The National Map Collaboration (27G9)
Currently The National Map (TNM) data layers base map and goes beyond other National Maps, such as the Ordinance Survey, by including environmental and human use information. (27GA)
SOCoP has discussed common interests with Dalia Veranka at USGS to improve semantics for such things as TNM. As a result the SOCoP workshop in Nov. 2009 included a session on vocabulary standardization to support TNM ontology efforts. Some notes by Gary Berg-Cross captured at this meeting are reproduced below. {nid 27GE} See SocoproundtableVocamp_national_map_summary_notes for a summary of the Round Table. (27HA)
Dalia provided a brief status update on TNM work. See National Map slides SOCoPworkshop2009 Dalia.ppt available on http://semanticommunity.wik.is/Spatial_Ontology_Community_of_Practice/2009_SOCoP_Workshop (27HG)
This noted that current TNM vocabulary is “ESRI-centered and relies on a 20th century geo model and data model. (27GF)
This is OK, but not aligned to current models and will become increasingly so. To move forward best practice data has been entered into Oracle 11g triple store and progress is being made with TNM data to move it farther along. (27GG)
As of Dec. 2009 a portion of this data, hydrology data, is stored in Oracle and represented in OWL. This sample Oracle database has National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) for 6 watersheds in geographically diverse areas of the U.S. It also includes 2 urban areas (St. Louis and Atlanta) These are more sophisticated and go beyond the base map by the use of Classes for GeoNames etc. and will include all 8 data layers. This .owl file has classes, definitions, and namespaces for hydrography data derived from the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), USGS Geonames, and the Spatial Data Transfer Standard (STDS). (27GB)
This work is being integrated with the TopBraid composer where taxonomies and instances will be stored but this is preliminary and thus could not yet commit to having this for the Nov. workshop. Dalia noted that someone may want to review this as a test of reference model ideas to see if they might be used and explored within the effort. Some members of SOCop expressed interest in looking at it and work on it. (27GH)
For more information and updates see cegis.usgs.gov/ontology.html. (27GC)
You can also contact the SOCoP Executive Secretary - Dr. Gary Berg-Cross via email to: gbergcross [at] gmail.com (27GD)