CREAF colaborate with OGC on a standard way to encode users’ comments on spatial databases

John Maso, CREAF researcher organizes the group named Geospatial User Feedback Standards Working Group with Sim Thum Fraunhofer Institute and Lucy Basten Aston University.

Members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) have formed an OGC Geospatial User Feedback Standards Working Group (SWG). The purpose of this SWG will be to reach consensus on a standard way to encode users’ comments on the results those users obtain when querying spatial databases. This effort has the potential to improve metadata, complement the producer quality indicators, extend the documentation about usability and usage of datasets, help data producers improve their data collection and publishing methods, and ultimately improve the quality of the data as well as the quality of analyses performed on the data.

The OGC Geospatial User Feedback SWG charter can be downloaded fromhttps://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/59800.

The explosive growth of geospatial data and related metadata has decreased the efficiency of data search catalogues. That is, the increase in the number of data resources often makes the discovery of a dataset that fits user requirements very time consuming. To make searches more efficient, many projects, such as GeoViQua (www.geoviqua.org/), are collecting user feedback. All would benefit from a common user feedback model that is easy to implement, simple enough for the user to understand, and powerful enough to provide useful information for data providers.

The GeoViQua User Feedback Model (http://www.geoviqua.org/UserFeedbackSystem.htm) offers a starting point for this discussion.

The SWG’s first task is to develop a conceptual model that will serve the purpose of creating one or more encodings for user feedback.

The Geospatial User Feedback SWG convenors invite the participation of interested parties from across a broad range of the geosciences, academic institutions, and commercial and government organizations that are interested in improving metadata catalogues and discovery portals so that they provide users with better, more “fit for use” results and data assessment capabilities.

The conveners of the GFU SWG are Joan Masó of CREAF, Simon Thum of the Fraunhofer Institute and Lucy Bastin of Aston University.

The following charter members of the SWG are committed to the charter and projected meeting schedule. Others may join this list before the SWG is officially chartered.
Joan Masó – CREAF
Lucy Bastin – Aston University
Veronica Guidetti – European Space Agency
Lorenzo Bigagli – CNR Institute for Atmospheric Pollution Research
Simon Thum – Fraunhofer Institute
Daniel Nüst – 52° North
Erin Robinson – Foundation for Earth Science
Ted Habermann – HDF Group
Dorothea B DeHart – National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency