[Geodata] Community Schemas: Making sense out of disparate data sets

[Cameron Shorter]

OSGeo Data Committee,
I've been hearing that people here in Australia have been forwarding 
this essay below to decision makers and hence thought I should make sure 
you guys know about it. I believe the essay covers a number of issues 
touched on by Schuyler's presentation at FOSS4G. (Excellent 
presentation, despite being recorded through a handy cam and posted to 
the web.)

http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2008/10/community-schemas-making-sense-out-of.html

I've written the essay hoping to encourage data providers to think 
beyond putting their data online, and to get them to work out how to get 
their data into usable formats.


      Community Schemas: Making sense out of disparate datasets
      <http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2008/10/community-schemas-making-sense-out-of.html>


With so many organizations publishing geospatial datasets using 
standards based web services, a raft of new opportunities for large 
scale data analysis are presenting themselves. The challenge now is 
integrating the datasets which use different terms and attributes to 
describe the same data. For example, "water quality" (good, medium, bad) 
in one database might equate to "pollution level" (1,2,3,4,5) in another.

...

The rest of the essay is at:
http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2008/10/community-schemas-making-sense-out-of.html

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
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