Building Quality Interoperability in GEOSS;TheGeoViQua role

J. Masó1. P. Diaz1, I. Serral1 and X. Pons2

1 Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications,

UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain.

2 Geography Department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona

08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain.

New technologies as Internet map browsers allow data to be available to everyone and rapidly exchangedalthoughthis situationcanlead to aloss of appreciation of the uncertaintiesassociatedtodata, with therisk of being used in an inappropriate manner or generate inaccurate studies or conclusions. These aspects are particularly relevant when the information is used in sensitive topics such as the anthropogenic climate change.Nowadays, during the processes of the creation of these datasets, strict protocols are followed in order to determine the accuracy and usability of data. Unfortunately, in many cases this information remains only in the producer organization or it is not expressed in a widely accessible manner.

To add more complexity, quality is a generic and sometimes subjective term defined in the ISO standards as: "the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs”. This seems a reasonable definition of quality as applied to both data and services. The problem with the quality concept is that it is not really clear what is meant when saying a data set "is of good quality". Different people might interpret this in different ways.

With the aim of increasing users trust in GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) products and reflecting some quality indicators, GEO (Groups of Earth Observations) has set the ST-09-02task.Participants are defining a GEO Label (ST-09-02, Draft GEO Label Concept, Doc.Id: GELACO Version 0.1, 18 Sept 2010) which shall address aspects of "quality, relevance and acceptance" in GEOSS products and services.One of the most obvious purposes for a GEO Label would be to help users to discover and use geospatial data more effectively. At the moment, GEOSS contains a large amount of data constantly growing and a GEO Label could facilitate searching by providing users a visual clue of dataset quality and its possible relevance.

GEOSS is initially a ten-year project (covering the period 2005-2015), sponsored by 85 countries and major international organizations including NASA, ESA and JAXAspace agencies. Its goal is to create a global public network of Earth observation data easy to use and available in real time. Its content and accessibility will have a global impact, enhancing the understanding of the dynamics of the planet and influencing environmental policies.

The European Commission, in the 7th Framework Program,funds the best initiatives, such as GeoViQua (the contraction of GEOSS Visualization and Quality, being the exact title “QUAlity aware VIsualisation for the Global Earth Observation system of systems”), in order to improve GEOSS and push its development further.This 3 year project, started on February 2011, has a total budget of about 4 million Euros, 3.2 million of which are funded by the European Commission.

GeoViQua will attach standard quality metadata, making it available to users and experts that will produce more reliable studies about environmental systems and their dynamics. This project aims to develop a rigorous estimation framework for quality, uncertainty and usability of global environmental data and to disseminate the quality information to users via browsers and data viewers. The initiative iscoordinated byCREAF, a Catalan research centre, and involves9 morepartners: a Spanish university (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), two English universities (Aston University, University of Reading), a French research centre (Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique -CEA- Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l'Environnement -LSCE-), an Italian research centre, (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche -CNR- Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis -IMAA-), aGerman research centre (Fraunhofer-Institut Graphische Datenverarbeitung) and two SME (52 North, S[]t coorp) and the European Space Agency.

For the GEOSS datasets (that comes from organizations like FAO, the World Meteorological Organization, the European Environment Agency, etc) GeoViQua is working on provide methodologies to enhance data documentation, standardized quality parameters and metrics, and extracting them from data sources, validation procedures, or even though expert users comments and ways to search data using this parameters as criteria. Another important aspect that GeoViQua is starting to address is how quality parameters, can be presented to the users in web browsers and virtual globes. Since data quality can be expressed in different form (e.g. single number, data tables, quality assessment reports, arrays of ground control points or even as a collection of coverage datasets, etc), several scenarios are foreseen.

Developed solutions will be tested on a collection of pilot cases (PC): Transversal satellite data processors (RS_PC); Global Carbon Project (CarbonPC); meteorological reanalysis (ClimPC); agricultural products (AgriPC); air quality in-situ sensors (AirQuaPC); marine fisheries (FisheryPC) and land cover changes (LandPC).

Results coming from the GeoViQua project will help to implement other international data sharing initiatives, like the INSPIRE directive, providing criteria for defining a minimum set of conditions to be respected in order to ensure a coherent approach to the provision of access to spatial data, sets and services.Once the quality, uncertainty and reliability of environmental data are estimated, the data will be available for experts so they could draw conclusions based on more reliable information. Thus, when a catastrophic event occurs, as happened in Haiti last year, the right geospatial data can be quickly obtained, allowing assessment of the situation and a rapid actionby ensuring that data quality is well characterized and thus the best information available is used. The components developed through thisproject will be compatible with the standards of mass market:web geoportals as well asmapping tools like Google Earth, other 3D visualization tools and mobile devices.