MEDIN Standards Workshop 27 th March 2012 Programme

MEDIN Standards Workshop 27 th March 2012 Programme

MEDIN Standards Workshop The aim of the workshop is to improve the knowledge and use of MEDIN standards and the tools that support them. Mixture of presentations, demonstrations and practicals. • A general introduction to MEDIN • Discovery metadata – introduction to standard and resources, practical use of the on-line tool and metadata maestro tools • Controlled vocabularies – demonstration of access to most commonly used vocabularies • Data Guidelines – introduction and practical • Stylesheets, XML, Schematron

MEDIN Standards Workshop • 3 rd MEDIN Standards Workshop • Feel free to interrupt us and ask questions • Provide feedback

The UK Marine Environmental Data and Information Network Mark Charlesworth– mecha@bodc. ac. uk www. oceannet. org

Content • Importance marine data management • MEDIN outline • MEDIN relationship to UK Location Programme (data. gov) and INSPIRE • Summary

Why is data management in marine sector important? Confidence in assessments and ability to detect trends limited • By lack of access to data • By lack of time to use existing data MEDIN has grown from previous work that have been in operation since 1996 but new push as MEDIN since 2007

Operational MEDIN Seven interlinked work streams: 1. Network of marine Data Archive Centres (DACs) 2. Suite of standards for data and metadata, together with guidelines and tools. 3. Web portal, products and services 4. International awareness, coordination and data delivery to global data-bases 5. Resource and application development 6. Communications: outreach, forums, publicity 7. Management, planning and coordination

Data Archive Centres – the base of MEDIN has built a network of “accredited” marine Data Archive Centres, linked by the adoption of common standards and common descriptions of their data. DAC Network Objective: • To provide secure long-term storage for marine data. • To provide the capability to upload data into and to retrieve data from the DACs. • Data contributors should have free access to their data managed within the DAC framework. Required capabilities of DACs : • To ensure the secure, long term, curation of key marine data sets, according to best practice and to relevant national and international standards. • To make available clear, searchable information on their data holdings, by the generation and publication of metadata on the MEDIN portal. • To form the first point of call of expertise for the management of marine data.

Standards 1) Discovery metadata standard to supportal search. • • Marine themed UK GEMINI 2 and so INSPIRE compliant. Tools. E. g. Metadata Maestro, DASSH on-line tool, stylesheets 2) Data guidelines: Instill good practice, for provision to DACS, specify in contracts, and thematic interoperability • • Commensurate structure to Observations and Measurements e. g. MEDIN data guideline for sediment sampling by grab or core for benthos 3) Controlled Vocabularies • Largely derived from other resources (e. g. Sea. Data. Net, ICES, EPSG) and provided via web services

Standards are governed by the MEDIN Standards WG which meets every 4 -5 months For keeping up to date with development of standards join the MEDIN e-mail listing by e-mailing mecha@bodc. ac. uk and subscribe to Marine Data News http: //www. oceannet. org/marine_data_newsletter/ MEDIN Metadata helpdesk Email: medin. metadata@mba. ac. uk Phone: 01792 633291

Discovery Portal CSW for data. gov ++ is in test phase. Upgrade in pipeline.

MEDIN Data Clause – Good data management is essential if data are to be re-useable. – Often data management is only considered as an afterthought, once the data have been collected, and inadequate resources are allocated • Greater costs to source, reformat, reuse data • Unnecessary expensive resurvey – MEDIN has developed a simple standard data clause that can be included within the tender process, or referenced at the planning stage, to ensure data management is properly planned

Operational MEDIN Metadata (discovery) Discovery Portal Metadata Data Archived Data+Metadata Data Flexibility for range of organisational technical capacities and needs

MEDIN relationship to data. gov +++? • MEDIN represents the marine community on the UK Location Information Interoperability Board • Aim is that MEDIN can (if required) meet partners’ metadata/data publishing obligations under INSPIRE • MEDIN will publish all MEDIN metadata (on request) through to UK node and hence to INSPIRE. • MEDIN DACs to provide the view and download service

The MEDIN Approach to INSPIRE implementation Metadata (discovery) Data Archived Discovery Portal CSW Data. gov +++ Annex 13 ++ view and download

Summary • MEDIN is working with a specific community to improve data management and access for a wide range of drivers • While doing that we are adopting INSPIRE standards to enable partners to meet INSPIRE requirements if needed • Thematic approaches do get involvement from non data managers and thus improve the stakeholder requirements. • Relationships evolve

An introduction to the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard

What is metadata and what should I do with it? Put simply, discovery metadata is information about a data set. For example, a metadata record typically contains information about the title of a data set, the geographic scope, when it was last updated and the contact details of the person who owns it. Put another way, discovery metadata provides information about, or documentation of, datasets managed within an organisation or application.

Discovery Metadata Standard Used to describe datasets (or series or services) so that a user can easily discover them using a portal and find details to where he/she can access them Standard composed of ‘elements’ (e. g. title, begin date, contact, access conditions) XML is used to encode the record so that it becomes machine readable. MEDIN has produced a guidance document, validation tool (schematron) and tools to create and test metadata records

Discovery Metadata Standard - Introduction http: //www. oceannet. org/marine_data_standards/medin_disc_stnd. html

Discovery Metadata Standard - Guidance Compliant with the ISO 19115 (Geographic information – Metadata), INSPIRE and UK GEMINI 2 and uses the ISO 19139 schema set for encoding xml Short, simple version available!

Discovery Metadata Standard - Marine The MEDIN standard specifies use of certain vocabularies (term lists) to make it ‘marine flavoured’ • Keywords: Sea. Data. Net parameter discovery vocab (e. g. Fish taxonomy related counts; temperature of the water column) • Keywords: Sea. Data. Net vertical coverage terms (e. g. epipelagic; benthic boundary layer) • Spatial Reference System: European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) geodetic parameters (e. g. EPSG: : 4326) • Data format: MEDIN (e. g. delimited; image; GIS) • Organisations: Sea. Data. Net European Directory of Marine Organisations (EDMO)

Discovery Metadata Standard - Parameters P 231 MEDIN Parameter Disciplines (12 terms) INSPIRE themes ISO Topic Categories P 031 Sea. Data. Net Parameter Groups (~54 terms) MSFD Indicators Criteria Descriptors P 021 Sea. Data. Net Parameter Discovery Vocab (~380 terms) Specific Need Vocabs E. g. Wind farm development stages Submit once use many times!

Discovery Metadata Standard - Tools 1. On-line metadata generation/editing tool 2. Desktop tool – Metadata Meastro. Can work in stand alone mode. Soon to be extended to GEMINI 2.

Discovery Metadata Standard - Tools 3. A tool which will assist in transforming already populated metadatabases into MEDIN format XML metadata. Designed so that organisations who hold their own metadata can transfer their data into this structure from which a tool can be applied to produce xml records. Guidance document available. 4. Specific tools for GIS users: Stylesheet for transforming Arc. Cat ESRI ISO standard metadata to MEDIN standard. Arc 9 stylesheet no longer supported. Arc 10 stylesheet now available.

Discovery Metadata Standard - Validation Important to be able to test the structure and content of the xml records once produced to ensure that they comply with the standard. A Schematron has been developed (compliant with ISO 19757 (Part 3) Information technology -- Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) -- Part 3: Rule-based validation – Schematron). Used in many different circumstances and tools so that if the standard changes it only requires one update rather than various validation methods for different applications This schematron ‘sits’ at the end of the on-line metadata editor tool in a validation step. Can be used by organisations to test transfer between metadata holdings.

Discovery Metadata Standard - Schematron Guidance document on the schematron – technical Guidance document on using the schematron in software ‘Oxygen’ - aimed at more lay user.

What is a dataset? • All metadata records can be harvested (and produced primarily for) by the portal. • It is important that the portal is not swamped with records or not rich enough to be useful to the user • MEDIN guidance on website

What is a dataset? • the correct level for a dataset is a cruise, survey or a set of repeat observations with a common purpose, • a data set usually constitutes a specificallyfunded piece of work, • the dataset should be easily extractable from a database for a 3 rd party, • if you are searching for a data set using a portal and get the result every time you search by different combinations of time, location and parameter then it is probably too coarse.

Updating the MEDIN discovery standard • Standards evolve! • MEDIN has placed itself to be close to, and feed into, any changes in standard that could influence our own. • Members of the MEDIN standards WG also are represented on various Location Programme, INSPIRE and BSI groups. • Sign up to the e-mail list to be kept up to date of changes

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