Red

La membresía de ICAN está abierta a todas las partes interesadas que aceptan la misión y los objetivos de ICAN, incluidos aquellos que tienen un Atlas web costero operativo, así como aquellos que esperan diseñar y construir un Atlas web.

Internacional

ICAN es un proyecto del Programa IODE de la COI de la UNESCO, y los miembros de ICAN buscan desempeñar un papel de liderazgo en la creación de colaboraciones internacionales de valor para las naciones participantes, optimizando así la gobernanza regional en la gestión de zonas costeras y la planificación espacial marina.

Atlas

Los atlas son "...colecciones de mapas digitales y conjuntos de datos con tablas complementarias, ilustraciones e información que ilustran sistemáticamente la costa, a menudo con herramientas cartográficas y de apoyo a la toma de decisiones, todas las cuales son accesibles a través de Internet.."  O'Dea et al., 2007

Costeros

Vivimos en un planeta azul, con océanos y mares que cubren más del 70% de la superficie de la Tierra. Los océanos nos alimentan, regulan nuestro clima y generan la mayor parte del oxígeno que respiramos. Aproximadamente el 37% de la población mundial vive a menos de 100 km de la costa. (UNEP)

¡Únete a nosotros!

Smart Atlas Enhances Marine Data Sharing in Africa

Ali Al Othman(Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.), Yassine Lassoued(Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.)
Coastal and Marine Research Centre, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

As part of UNESCO’s International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) Ocean Data and Information Network of Africa (ODINAFRICA) project, the Coastal and Marine Research Centre (CMRC) has developed a second version of the underlying technology used in the Marine Irish Digital Atlas (MIDA: http://mida.ucc.ie ). This system called Smart Atlas is being deployed and used by ODINAFRICA partners. Smart Atlas includes up-to-date web mapping technologies to make it easier to explore coastal and marine information through the development of web-enabled, customised Geographic Information System (GIS) that allows users to visualise and identify marine sources of data. A key feature of Smart Atlas is that it promotes and supports distributed marine dataset sharing, which is vital to facilitate marine information exchange between coastal African states.

Figure 1: Smart Atlas View Services. This example shows bathymetry around southern Ireland.

This project follows INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) Directive recommendations for Data discovery, view, and download services. Being conformant to well established web services makes the services developed available to other organisations to consume and view with minimum effort of integration. The new web client mapping application features expanded functionality, plug-in-free animation, and a new architecture with a rich user experience for every browser. The system provides greater accessibility to data and information in the form of a web enabled and customized GIS, data access and data analysis combined with mapping tools for identification of data sources, visualisation, management, and analysis for different use case scenarios.

Smart Atlas is developed using open source software technology with greater performance, a much more simplified, flexible, and customisable interface using the latest JavaScript frameworks and it supports new mapping tools for adding features, zooming, drawing, measuring, and customised printing. Smart Atlas Layers contain views of layers organised in different tabs with built-in base layers, such as Google maps and Open Street maps, overlays that includes the atlas layers and selected layers that contains the list of active layers, sorted by depth, with the possibility of changing the layer order and layer transparency.

Smart Atlas introduces the integration of Catalogue Services for the Web (CSW). The atlas can be configured to connect to metadata catalogue servers (e.g. Geonetwork, ESRI ArcServer, etc.) so that users can search for data layers within the atlas or other metadata stores included in the search through the distributed CSWs.

Metadata provides information about the content, purpose, location of the data, as well as quality and reliability of the data itself. Using standard metadata web protocols makes the mediation and integration between different metadata providers seamless. Standardised metadata supports users in accessing data by using a common set of terminology and metadata elements. This allows for a quick means of data discovery and retrieval from metadata catalogue servers. The metadata based on standards ensures information consistency and quality, and avoids the loss of important knowledge about the data.

Smart Atlas supports distributed Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) search. The search can be done through a simple and advanced search. The user can simply enter free text in a box and hit the search button or do an advanced search using more detailed criteria like controlled vocabulary keywords that support a more standard search based on  keywords pubpublished by standardization organizations. Users can also select a geographic extent for the searched metadata records. Participating metadata server catalogues can be selected by the user to be validated and included in the search.

Figure 2: Example of a summary metadata record returned from a search. Data visualisation and download is also available.

Three methods are used for presenting metadata record search results. These are Summary metadata record, Full metadata record and FAQ Metadata record viewed as a simple FAQ style where basic questions/answers about the metadata record are presented.

Once a particular metadata record is presented, it is also possible to either download the datasets associated with it or overlay these datasets on the mapping area through Web Map Service (WMS) for further analysis. This is designed to enhance spatial information exchange, and promote sharing between different organisations through instant search on local and distributed geospatial catalogues.

The CMRC is making Smart Atlas available for download and use via an open source free software license. Contact Ali Al Othman for further details and for the available support options. A Smart Atlas user training workshop for ODINAFRICA participants will take place  in Nairobi, Kenya from 24 - 28 September 2012.

Activities of the ICAN Technical Team

Roy Lowry (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.) and Adam Leadbetter (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.), BODC, Liverpool, UK,
Declan Dunne(Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.) and Yassine Lassoued (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.) , Coastal and Marine Research Centre (CMRC), Cork, Ireland,
Tanya Haddad (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.), Oregon Coastal Atlas Project, USA,
Liz O’Dea (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.) State of Washington Department of Ecology, USA

ICAN Cookbooks

The last issue of the ICAN newsletter (Volume One, Number 1, March 2012) outlined the need for technical training material for costal web atlas developers in the form of cookbooks, and how the NETMAR project has produced cookbooks to contribute to this training material. In June 2012, the NETMAR team has revised and updated these cookbooks based on feedback. The cookbooks explain key information behind NETMAR’s ICAN demonstration pilot. Central to these cookbooks is material to help atlas developers connect to the International Coastal Web Atlas (ICWA) prototype. It is a prototype atlas mediator that provides a common interface for accessing distributed local atlases, such as MIDA (Marine Irish Digital Atlas), OCA (Oregon Coastal Atlas), Washington Coastal Atlas (WCA), etc. It uses a knowledge organization system to improve data discovery by exploiting the semantics of keywords and allowing users to search data by “meaning” rather than by “mere keywords”.

Four cookbooks are included which covers key material concerning the technologies and standards utilised by the ICWA prototype:

  • Understanding Semantics;
  • Understanding Metadata;
  • Establishing a CSW metadata catalogue with GeoNetwork; and
  • Connecting your Atlas to the ICWA prototype.

The “Understanding Semantics” cookbook provides a tutorial for those who wish to investigate and make use of semantic web and knowledge organization system technologies. These technologies fall broadly into three groups: vocabularies, thesauri and ontologies. This cookbook includes material explaining how to deploy semantics that are required by the ICWA prototype, utilising the NERC Vocabulary Server (NVS) infrastructure.

The “Understanding Metadata” cookbook provides a tutorial for those who wish to understand metadata. Included is a description of metadata and why we need it, metadata standards in use today, description of different metadata hierarchy levels, and a list of some metadata editing tools available. The section also references example metadata records aimed at system developers who are familiar with ISO 19115/19119 metadata implemented in ISO 19139 XML. These metadata examples include semantic keywords which are registered in the NVS.

The “Establishing a CSW metadata catalogue with GeoNetwork opensource” cookbook provides a tutorial for those who wish to understand CSW (Catalog Services for the Web) metadata catalogues. Included is a description of a metadata catalogue, the CSW standard, and a list of selected CSW servers. The document also contains initial pointers to establishing a CSW server using GeoNetwork open source and examples of selected CSW query operations aimed at system developers. GeoNetwork is recommended and used by the NETMAR project.

The “Connecting your Atlas to the ICWA prototype” cookbook provides a step-by-step guide explaining how to connect a local atlas as a node in the ICWA prototype utilising technologies and standards described in the other cookbooks. This cookbook specifies the ICWA connection requirements including metadata (ISO 19115/19119/19139), CSW metadata catalogues (CSW 2.0.2, ISO Metadata Application Profile version 1.0.0), and supported ISO 19139 encoding forms for semantic keywords.

The four cookbooks are available in a single PDF file that is currently located at: http://netmar.nersc.no/sites/netmar.nersc.no/files/D7.9.2_ICAN_semantic_cookbooks_r2_20120731_0.pdf

Please get in touch with Coastal and Marine Research Centre (CMRC) if you wish to give feedback.

International Coastal Web Atlas prototype

The Geomatics team of the CMRC, University College Cork (UCC), in partnership with the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), are currently developing the third version of the International Coastal Web Atlas (ICWA) prototype as part of the EU FP7 NETMAR project. ICWA 3 will replace the current ICAN prototype and aims to become an operational web application that allows seamless and semantically enabled access to the ICAN atlases.

ICWA 3, which will be released by the end of October 2012, will include the following features and improvements since version 2:

  • a standardised semantic resource structure based on SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System);
  • an advanced thesaurus browser that displays term hierarchies, related terms, definitions, synonyms, etc. (Figure 1);
  • smart search;
  • the ability to connect an atlas without requirements for ontology development;
  • improved storage and management of ontologies with faster access;
  • a standardised semantic web service (SWS) will allow external applications to interact with the ICAN thesauri;
  • support for Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) 2.0.1 and CSW 2.0.2 nodes,
  • support for CSW 2.0.2 queries; and
  • improved search performance.

Para nuestras Costas

Vol, 8, Nr 2 - Now Available!

We are now entering our 9th year publishing the ICAN newsletter. Many thanks to our Editor Andy Sherin!

Please consider preparing an article for the next newsletter that will likely be published in the spring of this year.

Happy New Year!

Photos from CoastGIS 2018

Our friends from CoastGIS 2018 have posted a wonderful gallery of photos, including the recent ICAN mini-workshop:

See how many ICAN members you can spot!