First Idea of a GGOS-Portal
At the Unified Analysis Workshop the first ideas of a GGOS-Portal was presented.
Position Paper about GGOS-Portal and Metadata Flow – Bernd Richter & Carey Noll – PDF file
Community Survey
GGOS conducted a survey in April and March 2023 to inquire the opinions of geodetic data users on data availability and visibility and to identify requirements for a comprehensive and user-friendly GGOS Portal. In addition GGOS obtained an overview of the current availability of data products and their metadata.
195
participants from
57
countries
Survey Results
All results of this community survey are published here:
In addition the final results of this survey will be presented at the IUGG General Assembly 2023 and the GGOS Days 2023.
GGOS-Portal Introduction
The services of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) provide very important and valuable geodetic data, information, and data products that are increasingly relevant for Earth System research, including monitoring of global change phenomena and a wide range of diverse applications such as satellite navigation, surveying, mapping, engineering, geospatial information systems, and so on.
Currently, it is difficult for many people to obtain an overview of all available geodetic products and data. The Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) of the IAG aims to fill this gap by developing the GGOS-Portal, which will serve as a unique search and access point for geodetic data and products (one-stop shop). Data and products will be described by detailed metadata and remain physically located at their originating data centers of each contributing IAG service and other data providers. The GGOS-Portal will only synchronize the provided metadata and include it in its platform to ensure better discoverability. In the long term, the GGOS-Portal can provide a set of tools for organized knowledge search, including visualization to support identification and selection of appropriate resources (information, data, products).
In general, geodetic data portals are a dime a dozen. However, the GGOS portal will be much more than just a data portal for geodetic data from the IAG Services. The combination of the easy understandable descriptions of products and observation techniques with this comprehensive source of detailed geodetic metadata makes the future GGOS portal unique.
Prominent examples for existing Metadata Portals are the GEOSS-Portal, the GNSS Metadata Portal Europe, the EPOS: GNSS Product Portal Europe and the Metadata Information System at BKG, Germany.
What is Metadata & DOI’s for Geodetic Data?
Metadata is data that provides information about the actual data, but not its content.
How does Metadata look like?
Metadata of geodetic data and products can contain several types of information. That can consist of general descriptions like title, data format, version, date, link to the data, contact person, … and of detailed descriptions like antenna type, receiver type, analyzing method, used models, …
What are Metadata Standards?
To make metadata comparable it is beneficial to use common metadata standards / schemas such as a simple Sitelog, GeodesyML, ISO19115, Dublin Core Format, etc.
How can Metadata be provided?
Geodetic metadata can be made available in the internet via various ways:
- That could be a simple website where the geodetic data is described. In this case it is favorable to provide the metadata in a machine-readable format (e.g. XML or JSON). This is used, for example, for DOI metadata or GeodesyML.
- Another way is to provide a metadata file (e.g. *.txt, *.log, Sitelog, …) on a server which can be accessed via (S)FTP or HTTP(S) request.
- A provison of metadata by standardized Interfaces or API is also possible. There are several standards in use (e.g. OAI-PMH interface, RESTful interface, OGC web feature service, …). This allows easy synchronization (harvesting) of metadata for metadata portals like the GGOS Portal.
What are DOI’s for Geodetic Data?
To make geodetic data and products FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) it is advantageous to assign DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for them (e.g. http://doi.org/10.5880/ICGEM.2019.011). This allows citability and scientific recognition.
Looking more closely at DOIs for geodetic data, they consists of metadata provided in a standardized metadata schema and available on a website (landing page) that is also machine-readable (e.g., XML format). If you want to read more, please visit the page of the GGOS Working Group on DOI’s for geodetic Data Sets.
History of the GGOS-Portal
2007
2009
GGOS Book - Detailed Description of a GGOS-Portal
In a chapter of the “Global Geodetic Observing System” book (Springer) the structure of the GGOS-Portal was defined.
2009-2011
First GGOS-Portal Prototype
The first prototype of the GGOS portal (ggos-portal.org) was developed by BKG (Germany) using the GeoNetwork Software Package.
GGOS-Portal Screenshot – IAG Travaux Report 2007-2011
Presentation “GGOS Portal and Meta Data” – Bernd Richter & Carey Noll – PDF File
2012
Stop of GGOS-Portal developments
For personnel reasons, the development of the GGOS-Portal at BKG was discontinued.
2020
Building up a GGOS Information Platform
One vision of the GGOS-Portal was to serve as a point of entry to geodesy with easy understandable explanations about geodetic observations, geodetic products and the services of the IAG. This objective was realized by redeveloping the GGOS website ggos.org at the GGOS Coordinating Office at BEV (Austria) together with experts of the whole IAG-GGOS community.
geodetic observations, geodetic products and the IAG services
2022
Revival of the GGOS Portal
After finishing the development of the new GGOS website ggos.org the GGOS Coordinating Office started to revive the idea of the GGOS-Portal to make geodetic observation data and products more easily discoverable and accessible through attractively illustrated metadata.
Presentation “GGOS-Portal – Revival of a Metadata Platform” – Martin Sehnal – GGOS Days 2022 – PDF File DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7321835
2023
Community Survey
Starting a community survey to inquired the opinions of geodetic data users and providers.
