web map and feature services from NASA, NOAA, CIESEN and CubeWerx.

Windows Azure cloud in real-time geospatial collaboration demo

2010-07-29T15:55:00.007-05:00

The Carbon Project's CarbonCloud Sync platform was tested and demonstrated at the recent Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services 7 (OWS-7) event. The problem addressed by this solution is the need to receive real-time geographic updates from many sources, validate them, and then share the updates with web services from many organizations. The demonstration uses Gaia, WFS from ESRI, plus WFS and REST Map Tile Services from CubeWerx. All real-time communications between users and web services is handled by CarbonCloud Sync on Windows Azure Cloud.

The components of CarbonCloud Sync as deployed on Azure Cloud were:

A web role - to host the management part and front facing services
A worker role - to process the transactions, do the transpositions, etc.
SQL Azure database – to store the transactions, users, etc.
Azure Queue Storage – web role uses this to add events that the worker role will process.

Lots of positive feedback on this - and many thanks to ESRI, CubeWerx and Windows Azure for the services!

GeoSynch Architecture explained on YouTube

2010-07-22T15:41:00.009-05:00

This screen capture from the OGC OWS-7 testbed walks you some GeoSynchronization Service (GSS) Architecture basics - including the roles of Publishers, Reviewers, Followers in a real-time network. Examples of GeoSynch in action with desktop and web apps are also available.

SDI technology wins Australian "Apps4NSW" competition

2010-07-18T16:12:00.007-05:00

Australian-based NuMaps has been awarded joint first prize winner in the inaugural Apps4NSW mashup competition for their DemographicDrapes web application. The Gov 2.0 competition was held in New South Wales, Australia.

At an awards presentation the Minister for Science and Medical research, Jodi McKay, said the aim of the Apps4NSW competition was about finding new and useful ways to deliver Government information to the public via the internet and mobile devices. “We know that more and more people are getting the information they need via mobile phones, computers and other mobile devices,” Ms. McKay said. “Applications and ideas that allow people to access and compare information about their local communities were the big winners.”

The competition attracted 122 entries. After much deliberation the judging panel decided to award equal first place to Brad Spencer for his DemographicDrapes application and the Smart Mashups team for their Suburban Trends application. “Our DemographicDrapes application is based on two distinct components – the browser application itself and the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) published by NuMaps,” Brad Spencer said. “Anyone could have developed their own mashup application against our spatial data service and in fact we would encourage people to do this next time.”

The actual mashup is a GoogleMaps-like application - allowing users to locate their map view to anywhere in Australia via a range of navigation tools. They can then select from a sample range of DemographicDrapes based on ABS Census 2006 data to overlay and zoom into specific suburbs to analyse different demographic themes such as age, housing, marriage, religion, gender and heritage population distributions. The user can also upload their own eXcel spreadsheet data and superimpose it on top of the demographics (such as monthly sales figures, etc.) “This really does provide the remote web user with an affordable analysis tool that both allows them to conveniently access publicly published demographics as well as integrate their own more private data sets.” Spencer said.

The underlying SDI powering DemographicDrapes leverages the Web Map Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) international standard and CubeWerx servers. Numaps also provides connectivity for Gaia from The Carbon Project so customers can combine DemographicDrapes with other data sets, wherever they come from.

GeoSynchronization Demonstrations Bridge Databases, Users and Enterprises

2010-07-11T09:42:00.004-05:00

At the recent OGC meetings in Silver Spring and other venues, The Carbon Project demonstrated a simulated response scenario over Haiti. This scenario was selected in consultation with government agencies and designed to represent a simulation of synchronizing geographic updates in real-time from many sources to any geospatial database using open standard web services - bridging a variety of databases, GIS vendors, and data schemas.

In this scenario, Political, Military, Economical, Social, Infrastructure, and Information (PMESII) and Area, Structures, Capabilities, Organizations, People and Events (ASCOPE) data types were geosynchonized to ESRI and CubeWerx/Oracle databases (simulating NATO and Army users). For the purposes of the scenario, it was assumed that geospatial data related to PMESII-ASCOPE is missing i.e., Port Au Prince airfield apron, camp locations, condition of damaged buildings, hospital locations, buildings, power generation networks, lines of communication and roads (operational corridors). This data was added, updated and deleted on multiple WFS Transactional services in near-real time, simulating operations ‘internal’ to the Army geospatial enterprise as well as ‘external’ operations - with users performing the role of Geospatial Engineering Teams.

To provide a suitable test of shareable geospatial foundation data across the force all requested data were collected in a Geography Markup Language (GML) schema of similar complexity to emerging geospatial data models.

Results of the demonstrations indicated GeoSynchronization based on platforms like CarbonCloud Sync, tools like the Gaia WFS-T Extender and open standard web services can provide a key capability to integrate geospatial information and analysis capabilities with command and control information. In addition, the scenario indicated this integration can occur across joint and multinational environments. The scenario highlights how with modern geospatial interoperability tools and standards updates can be ‘published’ digitally by field users, reviewed by other users located at more centralized sites, and instantly added to multiple data stores whenever the updates are ‘accepted’.

CarbonCloud featured in Microsoft Azure COM.geo Keynote

2010-07-08T17:30:00.005-05:00

Mark Eisenberg from Microsoft Azure keynoted the recent COM.geo conference in DC - and did a great job. His example was CarbonCloud Sync on the Azure Cloud. Mark described how CarbonCloud Sync on Azure can receive real-time geographic updates from many sources, validate them, and then report updates to web services from multiple organizations using open standards. Mark also talked about how the need for this solution is apparent in situations like the Haiti earthquake - and how the scalable and dynamic capabilities of Azure allows the network to expand efficiently to meet these needs.

SDI as real-time collaborative service

2010-07-06T07:38:00.009-05:00

Access to reliable, current and local geographic information is essential for understanding our interconnected world and geosocial dynamics. In many situations, geographic information provides an important key for referencing and accessing a variety of other data - and one of the best ways to maintain this resource is locally, closest to the people that know it, and then share it with others through online services.

Since geographic information is so important, there's growing global interest in sharing and updating it across standard Web-based services and databases that aren't controlled by any one organization or group. In this "spatial data infrastructure" approach an important way to ensure geographic information is open and accessible is through the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS). The WFS defines a standard way for accessing geographic information across the Web using platform-independent calls – and also a way to update the information called WFS Transactions (WFS-T).

But even though WFS-T provides significant capacity for update, one additional capability is needed to transform multiple WFS into an agile framework driven by collaborative maintenance partnerships between many users and organizations. Specifically, the capability for collaborative geospatial data maintenance in a web services environment (GeoSynchronization) is needed.

To meet this challenge, GeoSynchronization Services (GSS) like CarbonCloud Sync provide an easy way to use WFS for real-time collaborative geospatial data update. When combined with tools like the Gaia WFS-T Extender that can interact with a GSS, you have an environment of Publishers, Reviewers, and Followers that allows enterprises to receive real-time geographic updates from many sources, validate them, and then report the updates to web services operated by many organizations. Moreover, CarbonCloud Sync fully leverages modern COTS GIS systems such as ESRI ArcGIS Server or CubeWerx WFS, without modifications or changes to the server infrastructure. The system leverages the existing GIS infrastructure by using interoperability standards supported by multiple vendors, open-source organizations and other partners. This approach maximizes the current and future GIS investment by enterprises while enhancing it with new levels of real-time collaboration.

- Jeff

Operational Test Helps Geo-Synch, Crowdsourced WFS, Advance

2010-06-24T16:38:00.019-05:00

Recently we had a wonderful experience helping the latest OGC Testbed, OWS-7, and ongoing contracts with some unique testing. As part of ‘hands on’ data development Gaia GeoSynchronization Service (GSS) client software was deployed and tested at MIT. During the test multiple students performed the role of data publishers “external” to a government geospatial enterprise and contributed updates to an emerging situation like the Haiti response.

In the test the students (who were basically untrained users when they started the afternoon) were asked to contribute WFS/GML edits using Gaia tools. They were only provided about 15 minutes of training. But you know what? After this period, they were able to begin successfully publishing proposed updates to Camp and Roads features using the GeoSynchronization tools and services. Several hundred proposed updates were contributed in a single two-hour production period - most of which were accepted after review, and added simultaneously and in real-time to WFS-T from multiple organizations. The CubeWerx and ArcGIS WFS-T for the test were located in Canada and The Carbon Project's Massachusetts office - and the CarbonCloud Sync GSS was deployed in Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. Many thanks to the students for their help!

- Jeff

Users to Data Providers, 'Let go! And deploy more WMS ...'

2010-05-21T16:17:00.025-05:00

I was at USGIF Tech Days this week - lots of leading folks in the geospatial community in one crowd. It was good to see old and new friends. As with most industry get-togethers, I had scheduled meetings and plenty of impromptu meet-ups - all of which were awesome.

One thing hit me hard at Tech Days this year, something in the crowd was different. I'm usually the one evangelizing standards-based online services like WMS, WFS, GeoRSS etc (hard to believe, I know ;-). But that wasn't the case this time. One Army officer said to me that access to data via WMS, WFS, GeoRSS, KML is vital - and that people need to 'let go' and do more in this area. Other folks said that 'without standards, there's chaos'. Still others wanted more apps to use online geospatial services.

What's changed? I think recent events like Haiti have given users a taste of the power and flexibility of being able to choose which WMS/WFS map and feature layers they need, which GeoRSS feeds to use, and the KML links that benefit them most - regardless of the system or vendor that provides it. Of course, many of the forward-leaning providers are already doing this.

What's next? I'd say users will want even more 'on-demand' interoperable geospatial services. In addition, seamless integration between partners, civilian, federal and international agencies are capabilities users will likely want more of - as well as the ability to contribute and validate crowd-sourced updates from many users into many different services. It's also likely they'll benefit from the speed and power of new services like WMTS - the open standard for fast web mapping.

One thing is certain - you can learn a lot when you listen in the crowd.

- Jeff

SDI as a Service

2010-05-14T06:10:00.004-05:00

We are entering a new era of information technology, when the network will be the computer. And significant computing tasks will be done somewhere in the network 'cloud'. Just a short time ago that may have sounded farfetched. The IT environment familiar to most readers was based on desktop/laptop computers, and the enterprise-wide deployment of information to those systems. The notion of an enterprise having to depend on the availability and responsiveness of some amorphous network of distributed data resources was challenging.

Some readers may argue that it's far easier to create a controlled, predictable IT environment by buying the hardware, the software, and even the data, and integrating them. This makes the system completely self sufficient. Arguably, this position was once the only option. But now we've experienced significant changes in technology. The Internet is just one. It started with a browser that pointed to web pages, reports, or documents. It is now extending into databases and collaboration services. As a result, a lot of us have come to depend on the internet for much of the information we consume. Thanks to Web 2.0 applications the world is embracing internet-based social networking and wiki worlds which have highlighted a generational shift in the way that we manage and access information.

In order to cope with all this increased internet activity, other technology has evolved. The introduction of broadband internet has improved the user experience significantly. Internet consumers – in some countries – are already experiencing very little difference whether they access resources internal or external to their organization. With the introduction of fiber to the home in North America, Australia, Europe, Asia and other regions, a vast majority of households will experience unencumbered access to remote resources. The availability of high speed broadband will change the way that we do a whole lot of things.

However, there's more to this than just having mountains of remote distributed resources. The development of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) support the concept of web services that allow programs or web applications to integrate these remote services and data. The development of SOA meant that applications developers could easily ‘cobble’ together any number of remote resources. An army of developers is working to build web-based and desktop ‘mashups’ that integrate any number of these remote services via web services. This trend is only in its infancy. As we become more comfortable with it, its usage will proliferate.

So we already have the fundamental infrastructure to broaden our use of information beyond the boundary of the enterprise. For the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) community what is now needed is the growth of remote services that can be harnessed in this manner. We need more distributed services that are exposed on the internet, and that can be discovered and accessed via standards-based web services. This Information as a Service (IAAS) model is a trend that is gaining a momentum of its own – initially in controlled intranet/extranet environments – but increasingly on Internet "cloud" as well.

We'll explore some specific examples in future parts of this series.

- Jeff and Brad

NEO Web Service - Tracking changes around the world just got easier!

2010-05-13T12:24:00.006-05:00

It's not often an online resource comes along and makes me say, "Wow!", but the NEO - NASA Earth Observations - web map service is just that kind of resource. NEO's mission is to help you picture climate and environmental changes happening on our home planet. To open up the NEO collection to all users they provide a WMS - giving anyone the ability to access maps from any application using a standardized programming interface. Just plug the service descriptions for NEO into Gaia to access it and start tracking changes around the world.

- Jeff

Web services provide access to Hawaii infrastructure info

2010-05-07T13:05:00.007-05:00

During a recent "10 minutes with NSDI Web Services" talk at AAG I discussed some new web feature services (WFS) from PDC. I was impressed with the services (good data, easy access) and see them as another great example of geospatial services oriented architecture (GSOA) advancing on the Internet.

The WFS are provided by Pacific Disaster Center and come in several flavors, each supporting a different theme. Two of my favorites are Infrastructure and Emergency Services. Just plug the service descriptions for each of these into Gaia to access them. Hint - a trick I use to add services is just clicking on the "Gaia" icon in the GOS Dashboard, your service list in Gaia will be automatically updated. The example above shows the PDC WFS for Emergency Services accessed using this technique through the open source GOS Dashboard for Windows 7/Vista and free Gaia from The Carbon Project. Enjoy!

- Jeff and Mark

Getting started with feature data production and Gaia WFS-T

2010-04-29T07:56:00.007-05:00

We've been using the Gaia WFS-T Extender for inserting, updating and deleting geospatial features a lot lately. These tools provide an easy way to contribute geospatial data using Web Feature Service Transactional (WFS-T) services on any system - including ESRI ArcGIS Server 10, Intergraph, ERDAS, OSGeo, CubeWerx and others. However, Gaia WFS-T also provides advanced functions to help speed up feature data production. In this post we look at how to configure a transactional feature layer and set up production rules to make sure the correct data goes into your WFS-T.

Before Gaia can work with a feature layer it must know the layer is a transactional one from a WFS-T. In addition, a description of the layer properties and a set of rules need to be set. To do this the layer’s Geography Markup Language (GML) schema must be read and processed. The Gaia WFS-T Extender makes this as easy as a single mouse click.

To configure a transactional layer first make sure it's available in Gaia - then select “Config” from the WFS-T toolbar to open the configuration form (see above). The form will list all relevant feature layers in a pull-down list. When selecting a feature layer the form will display information about the layer, including the operations supported. This information is gathered from the layer’s parent service Capabilities. If the selected layer supports transactional operations (indicated by the gray check-boxes) the “Refresh from Schema” button will be enabled. Clicking this button will start an automated process where the layer’s GML schema is read from the service, analyzed, and converted to a local table along with data rules built automatically from the schema.

Often, you are ready to go at this point. But if you want to set additional rules to speed up feature data production or to ensure data quality you can do it now. For example, the following rules can be set for the 'AircraftHangarGeosurface' feature properties example above:

Property Availability - Use the check boxes to select whether the property applies to your transactions. Remember, at least a single geometry must be selected to be valid.

Property Type - This value is usually read from the schema - but if no clear type was determined you can manually adjust it. These values appear as UNKNOWN, TEXT, DOUBLE, POINT, LINE, POLYGON, MULTIPOINT, MULTILINE, MULTIPOLYGON, GEOMETRY etc.

Maximum Text Length - This is parsed from the WFS-T schema, and applies only to TEXT type properties. You can set it manually to make sure the appropriate length gets entered. Once set, if you type text values with more characters than allowed an alert will pop up and the operation will not be allowed until you fixthe error.

Default Property Value for New Features - This rule is very helpful and allows Gaia to automatically add values when a new feature is being created - so you don't have to select it over and over again. If the WFS schema describes "enumeration values" this field will appear as a pull-down list - very handy (see above).

Value Range of Numerical Fields - If you set this, the minimum or maximum value is enforced when you “Insert” or “Update” and the feature operation will not be allowed until a valid numerical value is assigned.

Once established, these rules are enforced by Gaia when editing or creating features. If a rule is not met, the feature operation (insert, update, etc) is considered not valid and completing the operation will not be allowed as long as the invalid values are not corrected.

If you want to learn more about using the Gaia WFS-T Extender check out the User's Guide or download the app and try it yourself.

- Nuke and Jeff

Maps more usable in Google Earth with OGC 'Style'

2010-04-21T10:22:00.008-05:00

CubeWerx has just posted an interesting Case Study on Cascading WMS and Haiti response. In discussing the Cascading WMS and Haiti the article says -

"In emergency response situations, first responders need accurate information immediately. The overwhelming response of the mapping community resulted in an unprecedented supply of geographic data being made available in a very short time. But each of the services supplied its own slightly different interface to the data. People working to bring that data together and create ad-hoc applications in support of relief efforts would have to deal with the discrepancies."

The Cascading map server from CubeWerx is able to connect to each of the other services offered, analyze their descriptions, and create a single point of entry for application developers. The Cascading WMS also uses OGC web map standards (WMS), Style Layer Descriptor (SLD) encodings and some slick connectivity to provide access to UN and OpenSteetMap layers in a easy 'tree style' structure - with great looking legends and map styles as transparent overlays in Google Earth (above). Having used both the native WMS support in Google Earth and this one I can tell you it's ALOT easier to work with the Cascading WMS in Google Earth. With the growing use of Google Earth and WMS it seems this very cool capability will have additional uses for emergency response, earth science, and more. Click here to read more...

- Jeff and Glenn

10 Minutes with NSDI Web Services - Using GOS Dashboard and Widget

2010-04-16T17:00:00.002-05:00

Here's our presentation from the American Association of Geographers (AAG) 2010 Conference - Geospatial Web Services in the Government session - great event!

View more presentations from Carbon Project.

Pizza points and polygons - Gaia WFS-T Demonstrated with ArcGIS Server 10

2010-04-12T10:41:00.012-05:00

Video of 2010 Developer Summit streaming on Internet

Rapidly adding the locations of pizza stores, census block groups and other data was part of the OGC demonstration at the recent 2010 ESRI Developer Summit in Palm Springs, California. The bottom line for the ESRI team doing the demo was the Gaia "WFS-T Extender" provides an easy way for anyone to contribute geospatial data using Web Feature Service Transactional (WFS-T) services on desktop systems - including ESRI's slick new ArcGIS Server 10.

As we've discussed before - when you look at the geospatial community a key emerging area are open geospatial services like those in ArcGIS Server 10 that offer new angles on data production. What's that angle? ArcGIS Server 10 and other products implement Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) WFS Transactions - a standard way for users to pull in geospatial information and then contribute back their own content. But to make it easy for anyone to contribute a user-friendly app was needed that plugs-and-plays with any system - and Gaia WFS-T Extender fills this need (as was demonstrated in Palm Springs).

The Gaia WFS-T Extender allows geospatial edits and updates using WFS-T and Geography Markup Language (GML) in both online and offline environments - wrapping OGC standards into easy-to-use tools accessible to anyone, including non-GIS users. A complete description of the tool set is available here. The app plugs-and-plays with WFS-T from ESRI and other vendors - and I hope it promotes collaborative SDI.

The Gaia WFS-T Extender is also part of CarbonCloud Sync - a Cloud or server-hosted collaboration capability for crowd-sourcing data production and updates over a network of OGC services.

If you want to try it yourself a Gaia WFS-T Extender evaluation is part of the latest Gaia package and available for download now

Carbon Project Becomes a 'Front Runner' With Release of CarbonCloud Sync

2010-04-07T10:08:00.005-05:00

The Carbon Project today announced it will launch a new application using the Windows Azure Platform. The CarbonCloud Sync solution in combination with the Windows Azure platform helps enable customers to collaborate and share geospatial updates from many sources to many spatial databases using open standards. The Windows Azure platform, Microsoft's cloud services platform, provides The Carbon Project with the ability to build, manage, and deploy cloud based applications.

"Thru the technical and marketing support provided by the Front Runner program, we are excited to see the innovative solutions built on the Windows Azure platform by the ISV community," said Doug Hauger, general manager for Windows Azure Microsoft Corp. "The companies who choose to be a part of the Front Runner program show initiative and technological advancement in their respective industries."

"Windows Azure platform provides greater choice and flexibility in how we develop and deploy geospatial applications for Gov 2.0, defense and intelligence customers, both on-premises or in the cloud," said Jeff Harrison, President and CEO of The Carbon Project.

CarbonCloud Sync automates critical processes such as validating, disseminating and synchronizing geospatial updates from many sources to many databases, bridging vendors and GIS platforms using interoperability standards. Counties, states, and federal agencies can now improve their efficiency, cut red-tape, and reduce data gridlock while maximizing geospatial platform investments.

For more information contact please visit -

http://www.thecarbonproject.com/Products/carboncloudsync.php

Carbon Project, Arkansas Selected for NSDI Geo-Synchronization Project

2010-03-22T15:38:00.004-05:00

The Carbon Project is pleased to announce its software has been selected by the 2010 National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP). The project will be conducted with the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO) and develop a Gov 2.0 collaboration platform for updating county, state and federal geospatial data using a geo-synchronization service.

The effort uses the CarbonCloud Sync platform from The Carbon Project and GIS from ESRI. These technologies will integrate county transportation data into a federation of collaborating state and federal databases. The approach uses standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and provides a bridge between current GIS processes and a new generation of collaborative NSDI geo-synchronization. It also allows the state to advance data stewardship, and federal systems to automatically keep data sets up-to-date. The approach is consistent with a vision for the NSDI where local governments and states have geographic information they'd like to volunteer to The National Map - and The National Map has procedures to accept this "VGI".

Partners for the project will include the AGIO, the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems Board, the Arkansas GIS Users Forum, and The Carbon Project. The AGIO begun under Governor Huckabee and now enjoys strong support from Governor Beebe.

The NSDI CAP was established by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) to help form partnerships to implement the NSDI. The United States NSDI includes the technology, policies, criteria, standards and people to promote geospatial information sharing throughout all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and academia.

For more information or to learn how organizations can participate, please contact info@TheCarbonProject.com or visit http://www.thecarbonproject.com/.

Geospatial and Gov 2.0? Best to use open standards

2010-03-09T08:18:00.013-05:00

In an effort to embrace a new age of tranparency, government agencies at all levels are turning to Gov 2.0 technologies that promote collaboration. Some of these approaches, like CarbonCloud Sync, iPhone GPS and others, can provide a platform and the tools for government-citizen collaboration through interoperability and open standards - while maximizing existing GIS investments.

However, a key point factor in ensuring these platforms are transparent is the use of open standards like "WFS" supported by all major geospatial services, such as ESRI, CubeWerx, ERDAS and GeoServer. Once these standards are implemented it's possible to synchronize geographic updates from citizens and government sources directly to any geospatial database - saving lots of time and money. Counties, states and federal agencies could improve efficiency, cut red-tape, and reduce data gridlock without making any changes to their GIS infrastructure. Furthermore, platforms like CarbonCloud Sync service can be hosted on an agency's server or on the Microsoft Azure Cloud to help reduce IT costs.

Once this approach is in place, citizens can submit updates and reports from their smartphones and websites directly to MANY local and national GIS, while professionals can use GIS tools to validate the proposed updates. Geographic updates may be easily coordinated with other localities, federal agencies, or civilian and commercial organizations. We think this type of crowd-sourcing (combined with interoperability and open standards) can promote a new level of transparency and collaboration visibility to all levels of the government.

- Jeff and Nuke

More people choosing Gaia to access secure WMS/WFS

2010-03-05T10:23:00.007-05:00

We're finding more and more people are choosing Gaia to access WMS/WFS protected by simple HTTP Authentication. We've all used this before (perhaps not recognizing it). The basic method provides a simple challenge-response used by a server to challenge a client request, and by a client to provide authentication information.

For example, a test WMS with HTTP Authentication provided by CubeWerx is at:

http://www.cubewerx.com/auth/cubeserv.cgi?service=wms&request=getcapabilities

It is protected by HTTP basic authentication. You can log in as Username: jeff and Password: carbon in the free Gaia application from The Carbon Project. The basic process is to click "Add new service to the list" in the "Add layer to map" dialog of the Gaia application - and complete the Authentication section. If you do not complete this, you will not be able to access the WMS.

Users may also exercise the CubeWerx service protected by HTTP basic authentication in a browser by clicking this link.

The Carbon Project has successfully used this "basic" authentication scheme for OGC WMS/WFS provided by many vendors, including DigitalGlobe and others.

The basic authentication scheme is a non-secure method of filtering unauthorized access to resources on an HTTP server. It is based on the assumption that the connection between the client and the server can be regarded as a trusted carrier. As this is not generally true on an open network, the basic authentication scheme should be used accordingly. In future CarbonCloud articles we'll discuss how HTTPS and other methods can help deal with this.

Of course, there are more advanced methods of securing OGC services that provide fine-grained access control rules and feature-level security - and many customers may want to implement these as well.

- Jeff

GSA "Getting Smart with Geospatial"

2010-03-01T11:24:00.009-05:00

Geospatial Intelligence Forum magazine for Feb 2010 features the new GSA program that enables Government agencies to purchase geospatial software and services at substantial discounts - and CubeWerx software is right there next to Google Earth Enterprise in the products. According to Geospatial Intelligence Forum -

"Federal and other government agencies will be able to purchase geospatial software and services at substantial discounts under new SmartBuy blanket purchase agreements announced recently by the General Services Administration (GSA).

SmartBuy is a federal procurement program that promotes effective software management. The Smart-Buy awards are co-branded with the Department of Defense Enterprise Software Initiative program."

The article goes on to point out that GSA SmartBuy geospatial awards were made to Onix Networking Corporation for Google and CubeWerx software among others - with CubeWerx software providing "Standards-based off the shelf software products in response to spatial data infrastructure requirements for interoperable information infrastructures." Nice. Of course, CubeWerx software is made available to GSA SmartBuy through The Carbon Project's GSA Schedule and Gaia is also available.

- Jeff (image courtesy of and copyright by Geospatial Intelligence Forum magazine)

Geospatial Crowd-Sourcing using OGC Standards

2010-02-24T11:38:00.008-05:00

The Carbon Project had the pleasure of presenting our geospatial crowd-sourcing solutions at the ESRI Federal User Conference last week in Washington, D.C. - a great event!

The presentation highlighted a Cloud-based (deployed on Microsoft Azure) "geo-synchronization" platform for crowd-sourced data production. The platform was demonstrated by synchronizing geospatial services from ESRI's ArcGIS Server working with SQL Server 2008 and an Oracle-based CubeWerx server. The geo-synchronization platform was developed in collaboration with US Government customers and uses emerging and established standards from OGC. What's that mean? The basic idea of a geo-synchronization service is simple - updates to a geospatial layer are published by one data source, reviewed by another and followed by others. When you hook up OGC WFS, geoRSS feeds and a geo-synch service for the task you get a federation of geospatial services and layers that can be maintained by many people working together - kinda cool and very useful.

Talking about the presentation Nuke from our office says, "If you look at the geospatial community a key emerging area are widely-used geospatial services like ArcGIS Server that offer new angles on data production. What's the angle? ArcGIS Server and other products implement Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) WFS Transactions - a standard way to share non-imagery content. The CarbonCloud Sync platform is designed to coordinate data operations by users and synchronize these operations across different services, platforms and vendors." Other Key Points included -

Smart synchronizing of different vendors, schemas, spatial structures
Flexible approach to configure editing by user roles, data layers and federated services
Standards-based architecture saves integration time and money, add new sources dynamically
Support both base plant and crowdsourced data production at same time - with validation

The presentation was part of the FedUC that brought together government and industry professionals to explore the vision and reality of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) for the nation.

The technology presented - the Gaia WFS-T Extender and CarbonCloud Sync platform - are available on the recently awarded GSA Geospatial SmartBuy BPA.

- Jeff

Publishers, reviewers and crowdsourced WFS

2010-02-10T11:25:00.016-05:00

Publishers and Reviewers using Gaia to "Geo-Synch" ArcGIS and CubeWerx WFS-T

We're working on a few projects now that help spatial data infrastructures (SDI) tap the energy of crowdsourcing - and help data production and update at local levels, where data sources can be maintained by people that know them best.

The basic operations for this kind of "GeoSynchronization" are pretty simple - updates to a geospatial layer are published by one data source, reviewed by another and followed by others. When you organize OGC WFS, geoRSS feeds and something like CarbonCloud on Azure Cloud for the task you get three roles in the federation:

Publisher - Makes changes to layers. Generates feature changes, submits them for review via a Change Feed. Changes include adding, deleting or updating features in layers. When a change is accepted or rejected Publisher is notified via a Resolution Feed. There can be many Publishers for a layer or different layers.

Reviewer - Approves changes submitted by Publishers, subscribed to a Change Feed. When a Reviewer receives a change to a layer, 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 in the federation. Reviewers serve as the "sanity check" in the network.

Follower - Can use standard RSS reader to get updates on any device. When changes to layers 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.

Haiti SDI - WMS reveal a city of tents and need

2010-01-26T10:36:00.017-05:00

(Updated Jan 27) In recent days multiple OGC Web Map Service (WMS) services have come online with high-resolution imagery from DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Google, NOAA and other providers. A quick survey and annotation of these sources reveals Port au Prince dotted with tent cities - with some people some even writing "SOS" on rooftops in hopes of catching the attention of a passing satellite to direct relief their way (above).

Overlaying multiple WMS imagery layers from many dates - along with the cascaded OpenStreetMap (OSM) info - can reveal the location and growth of these tent cities quickly. You can get an idea of the scope of the problem with Gaia and this preview of tent cities near the French consulate - just hit the "refresh all layers" at the top of the map display to access the rest of the WMS. You can also use Bing maps to preview areas, and add your own WMS image annotations to the VGI WFS with Gaia WFS-T if you would like to contribute.

Haiti SDI Background

Volunteers from CubeWerx and The Carbon Project have announced that free mapping data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), the United Nations and other sources have been organized into an open information network for the nation of Haiti. The Haiti Spatial Data Infrastructure (Haiti SDI) is a public resource that may be updated by anyone and used in Google Earth, OpenStreetMap editors, the free Gaia SDI Platform and other applications to support relief and rebuilding.

Gaia users may click here to preview Haiti SDI data services now. This application will stream live data and maps to your desktop - some geographic features will display faster than others depending on internet connection speed. Service URLs are provided below for users on all applications to access Haiti SDI services and Google Earth KMLs will be posted shortly. The Haiti SDI is based on international standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC): the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) Interface Standards. The Haiti SDI provides four service capabilities:

Cascading WMS – A unique service that provides a single access point for applications like Google Earth, Gaia SDI Platform and OSM editors that implement WMS. The service works by aggregating WMS deployed in the last few days into one easy-to-use resource - including New York Public Library, University of Cincinnati, CubeWerx framework WMS, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe imagery, government data and more.

OSM WFS – A data service that refreshes from OpenStreetMap (Geofabrik) sources every hour and deploys the data as OGC WFS so any application may instantly connect to the most up-to-date information from the OSM community. Includes the Dominican Republic.

UN WFS – A data service that provides United Nations framework data through an open interface that implements the WFS standard. United Nations framework data includes Boundaries, Hydrography, Transportation, Locations, and Population information.

VGI WFS – A Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) service that enables anyone to add GML points, lines or polygon WMS annotations using WFS-T, contributing their own Haiti framework data and information about tent cities, emergency operations, locations, and points of interest data. This service employs OGC standards based tools such as the Gaia WFS-T Extender.

All OpenStreetMap, United Nations and Volunteered Geographic Information for Haiti SDI are freely available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Haiti SDI services are being posted on http://www.crisiscommons.org/ as often as possible. The Haiti SDI services are evolving rapidly and updates are being posted here and www.Twitter.com/JeffHarrison. Please contact info@thecarbonproject.com if there are specific information needs.

CubeWerx and The Carbon Project Contribute Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for Haiti

2010-01-21T11:09:00.025-05:00

(Updated Jan 25) Today volunteers from CubeWerx and The Carbon Project announced that free mapping data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), the United Nations and other sources have been organized into an open information network for the nation of Haiti. The Haiti Spatial Data Infrastructure (Haiti SDI) is a public resource that may be updated by anyone and used in Google Earth, OpenStreetMap editors, the free Gaia SDI Platform and other applications to support relief and rebuilding.

Gaia users may click here to preview Haiti SDI data services now. This application will stream live data and maps to your desktop - some geographic features will display faster than others depending on internet connection speed. Service URLs are provided below for users on all applications to access Haiti SDI services and Google Earth KMLs will be posted shortly.

The Haiti SDI is based on international standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC): the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) Interface Standards. The Haiti SDI provides four capabilities:

Haiti SDI Cascading WMS – A unique service that provides a single access point for applications like Google Earth, Gaia SDI Platform and OSM editors that implement WMS. The service works by aggregating WMS deployed in the last few days into one easy-to-use resource - including New York Public Library, University of Cincinnati, CubeWerx framework WMS, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe imagery, government data and more.

Haiti SDI OSM WFS – A data service that refreshes from OpenStreetMap (Geofabrik) sources every hour and deploys the data as OGC WFS so any application may instantly connect to the most up-to-date information from the OSM community.
Haiti SDI UN WFS – A data service that provides United Nations framework data through an open interface that implements the WFS standard. United Nations framework data includes Boundaries, Hydrography, Transportation, Locations, and Population information.
Haiti SDI VGI WFS – A Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) service that enables anyone to add GML points, lines or polygon WMS annotations, contributing their own Haiti framework data and information about tent cities, emergency operations, locations, and points of interest data. This service employs OGC standards based tools such as the Gaia WFS-T Extender.

“We hope the Haiti SDI will help the people of Haiti and everyone working to assist them," said Jeff Harrison, coordinator for the Haiti SDI project. “We are planning coordination sessions in the coming days and working to make sure this resource is openly available to as many people as possible.”

All OpenStreetMap, United Nations and Volunteered Geographic Information for Haiti SDI are freely available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Haiti SDI services are being posted on http://www.crisiscommons.org/ as often as possible.

The Haiti SDI services are evolving rapidly and updates are being posted here and www.Twitter.com/JeffHarrison. Please contact info@thecarbonproject.com if there are specific information needs.

NOTICE - Haiti SDI Cascading WMS, OSM WFS, UN WFS, VGI WFS were given dedicated servers at 1PM ET Jan 22. Old URLs for all Haiti SDI WMS & WFS will be maintained until 6PM ET Jan 25. Please update your applications as needed and use the new URLs.

Haiti cascading WMS deployed - single WMS access point for Google Earth, OSM, Gaia

2010-01-20T11:18:00.027-05:00

(Updated April 2010) CubeWerx and The Carbon Project have deployed a Cascading Web Map Service (WMS) as part of the growing open information network for the nation of Haiti. The service is being posted on CrisisCommons.org and may be accessed now in Google Earth (Image overlay), Gaia, OpenStreetMap (OSM) editors and other applications with this WMS service link-

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti&SERVICE=WMS&request=GetCapabilities

The Haiti SDI Cascading WMS is offered by CubeWerx as a free public resource to help support relief, rebuilding, communications and data update operations. The practical benefit is to provide a simple, single access point (above) for applications like Gaia, Google Earth and OpenStreetMap editors by “cascading” online WMS. WMS are currently being cascaded from New York Public Library, University of Cincinnati, Calit2, Haiti.opensgi.net, CubeWerx and others, as well as imagery from GeoEye and DigitalGlobe on a variety of WMS - and any organization is invited to contribute WMS URLs to support Haiti relief. The Haiti SDI Cascading WMS can combined with the Haiti OSM WFS and UN WFS to get a clear picture of the environment using applications like Gaia at the following URLs -

Haiti SDI OSM WFS

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti&SERVICE=WFS&DATASTORE=OSM&request=GetCapabilities

Haiti SDI UN WFS

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti&SERVICE=WFS&DATASTORE=MINUSTAH&request=GetCapabilities

The technical benefits of a cascading WMS are -

1. It can connect to all official WMS versions and most unofficial ones - so your application doesn't have to know all the different protocols. For example, if your client supports WMS 1.1.1 and you use a cascading WMS you can connect to 1.0.0, 1.1.0, 1.3.0-only servers.

2. The cascading WMS supports many image formats and will convert the data to your desired format. So if an OSM client wants the image in PNG using a cascading WMS you can connect to servers that only serve either GIF, PNG, TIFF, JPEG, etc.

3. The cascading WMS supports a large number of coordinate systems and will convert the data to your desired coordinate system. Your client wants the image in Geographic and using a cascading WMS you can connect to servers that serve only UTM, Mercator, etc.

4. The cascading WMS supports loop detection. When retrieving the capabilities of all the remote WMSs it will not go into an endless loop. Server A can cascade Server B and Server B can cascade Server C and Server C can cascade Server A. Your client can connect to any of these servers and get an aggregated capabilities of all the servers.

Interesting to note that CubeWerx's CubeSERV is the only cascading WMS - that implements all the functions above (as far as I'm aware). The Haiti Spatial Data Infrastructure (Haiti SDI) is a public resource that may be used in Google Earth, OpenStreetMap, the Gaia SDI Platform and other applications to support relief, rebuilding, communications and mapping data production. The Haiti SDI is based on international standards for Web Mapping Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) from OGC, and any organization is invited to contribute.

The Haiti SDI services are evolving rapidly and updates are being posted on The Carbon Project’s blog at http://carboncloud.blogspot.com/. Please contact jharrison@thecarbonproject.com for more information.

Accessing OpenStreetMap as WFS over Haiti and Dominican Republic

2010-01-20T09:52:00.019-05:00

(updated Jan 27) Volunteers from CubeWerx and The Carbon Project have deployed OpenStreetMap (OSM) data into Web Feature Services (WFS) as part of an open information network for Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The service is being posted on CrisisCommons.org and may be accessed using Gaia and other tools at -

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti&SERVICE=WFS&DATASTORE=OSM&request=GetCapabilities

Gaia users may click here to preview Haiti SDI OSM WFS now. To access the service users on all WFS applications just need to add the link above. The OSM WFS is offered by CubeWerx as a free public resource to help support relief, rebuilding, communications and data update operations. The OSM WFS server collects OpenStreetMap Roads, Places, Points of Interest, Buildings, Waterways, and Railways hourly and deploys them as WFS.

The Haiti and Dominican Republic OSM WFS can be combined with the Haiti SDI Cascading WMS, the UN WFS and the VGI WFS-T for WMS annotations at the following URLs:

Cascading WMS -
http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti&SERVICE=WMS&request=GetCapabilities

UN WFS -
http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti&SERVICE=WFS&DATASTORE=MINUSTAH&request=GetCapabilities

VGI WFS-T -

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti_vgi&DATASTORE=vgi&service=WFS&request=GetCapabilities

Using the Cascading WMS above with a variety of imagery sources (GeoEye, Bing) may reveal some location offset with the OSM WFS data. The OSM WFS data matches DigitalGlobe WMS.

The Haiti Spatial Data Infrastructure (Haiti SDI) is a free public resource that may be used in Google Earth, OpenStreetMap, Gaia and other applications to support relief, rebuilding, communications and mapping data production. Haiti SDI is based on international standards for Web Mapping Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) from ISO/OGC, and any organization is invited to contribute.

If anyone has any questions please contact info@thecarbonproject.com

UN and Geonames WFS for Haiti Deployed

2010-01-17T16:02:00.014-05:00

On Friday, January 15 The Carbon Project and CubeWerx received FTP links to a GIS data dump from the United Nations MINUSTAH (mission to Haiti) - the data came out in ESRI format. We had to convert it, and sort through the files - and after some review it was apparent the UN had released raw data on Boundaries, Hydrography, Transportation, Locations, and Population for the whole country. A great move by the UN since we were really struggling to find decent data sources.

To make this important information more accessible volunteers from CubeWerx and The Carbon Project have deployed the UN data into Web Feature Services (WFS) as part of an open information network for Haiti. The service is based on international standards from OGC and will be posted on CrisisCommons.org. The "UN WFS" may be accessed using Gaia and other WFS tools at -

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti&SERVICE=WFS&DATASTORE=MINUSTAH&request=GetCapabilities

The Haiti SDI UN WFS is offered by CubeWerx as a free public resource to help support relief, rebuilding, communications and data update operations. The service deploys instantly accessible information layers (real data) like Boundaries, Hydrography, Transportation, Locations, and Population for the whole country.

[Information on the Geonames WFS coming soon]

For more information on the services contact info@thecarbonproject.com

Haiti SDI Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) WFS-T

2010-01-15T07:22:00.045-05:00

(updated Jan 26, 2010) CubeWerx and The Carbon Project have established an online service to collect and distribute WMS image annotations and features over Haiti. The Haiti VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information) service, data model and tools are based on international standards, and can be updated by anyone. The companies are working with Crisis Commons, Crisis Mappers Google groups and others to coordinate the services. Anyone may contribute updates with free Gaia WFS-T tools or any WFS-T client. Some updates include:

Tent Cities (GSF - remove some WMS imagery layers for faster navigation if needed)

Champs de Mars area Shelters (GSF)

Staging Areas at Port au Prince airport (GSF)

The service is designed as rapid collection point for Haiti WMS imagery annotations, emergency operations, framework data updates etc. In addition to framework data, the service includes three layers that follow a very simple WMS image annotation model of - Point, Line and Area Annotations - and let you quickly add annotations to WMS imagery with DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Google imagery.

To get started and contribute data such as tent city locations using these layers, install Gaia with WSF-T Extender, (or use your own WFS-T client) and add the following service -

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti_vgi&DATASTORE=vgi&service=WFS&request=GetCapabilities

Read the Capabilities description, then select and add Haiti Point Annotations to your layer list. Then select the "Config" button at the bottom of Gaia and read the schema - you are now ready to add WMS image annotations from DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Google WMS. Note, users may wish to review the Gaia WFS-T User Guide for more details and add other Haiti SDI services as well - especially the Cascading WMS. The Cascading WMS will show you the locations of OpenStreetMap roads, buildings, points of interest and locations being added by the OSM community.

The VGI WFS-T service and data use international standards for Web Feature Services (WFS-T) and Geography Markup Language (GML) from OGC. Pretty much anything can be added to the service as needed. A WMS of the data is also being made available to distribute the updates.

Online services from DigitalGlobe, OpenStreetMap, GeoEye, Microsoft Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps, any Web Map Service (WMS) or WFS can be used with the VGI WFS.

For information contact info@thecarbonproject.com.

SDI Contributions from Anyone - Free Gaia WFS-T Evaluation Released

2010-01-12T19:24:00.021-05:00

The Carbon Project is pleased to announce a free evaluation of the data production tool for our Gaia Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) platform. The new "WFS-T Extender" provides an easy way for anyone to contribute geospatial data using Web Feature Service Transactional (WFS-T) services from any system - including ESRI ArcGIS Server, CubeWerx, Geoserver, Intergraph, ERDAS and others. You can try the free evaluation now (the free WFS-T Extender eval is in the download package). Also, a free Users Guide for the Gaia WFS-T Extender is available.

Why is the Gaia WFS-T Extender important? If you look at the geospatial community a key emerging area are open geospatial services like ArcGIS Server 9.3 that break down stovepipes and offer a new angle on data production. What's the angle? ArcGIS Server and other products implement OGC WFS Transactions (WFS-T) - a standard way for users to pull in geospatial information and then contribute content for use by others. I should mention that WFS-T tools like The Carbon Project’s CarbonArc PRO (an ESRI ArcGIS desktop extension) have been around for years. But face it, ArcGIS desktop may not be easy for a "non-GIS" user. So to make it easy for anyone, anywhere to contribute to the geospatial community a user-friendly app was needed to work with ArcGIS Server 9.3. To do this and also support users who can’t rely on stable network connections (like in the field), a standalone app also seemed reasonable. Enter the WFS-Transactions Extender for the Gaia SDI platform.

The Gaia WFS-T Extender allows geospatial edits and updates using WFS-T and GML in both online and offline environments - wrapping OGC standards into an easy-to-use application accessible to anyone, including non-GIS users. The app also plugs-and-plays with non-ESRI WFS-T like CubeWerx, Geoserver, Intergraph, ERDAS and ESRI - and we hope it promotes collaborative SDI.

Finally, the Gaia WFS-T Extender is part of CarbonCloud Sync - a Cloud-hosted geosynchronization capability for crowd-sourcing data production over an OGC SDI network. The Carbon Project will present the Gaia WFS-T Extender and CarbonCloud Sync at the ESRI Federal Users Conference in Washington DC, on February 18 - hope to see you there! So go ahead and try the free evaluation (the free WFS-T Extender eval is in the download package). If you have questions you can contact us at info@TheCarbonProject.com.

NASA satellites, WMS reveal arctic grip

2010-01-10T11:29:00.018-05:00

For people in North America and Eurasia it’s not news the last month was one of the coldest in decades. The NASA satellite data WMS in Gaia above illustrates just how much colder it's been compared to average temperatures recorded in December between 2000 and 2008. Places that are warmer than average are red, places that were near-normal are white, and places that were cooler than average are blue. According to climate gurus this pattern is a sign of "negative" Arctic Oscillation - where cold Arctic air chilled the land surface at midlatitudes, while Arctic land (Greenland and Alaska), was warmer than usual. Over most of the past century, the Arctic Oscillation alternated between positive and negative phases. Starting in the 1970s, however, the oscillation tended to stay in the positive phase, causing lower than normal arctic air pressure and higher than normal temperatures in much of the US and northern Eurasia. Not quite the Day After Tomorrow - but damn cold nonetheless.

- Jeff

CarbonTools PRO release enhances OGC WCS, ESRI WFS-T editing support

2010-01-05T07:47:00.009-05:00

As a "Happy New Year" gift we released CarbonTools PRO Version 3.1.1 on December 31, 2009.

This version has many updates and changes - including better support to some of the more modern OGC services like WCS 1.1.x, new features to work with ArcGIS Server WFS-T and WFS 1.1, improved handling of GML 3 and full source code of Gaia 3.4.1.

Some of the highlights from the CarbonTools PRO Version 3.1.1 release include:

Capabilities parser now supports WCS 1.1.x
WCS.QueryBuilder now supports WCS version 1.1.x
HandlerWCS supports WCS version 1.1.x
DataFeatures.LockId property added and contains a parsed lockId attribute from GML
Added MultiMap.GeometryEditGetMarkerPoints and MultiMap.GeometryEditUpdateMarkerPoints for more feature editing extendibility.
Parse3_2.Parse(string, bool) adds parsing based on GML as text
GML 3 and GML 3.2 parsers now read the LockId from the returned FeatureCollection tag
WFS.QueryBuilder.BuildGetFeatureWithLock method now uses the GetFeatureWithLock element in the query
WFS.TransactionBuilder supports 'LockId' parameter
HandlerWFS : GetPersistentFeatures, AddPersistentFeatures, AddRangePersistentFeatures, RemovePersistentFeatures, ClearPersistentFeatures
CarbonTools.Content.OGC.GML.Parse3_2.ParseGeometry() parses a GML geometry
The full source code of Gaia 3.4.1

All assemblies are available for Mono users on Linux and Mac OS.

Read the complete release notes here. Hopefully, we'll get the formal announcement out later this week. Happy geospatial programming in 2010!

- Jeff

DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 Reaches Full Operational Capability

2010-01-05T06:20:00.002-05:00

DigitalGlobe, announced today that its latest high-resolution satellite, WorldView-2, has achieved full operational capability. Imagery from the satellite is now available to global resellers, partners, and customers.

Blasting into orbit on October 8, 2009, WorldView-2 joins DigitalGlobe's existing sub-meter satellites, QuickBird and WorldView-1, in a three satellite constellation. WorldView-2 significantly expands the constellation's collection capacity, enabling an annual imaging capacity equivalent to three times the area of earth's land mass, and allows for intraday revisit, providing customers with the most timely, relevant imagery available in the commercial market. WorldView-2 is also the industry's first commercial high-resolution satellite to offer eight multispectral bands. This capability will enable higher levels of feature identification and extraction and more accurately reflect the world’s natural color - with potential for many applications, including environmental monitoring, change detection, and defense and intelligence.

"Along with the four typical multispectral bands: Blue (450-510), Green (510-580), Red (630-690) and NearIR (770-895), WorldView-2 introduces the following new color bands for enhanced multispectral analysis:

Coastal Band (400 - 450 nm) This band supports vegetation identification and analysis, and supports bathymetric studies based upon its chlorophyll and water penetration characteristics. Also, this band is subject to atmospheric scattering and will be used to investigate atmospheric correction techniques.

Yellow Band (585 - 625 nm) Used to identify "yellow-ness" characteristics of targets, important for vegetation applications. Also, this band will assist in the development of "true-color" hue correction for human vision representation.

Red Edge Band (705 - 745 nm) Aids in the analysis of vegetative condition. Directly related to plant health revealed through chlorophyll production.

Near Infrared 2 Band (860 - 1040 nm) This band overlaps the NIR 1 band but is less affected by atmospheric influence. It supports vegetation analysis and biomass studies"

Sources: DigitalGlobe

Common base map data for all - Canada's Framework Data guide

2009-12-29T10:33:00.021-05:00

The popularity of Google Earth and Microsoft Bing Maps has resulted in exponential growth in the use of Internet mapping. But as Google's use of government base map data demonstrates, Google and Microsoft will continue to need access to common base map data from organizations that create it and keep it accurate and up-to-date. The GeoConnections Framework Data Guide explains how to use this common base map information, called Framework Data, in Canada. Canada's Framework Data provides physical features and other types of information linked to Canada's geography - available as discrete information layers like those shown above in the Gaia SDI Platform so you can make you own maps and applications. Canadian framework data standards meet international norms such as the OGC WMS in Gaia, making the data compatible with both commercial and custom geospatial information applications.

- Jeff

Onix Networking awarded GIS SmartBUY BPA - Google, CubeWerx, Carbon Project software selected

2009-12-18T11:13:00.008-05:00

Onix Networking Corporation, a leading information technology provider to the federal government since 1992, has been awarded Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) No. GSQ0009AE0027 for Geospatial Information Systems. This is a single award BPA to a Small Business, established competitively against the GSA Schedule for a five (5) year term and is open for ordering by all United States Federal agencies, Department of Defense Components, authorized state and local government entities, and authorized contractors.

Geospatial technologies and services offered by Onix Networking under the BPA include Google Earth™, Google Maps™, and Google Sketchup™, Carbon Project Gaia products, CubeWerx products and services from NT Concepts. Google Earth™ Enterprise solutions help organizations with imagery and other geospatial data make that information accessible and useful to all users who need access via an intuitive, fast application. Carbon Project Gaia is a platform designed for advanced geospatial network and SDI needs, and CubeWerx CubeSTOR is a highly scalable Spatial Data Warehouse product that handles massive amounts (terabytes) of geospatial data in vector, raster, imagery or metadata format. Together, these product offerings provide a wide array of GIS options to the government.

A simple, single point of purchase for Google™, CubeWerx and Carbon Project geospatial products is now available to the government through the BPA. This Geospatial SmartBUY Agreement will make geospatial technology more accessible, will help reduce costs and streamline administration, while improving access to high quality commercial geospatial software and support products for government users. It is Onix Networking's goal to provide the government with access to technically advanced products and the highest level of services.

“Onix has served as a trusted supplier to the Federal government for the evaluation, deployment, and integration of GIS solutions and numerous government customers have already selected Onix Networking as their provider of choice for securing Google™ GIS products,” said Onix Networking Federal Sales Manager and BPA Program Manager, Dal VanDervort. “This award significantly strengthens our ability to help government organizations deploy geospatial solutions simply and economically and we are pleased to have been chosen as the single small business awardee for this important initiative.”

This BPA has been designated as a co-branded GSA/FAS/SmartBUY PMO and DoD/ESI Agreement. Contractually, the Enterprise Software Agreement (ESA) is a GSA Multiple Award Schedule-based Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA), under the contract #GS-35F-5519H. Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs) reduce contracting and open market costs such as: search for sources, the development of technical documents, solicitations, and the evaluation of bids and offers.

Information regarding the agreement can be found on the Onix Networking SmartBUY website at http://www.onixgov.com/SmartBUY, on the SmartBUY website at http://www.gsa.gov/smartbuy, and on the DoD/ESI website http://www.esi.mil/.

From Onix Networking Corporation - http://www.onixnet.com/

Onix Networking is a trademark of Onix Networking Corp. All other company and product names in this document are the property of their respective owners.

NHD SLD opens up world of WMS and Google Earth

2009-12-16T09:10:00.007-05:00

A prototype Styled Layer Descriptor for National Hydrography Data (NHD) has been tested in Google Earth - opening up the world of OGC Web Map Services (WMS) even more for Google Earth users.

The SLD was developed by USGS and deployed as part of prototype WFS and WMS services. The capability highlights how SDI data providers can use the same underlying data to generate different types of maps - like a transparent overlay of hydrography on Google Earth - using a standards-based XML language from OGC.

The NHD SLD is based on cartographic specifications and USGS Symbol libraries were used to render geographic features in a cartographic quality map. To produce the SLD XML, map symbology documents '6psym403.pdf' and 'topomapsymbols.pdf' were used as templates to generate SLD encodings for NHD styles. Descriptions of the technical development effort and examples are available - as well as the prototype SLD encoding. The deployment is powered by standards-based WMS which can generate dynamic, scale-dependent maps and map legends as transparent overlays in Google Earth.

- Jeff

Best Practices address key NSDI topic - "Role-based Access Control"

2009-12-11T09:37:00.004-05:00

New Best Practices envisions agencies moving from on-premise computing to access, discovery, processing & collaboration services on Internet cloud – leveraging shared Government Service Units

A set of Best Practices for one of the most important, but least understood, areas of Geospatial SOA – Role-based Access Control has just 'hit the street'. Development was coordinated between NSDI 2008 CAP Category 2 recipients and is designed to satisfy multi-agency requirements through modeling of business processes and related geospatial service components. As discussed in the report - these Best Practices will help the NSDI shed rigid, inward-looking approaches and transform into a more agile, responsive and customer-centric framework driven by collaborative partnerships.

This effort is important because Geospatial SOA based on OGC and other standards are strongly influencing development of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Geospatial Profile, especially data access and update. These efforts have matured to a point where broad acceptance is now dependent on the capacity to secure data resources. In fact, organizations that are considering participation in the NSDI must also consider how they can establish distributed security frameworks for role-based access control to SOA resources. These requirements will continue to increase as data access transitions into data management with services like GeoSynchronization and Web Feature Server- Transactional (WFS-T) where loosely affiliated parties collaborate on maintenance of shared geospatial data resources.

Specifically, the lack of adequate Access Control solutions have contributed to a situation where many organizations have been avoiding deployment of their OGC services like WFS-T on the Web. The lack of such controls has forced data providers to adopt data sub-setting techniques to isolate access to geospatial data based on different projects, users, groups of users, etc. But such approaches have been proven to add hardware, software, implementation and maintenance costs for organizations deploying their OGC-based Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) services on standalone servers or cloud computing platforms.

To meet this challenge, this project defined and documented Best Practices in Geospatial SOA for Role-based Access Control - leveraging CubeWerx, The Carbon Project and OGC investments in developing solutions to solve this security challenge. The capability was deployed as part of a distributed SOA laboratory for Services Development, Test, and Evaluation (DT&E) designed to drive out Best Practices. Rather than dictating policies, the goal was to support policies already available in most organizations and provide components for supporting SDI Access Control Rules (SACR). These components were invoked in open geospatial web services, allowing simulation of trusted organizations in a federation, reuse of existing authentication methods and definition of new access control rules. Scenarios ranging from a hurricane response along the Gulf coast, cross-border information sharing, and regulatory permitting were executed and common Use Cases derived.

The resulting Access Control Rules were defined in an XML Schema using an XML file that can be dynamically parsed by OGC-compliant Web services. With this approach Authentication services can provide access control on a user-by-user basis. For example, several rules can be specified in an document, where each rule can apply to a different set of usernames, groups and/or roles.

The approach modeled in this project is compatible with IT industry-wide efforts working on “Identity Metasystems”, OASIS security standards for Information Cards, and the Web Services Protocol Stack that includes WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-MetadataExchange and WS-SecurityPolicy. In particular, this Best Practice for Role-based Access Control adopted the philosophy of using Authentication methods defined by IT industry-wide efforts and focused on defining reusable SDI Access Control Rules for granting access to OGC services by role, geographic extent, feature and SDI operations. This approach adds significant new capability for deploying service components by allowing organizations to optimize data services and reduce costs.

- Jeff

Knowing your Role when defining Best Practices for SDI Access Control

2009-11-25T12:14:00.010-05:00

Requirements for Access Control and Authentication solutions on the Web have been growing during the last few years - but many security concerns for deploying geospatial data services like OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) Transactional still need to be addressed. Specifically, the lack of adequate Web-based Access Control solutions has contributed to a situation where many organizations have been avoiding deployment of their OGC services like WFS-T on the Web. The lack of such controls has forced data providers to adopt, for example, data sub-setting techniques to isolate access to geospatial data based on different projects, users, groups of users, etc. But such approaches have been proven to add hardware, software, implementation and maintenance costs for organizations deploying their OGC-based SDI data services.

To address this challenge a collaborative group including CubeWerx, The Carbon Project and others have been working on Best Practices for Role-based Access Control to help organizations deploying OGC Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) services. The approach is based on a set of simple Access Control Rules that can be used to make sure the right geospatial information goes to the right people. But behind the scenes there are IT industry-wide efforts working on “Identity Metasystems” to provide an interoperable architecture for digital identity, OASIS security standards for Information Cards, Authentication discussions on "Identity Provider" and "Relying Party" – all built on top of the Web Services Protocol Stack that includes WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-MetadataExchange and WS-SecurityPolicy. In other words, an incredible amount of effort IT industry-wide on Authentication.

So in the Best Practices for Role-based Access Control we adopted the philosophy that says, “Use Authentication methods defined by IT industry-wide efforts ” - we'll focus on defining simple, reusable SDI Access Control Rules (SACR) for granting access to OGC services by role, geographic extent, feature and SDI operations. This approach adds significant new capability for deploying SDI by allowing organizations to optimize data services and reduce costs. Over the next weeks we'll be talking more about these Best Practices, examples, and the associated 2008 NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP) project.

- Jeff

Basic roles in a crowd-sourced OGC SDI

2009-11-24T08:21:00.014-05:00

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.

More info check here

- Jeff

Spatially-defined Access Control on YouTube

2009-11-23T15:05:00.004-05:00

More NOAA weather via WMS and WFS SOA

2009-11-17T07:37:00.008-05:00

It's Earth observation week at CarbonCloud - and here's quick look at some NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) WMS and WFS. Rumor has it a lot has happened in NWS with regards to web services - and the radar/warnings and Flood Outlook Product (FOP) WMS and WFS above are just a small glimpse of the progress. Although not a traditional part of an NSDI "Framework", climate and weather data have become essential for both daily forecasts and longer term understanding of potential changes in climate. The data is overlayed on USGS Framework WMS, NASA OnEarth WMS. If anyone would like the Gaia geospatial session file (GSF) for the services above just let us know at info@thecarbonproject.com.

- Jeff

NOAA's WFS - Instant Access to Climate Data

2009-11-16T13:53:00.005-05:00

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is "the world's largest active archive of weather data" - producing numerous climate publications and responding to data requests from all over the world. As part of its access programs the NCDC provides its geospatial data through OGC web services (WMS, WFS, KML/KMZ) and Catalog Service for the Web (CS-W). We tried the WFS recently in Gaia (above) and they work great. The data is overlayed on USGS Framework WMS, NASA OnEarth WMS and OpenStreetMap. Looks like lots of potential for open access to climate data.

- Jeff

Science Fiction or the Future of Aviation? NextGen System Utilizes Open Data Modeling

2009-11-11T08:42:00.003-05:00

Image copyright & courtesy Geoworld magazine

The Carbon Project's CTO, Nuke Goldstein, discusses the role of open data modeling in the November issue of Geoworld (pp 19-21). The article begins by describing a pilot on a Flight from Dallas/Forth Worth airport in 2020 - and continues on to describe the role of geospatial data modeling and online services in modernizing our aging national airspace system. Check it out online here and let us know your thoughts.

- Jeff

Gaia brings WFS Transactions on ArcGIS to everyone

2009-11-10T09:13:00.015-05:00

Modern mapping technologies can allow anyone to contribute up-to-date knowledge anywhere and at anytime - not just professionals equipped with GIS desktops. If you look at the geospatial market a key aspect of this emerging environment is likely to be open geospatial services supported by ArcGIS Server 9.3. Implementing specifications from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) ArcGIS Server 9.3 not only enhances interoperability - it offers a new angle on data updates.

How? ArcGIS Server 9.3 implements OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) to let anyone interact with geospatial services and affect remote content. This is possible because the folks at ESRI have implemented a powerful concept from the OGC WFS specification – Transactions. WFS Transactions on ArcGIS Server allow users to selectively pull in geospatial information and then push out value-added content for reuse by others. At this point I should mention that WFS-T tools like The Carbon Project’s CarbonArc PRO (an ESRI ArcGIS desktop extension) have been around for a few years - and allow ArcGIS users to graphically update, delete or insert info on a WFS-T within the ArcGIS ArcMap application. But sometimes ArcGIS desktop may not be that easy for the average "non-GIS" end-user (and some people might not even have an ArcGIS desktop ;-)

So to make WFS-T usable by non-GIS professional a light, cost-effective and user-friendly software client is needed that can work with ArcGIS Server 9.3. This tool would enable users to post updates in a visual and intuitive way. To support this requirement and accommodate for users who can’t rely on stable network connectivity, such as users in the field, a standalone application also seems to be reasonable. Enter the WFS-Transactions Extender to The Carbon Project’s Gaia SDI platform. The Gaia WFS-T Extender allows geospatial edits and updates using WFS-T and GML in both online and offline environments - and the user-interface wraps the OGC standards into an easy-to-use application accessible to everyone, including non-GIS users. The app also works with non-ESRI WFS-T as well - and we hope it promotes enhanced collaboration and participatory mapping in the geospatial community.

- Jeff

New OGC WMTS hits the street - supporting REST interfaces

2009-11-03T08:24:00.006-05:00

CubeWerx is in the process of launching its OGC WMTS implementation and the feature list is impressive - tiles created using OGC Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD), multiple tile sets from the same data (to respond to different symbology or map projection requirements), no database needed to deploy, REST interfaces and more.

With the recent release of a proposed standard for tile-based web mapping, Web Map Tile Service (WMTS), the OGC and members like CubeWerx are poised to provide open alternatives for "slippy" tile-based web mapping. Worked on quietly by the gurus at CubeWerx, CREAF and the Autonomous University of Barcelona - the candidate WMTS Interface Standard is much like OGC's popular WMS, but it enables faster server performance.

As many know, OGC Web Map Server (WMS) has been criticized for being slow because it creates a new image for each request – rather than returning pre-generated tiles that provide an almost instant zoom and pan. WMS was designed this way because there were two goals behind the interface, interoperability and the ability to overlay many sources - and in this respect it's been very successful. A WMS client can overlay map layers from many sources in an arbitrary bounding box at an arbitrary scale with any number of styles. But this flexibility comes at a price - since a WMS server is required to generate each requested map image on the fly it's slower to respond than a tile map service.

But OGC WMTS like CubeSERV Web Map Tile Server (WMTS) change all this. To improve performance, instead of creating a new image for each request, the WMTS returns small pre-generated images (e.g., PNG or JPEG) or reuses identical previous requests that follow a set of tile matrices. This service is also the first OGC standard to include a RESTful approach in addition to the usual OGC "KVP" encodings. The "oh, that makes sense" aspect of WMTS has already resulted in implementation in clients like Gaia 3.4.

Bottom Line - WMTS provides a natural way to evolve WMS services into a more constrained - but more scalable and faster service - so anyone can build services and applications that are fast, easy to use, and democratically accessible.

- Jeff

Advantage of OneGeology WMS model - data stays in nations

2009-11-02T14:10:00.010-05:00

An article from Pubblica Amministrazione raises the interesting assertion that the "technology used by" the OneGeology project, "called 'Web Map Service', surpasses that of Google Earth using a distributed model, dynamic and sustainable, able to leave the data provider in the sites of nations so that they are best kept and constantly updated."

- Jeff

Windows 7 removes Sidebar - GOS Dashboard now part of desktop

2009-10-21T17:50:00.007-05:00

Windows 7 comes out tomorrow and one of the cool things is the Sidebar is now gone. The Sidebar was the part of the desktop that Windows Vista reserved for Gadgets like stock tickers. So instead of cluttering up the right side of your desktop, Gadgets now float free. An example of a free floating Gadget is our open source dashboard for Geodata.gov, the federal government’s information service for maps and data. The dashboard enables “at-a-glance” visualization of map servers around the country and monitoring of Geodata.gov search from the Windows 7 desktop. The GOS Dashboard is a free download and the latest development report is available here - check it out with Windows 7 (or Vista even ;-).

- Jeff

Rapid #GEOINT update - a standards-based SOA perspective

2009-10-19T15:19:00.008-05:00

Rapid GEOINT Update

View more presentations from Carbon Project.

GEOINT has traditionally been a product-focused, read-only business. But this “one-way” model doesn’t allow analysts and warriors to easily affect the content in a way that can be immediately shared in a net-centric environment.

But new geospatial enterprise services implementing OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) break the one-way model, and let analysts and warriors interact with net-centric sources and affect remote content. This is possible because OGC has not only standards dealing with maps, imagery and metadata but a very powerful concept supported by the WFS specification – Transactions. WFS Transactions allow users to select mission-critical information and then push out value-added content for reuse by others. This two-way information flow makes is possible to interact and share geospatial content. For example, users can add or revise data from the front lines providing instant update to the rest of the net-centric geospatial services environment.

How? The "WFS-T" provides a way to interact with and affect the remote content directly from the end-user. So an end-user can now alter the global data view from a remote location using tools based on standards. Standards-based commercial off-the-shelf software (SCOTS) services now use this capability in a very powerful fashion (see above). But to make geospatial services and Geography Markup Language (GML) usable by everyone light, user-friendly software clients are needed that can work with any geospatial service. These tools need to let users to post updates in a visual and intuitive way. To accommodate for users who can’t rely on stable network connectivity, a standalone application is also needed - and a friendly user-interface must wrap complexity into an easy-to-use application.

So now, with little training anyone can use these tools to rapidly update geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, (see above). This capability will let analysts and warriors quickly interact with geospatial enterprise services and affect remote content vital to ongoing military operations.

- Jeff

Carbon Project to Support Near-Real Time Access at GEOINT 2009

2009-10-14T14:19:00.005-05:00

The Carbon Project is pleased to announce it will bring its near-real time geospatial access solutions to the GEOINT 2009 symposium on October 18-21, in San Antonio, Texas.

The Carbon Project’s Gaia SDI platform will be used to access high-value, time-dominant geospatial-intelligence (GEOINT) at the symposium. Based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the Gaia SDI platform is designed to provide the next-generation of access, update and geosynchronization capability for intelligence, military and humanitarian assistance requirements.

Rapid delivery of information using standard web services is essential to GEOINT users today. The Carbon Project is proud to bring this capability to GEOINT 2009.

For more information please contact info@TheCarbonProject.com or visit the DigitalGlobe booth at GEOINT 2009 from October 18-21 in San Antonio, Texas.

Graphic source: United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)

Government spatial "infrastructure" helping power Google Maps

2009-10-12T05:32:00.019-05:00

Last week users in the US started noticing a change in Google Maps - the familiar Tele Atlas copyright was gone from many tiles and "all of that new green park land was" an indicator something big was up. The change was that Google started working with publicly accessible geospatial datasets like Census, transportation, USDA Forest Service's Forest Boundaries and the US Geological Survey's National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) from the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) to create a new base map dataset. According to Google Maps blog, "these organizations that create the data do the best job of keeping it accurate and up-to-date." Of course, Google is also using lots and lots of data it collects from its own fleet of mapping vehicles - called Streetview - plus data from other sources like aerial and satellite imagery, walking trails etc.

What's the NSDI? It's a coordinated national approach to geospatial data creation, maintenance, discovery, and use - and includes access to geospatial data for the Nation developed by Federal, State, and Local governments, the private and non-profit sectors, and academia. Folks in this community often refer to NSDI "Framework" data - themes of common data layers like elevation of the land, map images, transportation, surface water, cadastral data, governmental unit boundaries, etc. Examples are shown above in the Gaia patform, a tool created to view and update individual components of an SDI. Strictly speaking, the NSDI includes not just data but policies, standards and people needed for geospatial information sharing throughout all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and academia. NSDI coordination in the US is led by organizations like the FGDC. Anybody can get access to this infrastructure as raw data and standard web maps through online government services like this one and others.

So where's all this heading? Well, it's likely there will be changes in other areas like Europe coming, and more public-private partnering - but I think the emerging picture is bigger than Google only. One thing to keep an eye is that the NSDI is maintained and accessed as locally as possible, closest to the people that know it.

- Jeff

Broadcasting live on Internet DigitalGlobe launches one very cool satellite

2009-10-09T05:52:00.007-05:00

Broadcasting live on the Internet from Vandenberg Air Force Base, WorldView-2 roared into orbit yesterday atop a Boeing Delta II rocket - making DigitalGlobe the only commercial imagery company with a high-res, eight-band multispectral imagery capability. The capability will enable higher levels of feature identification and extraction and more accurately reflect the world’s natural color - with potential for many applications, including environmental monitoring, change detection, and defense and intelligence. WorldView-2’s advanced geopositional technology is allowing for significant improvements in accuracy as well -with no processing, no elevation model and no ground control. With WorldView-1, and anticipated for WorldView-2, the accuracy is coming in at a remarkable 4.1m CE90. If all that wasn't enough, other features announced are just wicked cool -

"WorldView-1 and WorldView-2 are the first commercial satellites to have control moment gyroscopes (CMGs). This high-performance technology provides acceleration up to 10X that of other attitude control actuators and improves both maneuvering and targeting capability. With the CMGs, slew time is reduced from over 60 seconds to only 9 seconds to cover 300km. This means WorldView-2 will be able to rapidly swing precisely from one target to another, allowing extensive imaging of many targets, as well as stereo, in a single orbital pass.

With its improved agility, WorldView-2 will be able to act like a paintbrush, sweeping back and forth to collect very large areas of multispectral imagery in a single pass. WorldView-2 alone will be able to collect nearly 1 million sq km every day, doubling the collection capacity of our constellation to nearly 2 million sq km per day. And the combination of WorldView-2’s increased agility and high altitude enables it to typically revisit any place on earth in 1.1 days. When added to our constellation, revisit time drops below one day and never exceeds two days, providing the most same-day passes of any commercial high resolution satellite constellation.

Along with the four typical multispectral bands: Blue (450-510), Green (510-580), Red (630-690) and NearIR (770-895), WorldView-2 introduces the following new color bands for enhanced multispectral analysis:

Coastal Band (400 - 450 nm) This band supports vegetation identification and analysis, and supports bathymetric studies based upon its chlorophyll and water penetration characteristics. Also, this band is subject to atmospheric scattering and will be used to investigate atmospheric correction techniques.

Yellow Band (585 - 625 nm) Used to identify "yellow-ness" characteristics of targets, important for vegetation applications. Also, this band will assist in the development of "true-color" hue correction for human vision representation.

Red Edge Band (705 - 745 nm) Aids in the analysis of vegetative condition. Directly related to plant health revealed through chlorophyll production.

Near Infrared 2 Band (860 - 1040 nm) This band overlaps the NIR 1 band but is less affected by atmospheric influence. It supports vegetation analysis and biomass studies"

Sources: DigitalGlobe

What does the NSDI look like? A partial view...

2009-10-07T07:53:00.014-05:00

Yesterday someone asked, "what does the NSDI look like?" After coffee this morning and before my first meeting I took 30 minutes to see if I could generate a picture using online sources. What I came up with is above, all accessed in the last 30 minutes with Gaia using WMS/WFS/GML, Geodata.gov, GOS Dashboard and Bing. From the bottom up - spatial data from localities and states, information on the environment, imagery of all types, elevations, water, transportation, community boundaries and names.

Of course, it's very incomplete, and uses just 13 out of thousands of possible services with no data files like KML - and my apologies to Alaska and Hawaii.

- Jeff

(Sources: USGS Framework WMS/WFS, MassGIS WFS/WMS, Montana, North Dakota, New Jersey, Maine WMS, NASA WMS, EPA WFS, EDNA WMS, Bing Maps, Geodata.gov, GOS Dashboard, Gaia)

Obama's Place Policy and Geospatial - Focus on Collaboration

2009-10-06T07:23:00.004-05:00

The concept of place-based policy has been emerging for years, and it's no surprise the Obama Administration has latched onto it given their community focus. Basically, place policies target the prosperity, equity, sustainability and livability of places - how well or how poorly they function as places and how they change over time. In some circles this is called "place-making".

This is a worthy goal, but it seems the initial "geospatial" reaction often is to shout, "What we have is broken!" However, it seems more reasonable to recognize the key aspect of place-based policy is to enable neighborhoods, localities, states and regions, and then ask the queston, "How can we build on what we have to help?"For geospatial information and tools the answer is likely not just how to make federal apparatus bigger and more integrated - but rather how to make it more collaborative with neighborhoods, localities, states and regions.

For example, geospatial information and tools supporting place-based policy can be maintained locally, closest-to-source - and federal investment could be provided to these local levels where the expertise and data creation responsibilities reside. With this type of collaboration national spatial data infrastructure standards and interoperability are key.

Why do all this? Just look at the agenda - fostering homeownership through neighborhood-based approaches, supporting public safety, advancing environmental health, etc - it can't be effectively implemented without shared local to national geospatial knowledge.

- Jeff

Gaia WFS-T Extender Now Available

2009-09-30T06:37:00.009-05:00

I'm very pleased to announce that the WFS-T Extenders package for the Gaia SDI platform is now ready! This Extender includes the world's most powerful tools to digitize, edit or delete data on any vendor's Web Feature Service Transactional (WFS-T). Some key features include:

Vendor Neutral SDI - Gaia WFS-T is designed to work with any transactional Web Feature Server (WFS). Use services from CubeWerx, Intergraph, GeoServer and more.

ESRI ArcGIS Server 9.3 - Gaia WFS-T supports ESRI WFS-T using ArcSDE and ArcGIS Server 9.3.

Easy Enhancement to Gaia - Gaia WFS-T Extenders are easy to use, as with most Extenders no installation is required and any other Extenders can coexist with no problem.

Save Your Work Anytime - The feature edits are done 'offline' and can be saved to a GSF. When you're ready these changes can be committed to the server in a bulk transaction that includes all insert, update and delete operations.

Schema Parsing - Configure your WFS-T layer with a one-click operation that reads and analyses the schema behind the scenes.

Transaction Templates - Each transaction template generated from the schema is configurable and allows validation rules and selection of used properties, thus client enforced data change rules.

Feature Locking - Some transactional services require a lock operation, others do not. Gaia WFS-T automatically adjusts its process to answer both scenarios.

Security and proxy tools - Gaia WFS-T supports proxy configurations and secure OGC services.

Geometry Snapping Tools - A set of snapping tools is included, adding the ability to snap edit nodes and edges to existing geometries in the session.

And more...all developed with the Gaia Extenders API and CarbonTools PRO. More details and examples are available on the Gaia WFS-T Extender info site. If you want more info or a demo please contact info@thecarbonproject.com.

- Jeff

Obama describes "interconnected world" problems - now what about geosocial solutions?

2009-09-24T08:20:00.013-05:00

Yesterday at the UN President Obama described an "inextricably interconnected world" where each country's problems can become the problems of others. "In the year 2009 — more than at any point in human history — the interests of nations and peoples are shared."

One can argue about which problem is most challenging - climate change, nuclear proliferation, persistent poverty or pandemic disease but Obama is correct that these problems are multinational and none can be solved by a single country. Furthermore, since the problems are interconnected the solutions must also be interconnected.

Honestly, I don't expect President Obama to ever discuss "geosocial" information - but developing collaborative, interconnected solutions to the problems he describes will require access to consistent, reliable and local information about both places and people. In fact, it's essential for understanding cross-border dynamics. In many situations, geosocial data provides one of the most important keys for referencing and accessing a variety of other information needed to understand and solve problems. But if we do seriously move towards developing interconnected solutions to problems information sharing should happen using global spatial data infrastructures that aren't controlled by any one organization or group - just like the UN.

- Jeff

FGDC Status Checker, GOS Dashboard and the "pulse" of NSDI

2009-09-21T11:08:00.015-05:00

The FGDC Status Checker is a new web service that offers a simple but powerful interface to obtain the status information for WMS, WFS and other services in the NSDI - meaning you can get a near real-time picture of thousands of services in the NSDI and beyond. The Status Checker uses the list of services maintained by Geodata.gov, the federal government's information service for maps and data - and is implemented in the new open source GOS Dashboard. The result is the geospatial community can now get a near real-time "pulse" of what services are online today, their reliability and connect directly to them with applications like the Gaia platform.

How do the Status Checker and the GOS Dashboard work together? Simple - The service accepts a document containing the identifiers of the services you want to get a status for, and returns information regarding those services. The document must submitted to the service via an HTML POST, using the application/x-www-form-urlencoded content-type, and the results are sent as an XML document. For our implementation the request is submitted as AJAX.

Here's a Javascript code sample of how our team at The Carbon Project request the 'Status' and reliability 'Score' in the GOS Dashboard gadget. Note that because gadgets only run in a Microsoft environment, this code is tailored to a Microsoft environment (apologies to Linux and Mac folks, we're working on it).

function getStatus(guid) {
_xhrStatus = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
_xhrStatus.open("POST", "http://registry.fgdc.gov/statuschecker/serviceResults.php?request=XML", true);

_xhrStatus.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (_xhrStatus.readyState == 4 && _xhrStatus.status == 200) {
clearTimeout(_xhrStatusTimeout);

var xmlDocument = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument");
xmlDocument.loadXML(_xhrStatus.responseText);

var response = xmlDocument.getElementsByTagName("response")[0];
var service = response.getElementsByTagName("service")[0];

setScore(service.getElementsByTagName("score")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
}
}

var request = "requestXml=brief";
request = request + "{" + guid + "}";

_xhrStatus.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
_xhrStatus.send(request);
_xhrStatusTimeout = setTimeout("getStatusTimeout();", _ajaxTimeout);
}

The result is displayed in the graphic above. You can get more information on the NSDI Status Checker web service by visiting the information page and source code for the GOS Dashboard is available. Community feedback on the GOS Dashboard is welcome through upcoming workshops (here is info on the first one), or you can contribute anytime at the GOS Dashboard discussion forum.

- Jeff and Mark

Gaia SDI Platform Now Available for Linux and Mac Users

2009-09-17T10:01:00.009-05:00

Gaia on Ubuntu - accessing Bing Maps, Yahoo!, OpenStreetMap, WMS and WMTS

The Carbon Project today announced the beta release of Gaia 3.4 for Mono, a powerful free platform designed to support Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) users. The software was developed with the Mono Project open source framework, allowing Gaia to be used on any Linux or Mac desktop.

You can visit the Gaia site to download the free beta of Gaia 3.4 Mono today. Technical information and forums for the Gaia 3.4 platform are available at http://www.thecarbonportal.net/.

Gaia 3.4 for Mono beta is a geospatial network platform that provides seamless synergy between Microsoft Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps, OpenStreetMap, ESRI ArcGIS Server, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) KML, GML, GMLsf, WMS, WMTS, WFS, Filters, WCS, ESRI Shape, Autodesk and MapInfo formats, and more.

Gaia for Mono is part of our commitment to help all SDI users meet tomorrow's infrastructure, transportation, environmental and national security challenges. Some of the most powerful desktop programs produced for Linux in recent years are built with the Mono open source .NET framework, and I’m very proud our team is able to bring Gaia to a new community of users.

Gaia 3.4 for Mono platform is built with the latest CarbonTools PRO open-geospatial development toolkit and its source code is available to CarbonTools PRO developers. The Gaia for Mono package is compiled to comply with the Mono Project multi-platform framework, allowing Gaia to be used on any Linux or Mac OS.

Initial Gaia development was sponsored by the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP).

We welcome community feedback on Gaia 3.4 for Mono beta. If you would like more information please contact info@TheCarbonProject.com.

- Jeff

INSPIRE Download Service implements OGC WFS

2009-09-15T10:05:00.006-05:00

INSPIRE is a Europe-wide initiative launched several years ago and developed in collaboration with Member States. It aims to make geographic information available to support formulation, implementation, and monitoring of European Community policies. A key INSPIRE requirement is defining a web service that can be implemented across Member states to provide the ability to download pre-defined datasets or pre-defined parts of datasets.

To support the "Download Service" requirement, INSPIRE defined a draft Download Service Technical Guidance to ensure that online services of Member states are compatible in a trans-boundary context - and a look into the guide yields some interesting similarities with the ISO/DIS 19142 (OGC Web Feature Service edited by Peter Vretanos from CubeWerx). Specifically, the Download Service "Get Spatial Objects" is implemented by the GetFeature operation of WFS, "Describe Spatial Object Types" is implemented by the DescribeFeatureType operation of WFS, and other operations of WFS like Capabilities and Filter Encoding are represented as well.

Why did INSPIRE base elements of the Download Service on WFS? I suppose INSPIRE coordinators believed a pan-European framework should be based on spatial information infrastructures created by the Member States, and that such infrastructures should be designed to ensure spatial data is stored, made available and maintained at the most appropriate level. I suppose they also wanted to ensure that it's possible to combine spatial data from different sources across the Community in a consistent way and share them between users and applications.

To do this, they turned to an international standard for pan-European interoperability - WFS.

- Jeff

USGIN - Cyberinfrastructure for Earth sciences

2009-09-14T20:15:00.008-05:00

The US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN) is a new system of state and federal geological survey online data providers and user applications linked together by shared web services and interchange formats that help users find, access, and use geoscientific information.

The objective of the GIN project is to develop standardized services to make data resources of the state and federal geological surveys accessible online in a distributed network - using a few standards and protocols, and to work with data providers to implement these services. Some of the standards include Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalog Service for the Web (CSW), Web Map and Feature Services (WMS and WFS).

The network is open to all providers and users and the stated goal is to become a core component of the emerging cyberinfrastructure for the Earth sciences.

- Jeff

Gaia 3.4 certified for Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC)

2009-09-11T05:58:00.006-05:00

The Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) is an OMB (U.S. Office of Management and Budget) mandate requiring that all Federal Agencies standardize the configuration of approximately 300 settings on their Windows XP and Vista computers. The reason for this standardization is to strengthen Federal IT security by reducing opportunities for hackers to access and exploit government computer systems.

Gaia 3.4 is now certified to be fully functional and operate correctly as intended on systems using the FDCC. This includes Windows XP and Vista. The standard installation and operation of the software shall not alter the configuration settings from the approved FDCC configuration. Some of the successful tests included:

• Configuration of the systems with the latest FDCC settings
• Use of a SCAP-validated tool with FDCC Scanner capability to baseline initial configuration
• Product installation and successful testing of common use cases
• Using an FDCC Scanner to ensure the FDCC settings and patches are intact
• Application uninstall, reboot then successful scan of the system using an FDCC Scanner to ensure proper FDCC settings and patches are still present.

Gaia 3.4 is a geospatial network platform that provides seamless synergy between Microsoft Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps, OpenStreetMap, ESRI ArcGIS Server, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) KML, GML, GMLsf, WMS, WMTS, WFS, Filters, WCS, ESRI Shape, Autodesk and MapInfo formats, and more. Gaia 3.4 is part of our commitment to help SDI users and developers meet tomorrow's infrastructure, transportation, environmental and national security challenges.

The Gaia 3.4 platform is built with the latest CarbonTools PRO assemblies and complete source code is available to CarbonTools PRO developers. Gaia 3.4 also provides a robust, open API that allows any programmer to develop Gaia Extenders with or without a CarbonTools PRO license. Gaia Extenders are light, easy to deploy and can enhance Gaia's functionality for simple and complex GIS and SDI tasks.

Initial Gaia development was sponsored by the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP).

- Jeff

Cascading and Brokering in Geospatial SOA

2009-09-07T10:05:00.014-05:00

Cascading WMS from USGS, ESRI, NASA on the "Cloud" - using Gaia 3.4, CubeWerx Cascading WMS and Web Services Security software

Open-Geospatial Web Services were developed around the concepts that 1) it's easier to reuse existing services than deploy new ones, 2) if you want to reuse services interoperability is needed, and 3) if you have interoperability you can broker many services to create applications. The advantage is simple - it's much easier to reuse and chain existing services than deploy new ones.

In this environment the ability to "cascade" services is vital. What does it mean to cascade? The OGC standards say a Cascading Web Map Server (WMS) is a WMS that behaves like a client of other WMSs, and behaves like a WMS to other clients. For example, a Cascading WMS can aggregate the contents of several distinct map servers into one service. Furthermore, a Cascading WMS can perform additional functions such as output format conversion, coordinate transformation and role-based access control on behalf of other servers. The cascading feature of the WMS specification is optional but for those vendors like CubeWerx who support it there are a lot of things to consider and which make the cascading WMS and WFS very valuable.

A Cascading WMS works like this - an SDI Broker defines the layer resources accessible by the WMS as part of the standard metadata requirements of a WMS server - but can also refer to a WMS service as a remote resource. When he/she runs a Get Capabilities request against the Cascading WMS the data resources defined in the remote WMS are included with a cascading indicator (cascaded attribute). The nesting level is recorded in the cascaded attribute in the Capabilities XML document and, given that the remote service could also be another cascading service which could in turn refer to local and remote data services, cascading could theoretically continue indefinitely. So the originating cascading WMS server can access all the layers defined in the local services as well as the remote or cascaded layers via the cascading WMS.

When a Get Map request (OGC WMS operation) is processed by the WMS server, the requests are sent to the appropriate resource such that any request for a cascaded data layer is handed off to the remote WMS to respond. To the remote WMS server, this is a just another WMS request which it fulfills and returns the resultant map image back to the calling WMS server. This requires no additional provisions at the standard WMS level to support a cascaded request. The Cascading WMS will then make sure that the returned image is compatible with its client request and return it to the client integrated with all the other data layers.

One of the really nice features from vendors like CubeWerx is that they support all OGC WMS versions. This means their Cascading WMS can cascade to ANY version of an OGC WMS server - and they correctly translate the incoming request to the version of the cascaded OGC WMS server. This allows a client tool to not worry about the WMS version of the cascaded servers.

Cascading opens up many other efficiencies like reusing remote services and applying a security layer - and a Cascading WMS can be deployed on a "Cloud" server so it's fully techno-buzzword compliant. But what users see is simple - you point an application like Gaia 3.4 at just one service and get the benefit of many.

- Jeff

Success at GOS Dashboard Workshop

2009-09-05T07:42:00.008-05:00

GOS Dashboard - Enterprise GIS Dashboard for Geodata.gov

This week we conducted our first online workshop for the open-source GOS Dashboard - the beginning a community dialog on the functions of the dashboard with NSDI users and developers.

As we've discussed, the purpose of this 2009 NSDI CAP project is to develop an open source dashboard for Geodata.gov, the federal government's information service for maps and data. The GOS Dashboard is designed to help integrate Geodata.gov search functions into GIS desktops and make NSDI data and services more open and transparent.

The agenda covered an overview of the GOS Dashboard (see above), demos (thanks to MassGIS for awesome WMS and WFS) and group discussion. We had folks from a variety of federal, state, local and private sector organizations online and the breadth of experience was evident. We showed how the GOS Dashboard can quickly find data and services from Geodata.gov, integrate with the NSDI Status Checker and link to desktop GIS applications. The response from the group was the GOS Dashboard is useful and folks seemed to like the design. Comments ranged from suggestions on UI adjustments to thoughts on "widgetizing" it for web pages so the functions are usable by folks not running Windows Vista/7. Thanks to all for taking the time to contribute!

The GOS Dashboard is now available as a free download and please feel free to share your comments online at the GOS Dashboard Forum.

- Jeff

Mono more popular than Java on Linux

2009-08-31T06:39:00.010-05:00

For a long time the Linux desktop and Java were like Starbucks and coffee. But according to SDTimes last month, "Mono—the open-source runtime for .NET applications—is stealing some of the thunder from Java applications for the Linux desktop. Recent Linux distros have featured new .NET consumer applications that run under Mono. Part of the reason is that the distributions contain up-to-date Mono development tools, while their Java tools are obsolete."

When it comes to desktop Linux applications, "Mono is clearly more popular than Java," said RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady. For those that don't know - Mono is a cross platform, open source .NET development framework.

- Jeff

Gaia 3.4 Release Provides Powerful Platform for SDI Users and Developers

2009-08-26T09:40:00.002-05:00

The Carbon Project today announced the release of Gaia 3.4, a powerful free platform designed to support Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) users and developers. The Gaia 3.4 platform release includes new SDI tools, an open API for software developers and support for OGC data and services, ESRI ArcGIS Server, Bing Maps and OpenStreetMap.

You can visit www.thecarbonproject.com/gaia.php to download the free Gaia 3.4 today. A suite of free Extenders and API documentation are also available. Technical information and forums for the Gaia 3.4 platform and its Extenders are available at http://www.thecarbonportal.net/.

Gaia 3.4 is a geospatial network platform that provides seamless synergy between Microsoft Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps, OpenStreetMap, ESRI ArcGIS Server, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) KML, GML, GMLsf, WMS, WMTS, WFS, Filters, WCS, ESRI Shape, Autodesk and MapInfo formats, and more. Gaia 3.4 is part of our commitment to help SDI users and developers meet tomorrow's infrastructure, transportation, environmental and national security challenges.

The Gaia 3.4 platform is built with the latest CarbonTools PRO assemblies and complete source code is available to CarbonTools PRO developers. Gaia 3.4 also provides a robust, open API that allows any programmer to develop Gaia Extenders with or without a CarbonTools PRO license. Gaia Extenders are light, easy to deploy and can enhance Gaia's functionality for simple and complex GIS and SDI tasks.

Initial Gaia development was sponsored by the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP).

For more information please contact info@TheCarbonProject.com

Dashboard Brings Transparency, Syndication to NSDI Services

2009-08-24T10:36:00.007-05:00

This week The Carbon Project announced the availability of an open source dashboard for Geodata.gov, the federal government’s information service for maps and data. The free application enables “at-a-glance” visualization of geospatial assets and monitoring of Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) search from desktop PCs.

The GOS Dashboard is available as a free download - and a video preview is available at our website and YouTube.

“The GOS Dashboard is designed to integrate Geodata.gov search and access functions into enterprise users desktops, and make geospatial data and services more open and transparent,” says Doug Nebert, Senior Advisor for Geospatial Technology at the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).

“The GOS Dashboard is powered by GeoRSS and builds on our experience developing applications for SDI,” said Nuke Goldstein, The Carbon Project's CTO. “It's based on Microsoft Gadgets and enhances common RSS functions with the ability to configure searches, view geodata footprints on mini-maps, and access desktop GIS applications from ESRI and other vendors directly with the data people find.”

But Nuke's last comment above really doesn't do justice to the power of Service-Feed-App syndication. By that I mean the GOS Dashboard is not just reading feeds with 'dead' data - it's reading feeds with 'live' services so WMS/WFS become new dynamic connections permanently maintained in apps like Gaia (you may never want to go back to boring KML, CSV, and Shapefiles data downloads). An example of this kind of syndication is shown above with MassGIS WFS-Geodata.gov-Gaia.

The GOS Dashboard is part of the 2009 National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP) - and we'll be hosting an initial online workshop on August 31, 2009 to promote community dialog on the functions with NSDI users and developers. If you want to participate please contact info@thecarbonproject.com.

Gaia supports Bing Maps WMS testing

2009-08-24T09:05:00.004-05:00

Bing Maps WMS from OnTerra Systems. Photo copyright OnTerra Systems

In a move sure to blur the line between "SDI" and "neogeo" Gaia is now being used to support testing of a beta Web Map Service (WMS) version of Bing Maps. Bing Maps WMS is provided by the experts at OnTerra Systems - it allows you to access Bing Maps such as ortho imagery, road data and hybrid layers (road + ortho) in OGC WMS form.

- Jeff

Geolocation Coming to Twitter - Pretty Cool and a Little Creepy

2009-08-21T08:22:00.007-05:00

Twitter just announced it's "gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information," wrote Twitter cofounder Biz Stone.

A developer preview indicates the API will use GeoRSS and work by enabling a point location for a user. Pretty cool and will likely work well at concerts and community events, and a little creepy since the implications for geolocation privacy are immense.

- Jeff

Gaia, GOS Dashboard and MassGIS WFS

2009-08-20T15:27:00.008-05:00

Initial testing with Geodata.gov, Gaia, GOS Dashboard , Bing and WFS from MassGIS yielding some very interesting results - near instant access to the SDI services. By the way, the new version of the free Gaia 3.4 viewer is now available online at The Carbon Portal.

- Jeff and Nuke

SDI "Cloud" Publishing - Feature-level Access Control

2009-08-20T11:30:00.007-05:00

This new YouTube video highlights the CubeWerx Identity Management Server (IMS) and secure publishing using an SDI service. Secure SDI provides unprecedented functionality including role-based access control, security by geographic area, security by OGC operations, and security down to specific geospatial features. This video follows “Bill” as an SDI manager grants him feature-level access and highlights the creation of access control rules for several OGC SDI services in the real internet "cloud".

- Jeff

Using Tile-based Map Services in Gaia 3.4

2009-08-19T18:20:00.006-05:00

In Gaia 3.4 (due for release this week) two commercial mapping services are supported: Microsoft Bing Maps (formally known as Virtual Earth) and Yahoo! Maps. In addition, Gaia 3.4 supports the Tiles @ Home system from OpenStreetMap (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@home).

To use these maps in the free Gaia geospatial viewer all you have to do is select the map type (Roads, Aerial etc.) to generate a preview and enable the addition of the layer to the map. After adding the tile-service to the map you can change the map-type by right clicking on the layer name in the layers collection in the main application view (but remember only "Roads" maps are available from OpenStreetMap).

Notice that you may change the number of cached tiles - Remember that a lower amount of cached tiles will increase the number of Web service calls, while a higher value will increase memory consumption and thus the potential size of saved geospatial sessions (GSF).

- Jeff

Which Ottawa map is better - Bing, Yahoo! or OpenStreetMap?

2009-08-18T18:13:00.002-05:00

Which is better - Bing, Yahoo! or OpenStreetMap?

Maps from Gaia 3.4. Google Maps not provided because their lawyers frighten us.

Which Tehran map is better - Bing, Yahoo! or OpenStreetMap?

2009-08-18T17:19:00.002-05:00

Which is better - Bing, Yahoo! or OpenStreetMap?
Maps from Gaia 3.4. Google Maps not provided because their lawyers frighten us.

Massachusetts Enhances SDI Services for Ocean Management

2009-08-18T06:18:00.005-05:00

Massachusetts waters are rich with natural resources and busy with human activity. This marine environment supports recreation and tourism, fishing and shellfishing, shipping and trade, and scientific research. The Commonwealth’s marine waters also harbor infrastructure that supports the well-being and standard of living of Massachusetts citizens, such as offshore liquefied natural gas facilities, fiber optic and electrical cables, and natural gas pipelines. In addition, new activities in the marine environment are emerging, including deepwater aquaculture and wave, tidal, and wind energy.

Given this array of activity and the need to protect and enhance the marine environment Massachusetts has developed a draft Ocean Management Plan that addresses a fundamental issue - the ocean is a public trust resource and the Commonwealth must effectively manage the protection and use of its waters on behalf of the public for the benefit of current and future generations.

To support the Ocean Management Plan about 85 layers are being added this week to web mapping services (WMS) from MassGIS. The layers include wind speed data, imagery, NOAA navigational charts, coastal land cover, sea floor topography and more. The WMS may be used in geospatial viewers such as Gaia and other SDI tools. With this addition MassGIS is charting its path forward with a standards-based information infrastructure of geospatial and environmental data - maintained locally, closest to the people that know it.

- Jeff

GOS Dashboard NSDI CAP Project - Now on Slideshare

2009-08-11T16:10:00.003-05:00

GOS Dashboard - Enterprise GIS Dashboard for Geodata.gov

View more presentations from CarbonProject.

Earlier this year The Carbon Project announced it had been selected by the 2009 National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP) to develop an open source desktop dashboard for Geodata.gov, the federal government service for maps and data.

The overview briefing is now on slideshare - so please take a moment to review and send us your thoughts. As discussed, the goal of the project is to develop a free application to enable "at-a-glance" visualization of geospatial assets and monitoring of Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) Portal search functions.

A video preview of the "GOS Dashboard" is also available at http://thecarbonproject.com/Videos/GOSGadget1/GOSGadget1.htm

and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwzEsCftonk&feature=PlayList&p=67E4C07DC67EC2F5&index=0

The software will be jointly developed in support of governmental activities by The Carbon Project, the US Army Corps of Engineers and other FGDC representatives and based on key business requirements - and we hope to announce the first community workshop soon.

If you have any questions or would like information please contact us at info@thecarbonproject.com

- Jeff

NSDI CAP 2008 Brief Now on Slideshare

2009-08-11T10:08:00.003-05:00

Role-based Access Control June09 GeoSOA Workshop

View more presentations from CarbonProject.

We've (finally) posted the NSDI CAP 2008 project overview on Slideshare. This is the briefing we gave at the recent Geospatial SOA and Cloud Computing Workshop in Washington, DC.

- Jeff

Government of Canada Sets WMS as Standard for Geospatial Data Sharing

2009-08-10T21:11:00.010-05:00

Canada has recently established a new geospatial standard - designed to help users across all government departments locate, understand, use and share geospatial data. A news release by GeoConnections Canada states:

“The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has established the Standard on Geospatial Data for the Government of Canada. The Standard will facilitate interoperability across institutions and increase their ability to identify, understand, use, and share geospatial data. This standard also allows institutions to maximize the reuse of existing mapping and related products.

The scope of the standard currently comprises two ISO standards: ISO 19115 Geographic information - metadata and ISO 19128 Geographic information - Web Map Server interface [also known as OGC WMS]. Both standards have been previously endorsed by the national GeoConnections program for use in the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI). "

The standard came into effect June 1, 2009 - but departments have until May 31, 2014 to fully implement it.

The WMS-based Standard on Geospatial Data for the Government of Canada is another sign of growing global interest in sharing geospatial data across Web-based service interfaces that aren't controlled by any one organization or group.

- Jeff

OGC Seeks Participants for Authentication Interoperability Experiment

2009-08-05T16:56:00.003-05:00

The OGC will launch an Authentication Interoperability Experiment on 2 October, 2009. The initiators of the experiment seek participation by other organizations interested in developing standard ways of implementing authentication and related security capabilities in applications involving OGC Web Services standards.

The Authentication Interoperability Experiment will test standard ways of transferring authentication information between OGC clients and OGC services using existing mechanisms such as HTTP Authentication, HTTP Cookies, SSL/X509, SAML, OpenID and WS-Security.

The purpose of this experiment is to develop a candidate OGC Best Practices document that documents standard ways of performing authentication in applications that implement OGC Web Services standards. The goal is to provide guidance about authentication to implementers of solutions and to organizations that seek to deploy such solutions. It is the belief of the initiators that if such a document is made available more OGC compliant commercial products that natively support authentication will be offered by vendors.

The OGC members that are acting as initiators of the Interoperability Experiment are CubeWerx, Sierra Systems Group, Inc.and others.

The planned start date for the Authentication Interoperability Experiment is 2 October, 2009. Applications for participation are due by 4 September, 2009. Contact Carl Reed (creed@opengeospatial.org) for further details or to register as a participant.

Geospatial AI for Air Turbulence Prediction

2009-08-03T13:16:00.012-05:00

In the future, Electronic Flight Bags like the one above from The Carbon Project may integrate the results of AI to reduce the danger from air turbulence

According to InformationWeek, "NASA is funding a project run by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, to identify areas of rapidly developing turbulence and storms over remote areas of the ocean.

The system concept is to guide pilots around these areas and avoid a disaster like the one that killed 228 people in June 2009 when an Air France flight hit a storm and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. It is not apparent whether the techniques will help guide aircraft around zones of "clear air turbulence" like the one today that bounced Continental Airlines passengers off the ceiling injuring dozens.

According to the article, "Scientists are working to predict areas of turbulence, both in clear skies and within storms, by applying artificial intelligence to satellite data and computer generated models of weather, NCAR scientists said." Scientists analyzing the data use an artificial intelligence technique called "random forests which creates series of yes-or-no votes on how elements of a storm may behave." In the future the information output from these models may become part of online services using spatio-temporal AIXM, WXXM and other Next Generation information.

- Jeff

SDI "Cloud" Publishing - Bill gets secure access to WMS

2009-07-28T11:52:00.013-05:00

This new YouTube video highlights the CubeWerx Identity Management Server (IMS). IMS lets organizations publish their OGC Web Services in a web-enabled collaborative framework for sharing secure and non-secure geospatial web resources with users inside and outside their organizations. This product enhances standard web services by implementing a secure distributed framework that supports Authentication, Single Sign On (SSO) and Role-based Access Control. This video follows “Bill” as an SDI manager grants him some basic access to a WMS - to a real internet "cloud".

- Jeff

(See what happens next to Bill)

What’s in a Geoname? Our world

2009-07-24T07:16:00.009-05:00

(updated May 2010) Access to consistent, reliable and local geographic names information is essential for understanding communities and geosocial dynamics. In many situations, geographic names provide one of the most important keys for referencing and accessing a variety of other information. And Geonames databases, called Gazetteers, are an information resource for representing places, groups of people and cultures - and one of the best ways to maintain this resource is locally, closest to the people that know it, and then share it with others through online services.

Since this resource is so important, there's growing global interest in sharing and updating geographic names across a standard Web-based service interface that's not controlled by any one organization or group. In this environment an important way to ensure Geonames information is open and accessible is through the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS). The WFS standard defines an interface for specifying requests for retrieving and updating geographic features across the Web using platform-independent calls – and a profile of WFS is designed specifically to support Geonames.

The Gazetteer Profile of the Web Feature Service, or WFS-G for short, is the result of two major activities - an OGC Best Practice describing a Gazetteer Profile of the Web Feature Service Specification and an ISO draft standard for geographic identifiers (ISO 19112). The WFS-G profile traces its legacy to the OGC Geospatial Fusion Services (GFS) interoperability initiative where an OGC Gazetteer interface was defined, tested and implemented and eventually published as an OGC Discussion Paper. The standardization process in the ISO TC 211 led to a separate mature draft standard defining "Spatial referencing by geographic identifiers" (ISO 19112) that defines an abstract model to be implemented by a gazetteer service. The outcomes of these activities were consolidated into a Gazetteer Service implementation specification published as an OGC Best Practice (05-035r2). This document defines a Gazetteer Service profile of the OGC Web Feature Service Specification. The OGC Gazetteer Service allows a client to search and retrieve elements of a georeferenced vocabulary of well-known place-names.

Advantages of WFS-G include -

• Easy access to well-known place-name vocabularies
• Promotes real-time access and maintenance of Geonames
• Facilitates data currency of Geonames within WFS
• Enables collaborative maintenance of Geonames using transactions and geosynchronization

• Supports ISO 19112 information models
• Supports development of a variety of location-based applications

With growing global interest in sharing geographic names - and with the recognition that one of the best ways to maintain this resource is locally, closest to the people that know it - WFS-Gs like those coming online now are a key collaborative technology for representing places, groups of people and cultures.

- Jeff and Peter

OpenNode2 integrates Exchange Network Discovery Service (ENDS)

2009-07-21T04:42:00.010-05:00

Just three months after the release of OpenNode2 comes an upgraded version - with some major new features like Exchange Network Discovery Service (ENDS) integration.

OpenNode2 is now capable of automatically registering an agency's Exchange Network (EN)presence and capabilities with the recently released national ENDS repository housed at EPA. ENDS is implemented as a set of services complying to the Exchange Network protocols - and the repository lets consumers of Network data discover which agencies have operational Nodes, and what data they are able to exchange via those Nodes.

The ENDS v1.3 exchange defines several Query services to retreive these lists of Nodes and services:

GetDataServices - returns ENDS_DataServices
GetSchemaList - returns ENDS_NetworkSchemaList
GetRequestList - returns ENDS_RequestList
GetStyleSheetList - returns ENDS_NetworkStyleSheetList
GetParametersList - returns ENDS_ParameterList
GetExampleList - returns ENDS_NodeExampleList

The six common data service payloads can be used to update data within the exchange just as they are used to consume data about the exchange. ENDS version 2.0 updated this approach to address issues raised by the EN community and align with OpenNode2.

With the release of OpenNode2 the Exchange Network has been gaining momentum - and the ENDS repository may become an essential tool to ensure that the community is aware of the Network's ongoing expansion.

- Jeff
(NSDI + NEIEN) x GeoWeb = NSDI 2.0

One Small Step...

2009-07-20T22:13:00.003-05:00

New CarbonTools PRO Adds OGC WMTS, OpenStreetMap, Digitizing Tools

2009-07-14T18:43:00.003-05:00

The Carbon Project announces the latest update to CarbonTools PRO. The release includes support to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) proposed standard for tile-based web mapping (WMTS) as well as the OpenStreetMap (OSM) tile service - providing free and open alternatives to services like Google Maps. In addition, the release adds new functionality to the powerful MultiMap control allowing developers to easily create and edit geometries directly on their mash-ups.

This latest release lets developers add a new generation of ‘SDI 2.0’ content interoperability to their .NET applications – like REST WMTS and OSM. Of course, they can still use all the other sources accessible by CarbonTools PRO like Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps, KML, KMZ, GML, GMLsf, WMS, WFS, WCS, Filter Encoding, Catalog, OSGeo, ESRI Shapefiles, MapInfo, Autodesk and more.

The release also includes source code for key assemblies and full source code for the up-and-coming Gaia 3.4 geospatial viewer, making it possible for developers to create and deploy interoperable .NET applications in minutes. The Gaia 3.4 geospatial viewer application will be available later this summer at www.TheCarbonProject.com/gaia.php.

CarbonTools PRO is available under a per developer license that has no limits, royalties, restrictions or fees on deploying applications - ever.

For more information please visit http://www.carbontools.com/.

- Jeff