The Spatial Information Services Stack (SISS)

The wealth of Australian observation scientific dat a holdings was previously only available to industr y and researchers by contacting each data provider individually, and then deciphering and reformatting the local content , a process which often takes up to 60-80% of the project time and re sources. The Spatial Information Services Stack (SISS) provi des the technology required to publish data online in a common format, using agreed terminology for common concept s, delivered using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards directly from each data custodians’ data store. It is built upon components from multiple open source projects in various domains in order to promote interoperability of spa tial data. The Stack standardises on three componen ts: • Format – that defines the semantics and structure; • Content – that standardises the resource content; a nd • Tools that define service interfaces and protocols t ensure that all components may communicate with each other in an interoperable manner. To achieve full interoperability, OGC standards are only the beginning. The various services defined i n the Stack provide a vessel to enable interoperable data exchange. The key to linking resources in this information excha nge model is webservice based access to data, information holdings, and computational services, all using common servi c interfaces and standard (i.e. community agreed) information models . SISS is interoperable with other OGC clients and th e enhancements of the services in the stack (e.g. c omplex feature support in Web Feature Service (WFS), vocabulary se rvic , etc.) have client APIs which can be used by client applications. There is a range of readily available cli nt tools that can interact with the Stack comp nents which rely on supported interoperable interfaces and protocols. O ne of these clients is a sophisticated discovery po rtal, originally developed in AuScope. It is released as an open-sou rce project and may be used by various communities to derive fieldspecific data discovery user interfaces and workflo ws. The impact that access to data from multiple data p roviders in multiple science domains provides is po tentially enormous. SISS has created a huge opportunity that has gone well beyond geosciences, into meteorology and water management and there are many other opportunities t o take this development further. It has already bee n distributed to multiple Australian Government agencies and researc h o ganisations. SISS is a national e-research project supported by CSIRO, AuScope, Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR), the Australian National Data Serv ic (ANDS), the Australian Research Collaboration S ervice (ARCS) through the National Collaborative Research Infrast ructure Strategy (NCRIS) and the Super Science Init iative Investments. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Pavel Golodoniuc is trained in Computer Science with an emphasis on ystem architectures and modelling. Since then he has been working on system design and implementa tio spects of various innovative solutions for co mmercial, industrial and governmental sectors. One of his pro fessional interests is in information management st andards and systems for interoperable data exchange, which incl udes information modelling, visualization, discover y and data delivery service interfaces, and validation. Since joining CSIRO in 2008, Pavel has been involved in t he AuScope project and took an active role introducing the Spatial Inf ormation Services Stack (SISS) to the Australian ge oscience community via close collaborative relationships wit h geological surveys of Australian states and terri tories. Pavel is collaborating closely with the OGC community to fos ter greater standards conformance. He is a leading developer and maintainer of the FullMoon project, which forms an essential part of GML Application Schema modelling framework. Other activities of special interest include sophis ticated data validation services and Web Feature Se rvices for interoperable data exchange. Ryan Fraser is a Project Leader within CSIRO’s Minerals Down U der flagship. He leads several large projects deal ing with the exchange and delivery of spatial informati on and eResearch tools. He manages projects that fo cus on enabling the delivery of data in an interoperable manner to various science domains. He has a software engineer ing background,