Digital Gazetteers in the UK : the geo-X-walk Project at EDINA

Presented by: Andy Corbett (Development Engineer) James S Reid (Project manager) 18.7.02

Roadmap

•Context - JISC , EDINA & gazetteers •Gazetteer Content •Technical and Implementation Issues •The future...

EDINA*

(Edinburgh Data and Information Access) •a JISC-funded national datacentre based at the University of Edinburgh,Scotland • offers the UK tertiary education and research community networked access to a library of data, information and research resources. •services are available free of charge to members of UK tertiary education institutions for academic use, although institutional subscription and end-user registration are required for most services. •30+ services - bibliographic,MPS and geo •Service focus + development project-to-full service strand

* "Edina"

is also the ancient and poetic name for Edinburgh, Scotland.

Robert Burns

wrote "Address To Edinburgh", which begins, "Edina! Scotia's darling seat!"

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is the strategic advisory committee for the UK academic sector.

The JISC Information Environment is…

• • • • • • a national digital library... for higher and further education a managed collection of resources a distributed resource supporting learning and research in the UK heterogeneous… bibliographic, images, data, video, geo-spatial, etc.

an information environment that enables people to discover, access and use a wide variety of quality assured resources simple underlying functional model of the Information Environment - discover, access, use, publish

JISC are interested in applying this model to geographic information and also desire to look for ways to enable geographic searching of the Information Environment

geo-X-walk - a gazetteer service

Digital Gazetteer An electronic list of geographic features together with their associated spatial location Digital Gazetteer Service A network-addressable middle-ware server supporting geographic referencing and searching aim: develop a demonstrator gazetteer service suitable for extension to full service a shared service within the JISC IE phase II demonstrator project - commenced June 2002 builds on the ideas of the ADL

geo-X-walk : Overview

• similar to the ADL approach (Linda Hill et al) • structural model: metadata model v. hierarchical thesaurus • emphasis on

implicit

spatial relationships over explicitly stated relationships • represent objects by correct geometry • feature type thesaurus important • merge data from various sources • comprehensive description but with small set of core elements – temporal aspects of names, footprints, relationships, … – document source, spatial accuracy/scale of footprint • technically challenging and many data related issues….

Geo-parsing & indexing

The geo-X-walk Server

Information server

Searching

Information server

Reference use

Assist information services with searching

• geographic searching is an important and powerful information retrieval facility • need to support a full range of geographic search options • more efficient to map a user view to native spatial coding scheme • use implicit spatial relationships to ‘cross-walk’ between geographies • machine to machine interaction (m2m)

Geo-parsing and indexing

• increasing demand from data providers, archives, libraries, and museums to support geographic searching • BUT large number of information resources NOT geographically indexed • assist in the geo-referencing of information objects – parse documents, metadata records etc. to identify geographic names, features and other geographies – semi automatic indexing • ideally everyone should use standard spatial coding scheme – why? Because wide variety of geographies exist which change over time!

– geographic coordinates preferred choice i.e GB National Grid /lat long – convert into geographic 'footprints’

Reference Use - Example queries

Where is Ormskirk?

What is the county town of Shropshire?

What is at grid ref. NT 258 728?

List me all places ending with ‘chester’ What parishes fall within the Lake District National Park?

On what river is Liverpool situated?

Which Roman roads pass through Leicestershire?

By what alternative names has York been known?

Anticipated uses of gazetteer service

• Reference source for researchers, libraries and museums • Assist metadata creators – Convert different geographic identifiers to standard coding scheme – Geo-parser for semi-automatic indexing – Facilities to resolve variant names etc.

• Provide services with means to support full range of spatial searching – no need to hold data to resolve spatial query • Interest outside academic sector

Roadmap (reprise)

•Gazetteer Content •Technical and Implementation Issues •The future...

• 4 ‘M’s: – Multi-source – Multi-scale – Metadata model – Multi-problem!

Edina Gazetteer

• ‘Near contemporary’ focus

• Boundary data - EDINA UKBORDERS service • Contemporary places - Ordnance Survey • 1:50,000 (medium scale) Placename Gazetteer • 1:1250 (large scale,cartographic) Land-line product • Additional features - range of OS products • miscellaneous ‘special’ gazetteers • e.g. GB Waypoints • a gazetteer of Cold War sites in the UK

Major Issues of: Complexity

Before we started...

Feature Typing Positional accuracy Alternative Names Time stamping Data incompleteness

In particular...

Boundary Complexity

•Over digitisation => thousands of points in a geometry •‘Region’ polygons (i.e. > 1 polygon) •Different sources, different scales - which is ‘correct’?

Placename Problems

•Cartographic vs geographical placement •Feature typing - high proportion of ‘miscellaneous’ features •Placename changes through time •Alternate names e.g. multilingual representations

Licensing

•Stakeholder involvement •Terms and conditions of use

Boundaries in Fife, Scotland

Gazetteer Architecture

• ADL Model • Modified ADL Feature Type Thesaurus • Ingres Relational Database • Spatial Searching

The Future

•Continue database population •Benchmarking alternative implementations bespoke/Oracle/Laser-scan •Interfaces - human:machine / machine:machine •Data issues - rights to data / limitations of use

A going away thought

Contacts and More Info @

http://edina.ac.uk

EDINA Data Library George Square University of Edinburgh EH8 9LJ Scotland,UK Tel: +44 (0)131 651 1383 Fax: +44 (0)131 650 3308 James Reid [email protected]

Contacts and More Info @

http://edina.ac.uk

EDINA Data Library George Square University of Edinburgh EH8 9LJ Scotland,UK Tel: +44 (0)131 651 1383 Fax: +44 (0)131 650 3308 James S Reid [email protected]

Geo-spatial data “data that have some form of spatial or geo graphic reference that enables them to be located in two- or three-dimensional space” Statistical Account of Scotland

NUMBER XIII.

PARISH OF CULLEN.

(COUNTY OF BANFF, SYNOD OF ABERDEEN, PRESBYTERY OF FORDYCE.) By the Rev. Mr. ROBERT GRANT.

Royalty, Extent, Climate, etc.

CULLEN, as appears from old charters, was originally called Inverculan, because it stands upon the bank of the Burn of Cullen, which, at the N. end of the town, falls into the sea: but now it is known by the name of Cullen on ly. Cullen is a royal burgh, formerly a constabulary, of which the Earl of Findlater was hereditary constable. The set, as it is called, of the council, consists of 19, in which num ber are included the Earl of Findlater, hereditary preses, 3 bailies, a treasurer, a dean-of-guild, and 13 counsellors. The parish extends from the sea fouthward, about 2 English miles in length.

Shared services Authentication Authorisation

geo-X-walk

Collect’n Desc Service Desc Resolver Inst’n Profile

JISC Information Environment

Content providers Provision layer Fusion layer

Broker/Aggregator Portal Go-Geo! Portal Portal

End-user Presentation layer

Example application

content provider profiles

initiate search ('Edinburgh') crosswalk spatial component return result set Go-Geo! Portal Gazetteer Server geo-X-walk Geo-parser Server

content spatially indexed

geo-X-walk customised requests geo-parse records (exp)

Content Provider 1 Content Provider 2 Content Provider 3 Content Provider 4

content not spatially indexed

JISC IE