Spatial Data on the Web Working Group Charter
What are the best examples of data-driven Web applications you've ever seen? The updates to Open Street Map after the Haiti earthquake? The mapping of all 9,966,539 buildings in the Netherlands? The NHS Prescription data? Things like SF Park that help you 'park your car smarter' in San Francisco using real time data? The maps, satellite and street level images offered by search engines?
All these and many, many more data-driven applications have geospatial information (GI) at their core; it is a major element in defining context for knowledge that can then be exposed in many different ways to end users. The societal, economic and scientific benefits of integrating GI into commercial and institutional processes is potentially huge. Very often the common factor across multiple datasets is the location data, and maps are crucial in visualizing correlations between data sets that may otherwise be hidden.
Having a clear strategy as to how GI is best integrated with data on the Web is paramount. Commercial operators, including search engines, invest a great deal of time and effort in generating geographical databases which are mirrors to Web content with the geographical context often added manually or at best semi-automatically. This process would be substantially aided if data were published on the Web with the appropriate geographic information at the source, thus allowing discovery and access using the standard mechanisms of the Web.
'Geo' is not the only spatial data. In healthcare, for example, polygons may represent pathology tissue segmentation extractions that can be subjected to spatial analysis. Whilst prioritizing geospatial use cases, in so far as is practical, the WG will take account of the needs of other users of spatial technologies.
The term coverage is used to describe a feature whose properties vary with space and / or time; for example, the variation of air temperature within a given geographic region, or the variation of flow rate with time at a hydrological monitoring station.
The Linking Geospatial Data workshop recognized that many relevant standards already exist. These include informal 'community standards' that enjoy widespread adoption (GeoJSON being the prime example) and others for which the formal standardization process has not been completed. Where standards have been completed there are competing ideas and engineers are often unsure which ones to adopt. With these factors in mind, the mission of the joint OGC/W3C Spatial Data on the Web working group is to clarify and formalize the standards landscape around spatial data on the Web. In particular:
- to determine how spatial information can best be integrated with other data on the Web;
- to determine how machines and people can discover that different facts in different datasets relate to the same place, especially when 'place' is expressed in different ways and at different levels of granularity;
- to identify and assess existing methods and tools and then create a set of best practices for their use;
- to complete the standardization of informal technologies already in widespread use.
Within W3C, the Spatial Data on the Web WG is part of the Data Activity.
| End date | 30 July 2016 |
|---|---|
| Confidentiality | Proceedings are public |
| Initial Chairs | Kerry Taylor, CSIRO Ed Parsons, Google |
| Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 20) |
Phil Archer |
| Usual Meeting Schedule | Teleconferences: weekly Face-to-face: twice annually, ideally alternating between an OGC TC and W3C's TPAC |
Scope
The scope of the Spatial Data on the Web Working Group will focus specifically on Web technologies as they may be applied to location. Where relevant, it will promote Linked Data using the 5 Stars of Linked Data paradigm, but this will not be to the exclusion of other technologies.
Out of Scope
The Spatial Data on the Web Working Group must be mindful of the needs of front end Web developers, (see Dependencies & Liaisons) however, it will not develop any geospatial or map rendering technologies. In other words, this WG is focused specifically on the intersection of the issues facing OGC and W3C members.
Relationship with OGC
The SDWWG is a joint W3C/OGC Working Group Outputs will be co-branded with copyright owned by both standards bodies. W3C and OGC will adapt their respective contribution copyright regime in order to allow the contributions to be published by both standards bodies.
Organizations that are members of only one standards body will be strongly encouraged to join the other. It is expected that the WG's chairs and editors will represent organizations that are members of both standards bodies.
The working group will operate according to the Memoradum of Understanding signed by W3C and OGC on DATE.
Deliverables
The titles of the deliverables are not final; the Working Group will have to decide on the final titles as well as the structures of the documents. The Working Group may also decide to merge some deliverables into one document or produce several documents that together constitute one of the deliverables.
- Use Cases and Requirements (Note)
A document setting out the range of problems that the working group is trying to solve.
- Spatial Data on the Web Best Practices (Recommendation)
This will include:
- an agreed spatial ontology conformant to the ISO 19107 abstract model and based on existing available ontologies such as GeoSPARQL, NeoGeo and the ISA Core Location vocabulary;
- advice on use of URIs as identifiers in GI systems;
- advice on providing different levels of metadata for different usage scenarios (from broad sweep metadata to metadata about individual coordinates in a polygon).
- develop advice on, or possibly define, RESTful APIs to return data in a variety of formats including those defined elsewhere, such as GeoJSON, GeoJSON-LD and TopoJSON.
Evidence of implementation will be gathered from national or sector-specific guidelines that reference the best practices.
- Time Ontology in OWL (Recommendation)
The WG will work with the authors of the existing Time Ontology in OWL to complete the development of this widely used ontology through to Recommendation status.
- Semantic Sensor Network Vocabulary (Recommendation)
The WG will work with the members of the former Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group to develop its ontology into a formal Recommendation, noting the work to split the ontology into smaller sections to offer simplified access.
- Coverage in Linked Data (Recommendation)
The WG will develop a formal Recommendation for expressing discrete coverage data conformant to the ISO 19123 abstract model. Existing standard and de facto ontologies will be examined for applicability; these will include the RDF Data Cube. The Recommendation will include provision for describing the subset of coverages that are simple timeseries datasets - where a time-varying property is measured at a fixed location. OGC's WaterML 2 Part 1 - Timeseries will be used as an initial basis.
Given that coverage data can often be extremely large in size, publication of the individual data points as Linked Data may not always be appropriate. The Recommendation will include provision for describing an entire coverage dataset and subsets thereof published in more compact formats using Linked Data. For example where a third party wishes to annotate a subset of a large coverage dataset or a data provider wishes to publish a large coverage dataset in smaller subsets to support convenient reuse.
Where deliverables build on prior work, any variance developed by the Spatial Data on the Web WG will be backwards compatible with the existing work. The aim is to formalize existing work, not to replace or compete with it.
Subject to its capacity, the working group may choose to develop additional relevant vocabularies and specifications in response to community demand. For example: a standard method for converting between spatial ontologies; methods to access a subset of a large dataset in terms of its spatial component.
Best Practice Success Criteria
To advance to Proposed Recommendation, evidence will be adduced that each of the best practices have been followed or recommended in at least two environments.
Vocabulary Success Criteria
To advance to Proposed Recommendation, evidence will be adduced that each term in the vocabulary has been used in multiple environments. This will be most strictly applied to terms developed by the WG, less strictly to terms originating from the prior work whose use or otherwise may not be knowable.
Milestones
| Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page. | ||||||
| Deliverable | FPWD | LC | CR | PR | Rec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use Cases and Requirements | December 2014 | March 2015 | ||||
| Best Practices | March 2015 | September 2015 | December 2015 | April 2016 | June 2016 | |
| Time Ontology in OWL | March 2015 | September 2015 | December 2015 | April 2016 | June 2016 | |
| Semantic Sensor Network | June 2015 | December 2015 | February 2016 | April 2016 | June 2016 | |
| Coverage in Linked Data | June 2015 | December 2015 | February 2016 | April 2016 | June 2016 | |
Timeline View Summary
- September 2014: First teleconference
- November 2014: First face-to-face meeting (tentative)
- December 2014: UCR First Public Working Draft
- March 2015: Best Practices & Time Ontology FPWD
- June 2015: SSN & Coverage to FPWD
- September 2015: Best Practices & Time Ontology to Last Call
- December 2015: Best Practices & Time Ontology to Candidate Recommendation, SSN & Coverage to Last Call
- April 2016: All standards to Proposed Recommendation
- June 2016: All standards to Recommendation