Perth Laboratory – Public Seminar Series 2008

Water Observations Markup Language

Dr Simon Cox
Research Scientist
CSIRO Exploration and Mining
WRON Project – Water for a Healthy Country Flagship

Thursday 26th June 2008 at 3.30pm, CSIRO Auditorium

Abstract

XML languages are being developed for many data-exchange applications in both business and technical fields. CUAHSI has proposed WaterML for exchange of water resources observations, as a part of its WaterOneFlow services. WaterML is essentially an XML version of the CUAHSI Observations Data Model (ODM) which is a relational database model, based on the “datacube” model. However, the XML representation was generated by an ad-hoc design process. Meanwhile, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has been developing technologies for geographic web services. The OGC Sensor Web Enablement suite (SWE) includes standards for encoding Observations and Measurements (O&M), as well as web service interfaces to access these.

Through the WRON project, in collaboration with CUAHSI, we have developed a profile of OGC’s O&M to cover the same scope as WaterML. This requires that the O&M encoding be used together with specific controlled vocabularies of water feature-types (WFML), observable properties, and observation methods. This standards-based redesign is desirable since (a) use of a regular design methodology provides for a more rigorous model and easier maintenance (b) water observations may be combined more easily with observations from related domains (e.g. geology) and (c) water observations can be provided through standard SWE interfaces.

About the speaker

Simon is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO. He is based in the Exploration and Mining division, currently is splitting his time with the Land and Water division. His work in geo-informatics focusses on web-based information transfer. His formal training was in Geological Sciences (BA, Cambridge), Rock Mechanics (MSc, London) and Geophysics (PhD, Columbia NY). He joined CSIRO Geomechanics, had a spell at Monash University Earth Sciences, and then moved to CSIRO Exploration and Mining.

Simon was responsible for a major early geoscience web-site for the Australian Geodynamics Cooperative Research Centre, which included one of the first geological web-mapping systems. He was on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative advisory committee, the Australian Government Locator Schema advisory committee, and has assisted the Australia-New Zealand Land Information Council. Spatial data management issues led to an active engagement with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), editing or contributing to several OGC standards including Geography Markup Language (GML) and Observations & Measurements (O&M). Simon has assisted in the transfer of OGC standards to ISO status through Technical Committee 211 (Geographic Information).

While based in the mineral exploration sector, Simon has also worked on informatics projects with earth and environmental scientists in water resources, ocean and atmospheric sciences, and biological taxonomy.

Simon served on the Council of the IUGS Commission for Geoscience Information 2004-2008, and will join the Council of International Association of Mathematical Geology for 2008-2012. In 2006 OGC awarded Simon the Kenneth D.Gardels award for sustained contributions and leadership.

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