index.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/</link><atom:link href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><description>IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information</description><generator>Source Themes Academic (https://sourcethemes.com/academic/)</generator><language>en-us</language><copyright>©2026</copyright><lastBuildDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2025 01:19:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><image><url>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/images/logo_hu556023c174f0ef5e821f1e2b97121874_339048_300x300_fit_lanczos_2.png</url><title>IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/</link></image><item><title>Newsletter Issue 11</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-11/</link><pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2025 01:19:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-11/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter--issue-11--october-2025">Newsletter | Issue 11 | October 2025&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/2025_CGI_Newsletter_I11.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2024</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2024/</link><pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2025 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2024/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 10</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-10/</link><pubDate>Thu, 12 Dec 2024 14:19:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-10/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter--issue-10--december-2024">Newsletter | Issue 10 | December 2024&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/2024_CGI_Newsletter_I10.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2023</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2023/</link><pubDate>Tue, 12 Mar 2024 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2023/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 9</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-9/</link><pubDate>Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:19:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-9/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter--issue-9--december-2023">Newsletter | Issue 9 | December 2023&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_2023_December.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Meetings on the Status and Future of Global Geoscience Information Standards</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/global-geoscience-standards/</link><pubDate>Tue, 10 Oct 2023 14:19:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/global-geoscience-standards/</guid><description>&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geoscience-information-standards-for-dde-workshop---7---8-november-2023">Geoscience information standards for DDE Workshop - 7 - 8 November 2023&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#agenda-subject-to-change">Agenda (subject to change)&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#future-geoscience-information-standards-forum---9---10-november-2023">Future Geoscience Information Standards Forum - 9 - 10 November 2023&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#agenda-as-participants-are-confirmed-this-agenda-will-be-updated">Agenda (as participants are confirmed, this agenda will be updated)&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#background-of-geoscience-information-standards">Background of Geoscience Information Standards&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#present-geoscience-information-standards-landscape">Present Geoscience Information Standards Landscape&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#the-ongoing-need-for-geoscience-information-standards">The Ongoing Need for Geoscience Information Standards&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/Meetings_Suzhou_Nov2023.pdf">View this article as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI in partnership with IUGS’s Deep-time Digital Earth Project are hosting in-person meetings in Suzhou, China, 7-10 November 2023, on the Status and Future of Global Geoscience Information Standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>There are two meetings, described in more detailed below:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>7 - 8 November - Geoscience Information Standards for DDE Workshop&lt;/li>
&lt;li>9 - 10 November - Future Geoscience Information Standards Forum &lt;strong>(invitation only)&lt;/strong>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>10 November CGI Council Meeting&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>For more information on these meetings contact
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.org/author/dr-zhang-minghua/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;u>Dr Zhang
Minghua&lt;/u>&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geoscience-information-standards-for-dde-workshop---7---8-november-2023">Geoscience information standards for DDE Workshop - 7 - 8 November 2023&lt;/h2>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Kunshan Xin Place Hotel, Suzhou, China&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Deep-time Digital Earth Standards Task Group&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Deep-time Digital Earth Secretariat&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;p>The Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) Project involves many science working groups organized around geoscience domains building interconnected digital information to enable massive-scale computing applications in earth science and Earth history. Effective communication of information relies heavily on the adoption of geoscience standards to ensure FAIRness of data. This workshop will evaluate the current status of geoscience information standards implementation in the DDE science working groups, identify areas where standards could facilitate information exchange and map out the steps needed to achieve good standards implementation. Our &lt;strong>objective&lt;/strong> will be to optimize coordination and planning of geoscience standards, to support the success of DDE to enable acceleration of research and provision of benefits to support science to manage earth resources and address challenges of climate change.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The workshop is being coordinated through the DDE Standards Task Group led by Prof. Harvey Thorleifson, Prof. Zhang Minghua, Dr Mark Rattenbury and François Robida.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="agenda-subject-to-change">Agenda (subject to change)&lt;/h3>
&lt;table style="width:100%;">
&lt;colgroup>
&lt;col style="width: 8%" />
&lt;col style="width: 14%" />
&lt;col style="width: 62%" />
&lt;col style="width: 14%" />
&lt;/colgroup>
&lt;thead>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Date&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Time&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Topics&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Chair&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th rowspan="12">&lt;p>7 Nov&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Tue&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="3">&lt;strong>Day 1. Global information standards and the DDE
major science program&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>8:00-9:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Registration&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th rowspan="4">DDE Secretariat, DDE-STG PIs&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>9:00-9:50&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>Opening&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome by CGI Chair Prof. Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Address by IUGS President, Prof. John Ludden (TBC)&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Address by DDE Secretary general Prof. Natarajan Ishwaran&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome by Suzhou City&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th rowspan="2">9:50-10:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>Keynote Presentations&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Role of Geoscience Information Standards for international
initiatives and programs – François Robida (15 min)&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>The Deep-time Digital Earth major science program – Prof. Hans Thybo
(15 min)&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>Release of the DDE geoscience information metadata standard – Prof.
Zhang Minghua and Dr Steve Richard (10 min)&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>10:30-11:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Group Photo and Coffee Break&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>11:00-12:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>DDE Science Working Groups progress and plans:&lt;/strong>
with emphasis on standards. (10 min + 5 min discussion each)&lt;/p>
&lt;ol type="1">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Geological mapping – Dr Benjamin Sautter and Dr Song Yang&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Stratigraphy – Prof. Fan Junxuan&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Petrology database and standard (Igneous Rock) – Prof. Wang Tao and
Dr Ding Yi&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Geological time standard – Prof. Li Xianhua and Dr Li Yang&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Marginal Seas – Dr. Jinpeng Zhang and Xinong Xie&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Mineral resource assessment (Porphyry copper) – Dr Yang Jie&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Zhang Minghua&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>12:30-13:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Lunch&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th rowspan="2">13:30-15:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>DDE Science Working Groups progress and plans:&lt;/strong>
with emphasis on standards continued. (10 min + 5 min discussion
each)&lt;/p>
&lt;ol start="7" type="1">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>DDE-China – Dr Liu Rongmei and Dr Cui Ning&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Paleogeography – Dr Haipeng Li&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Hydrogeology – Prof. Cheng Jianmei and Chen Yanpei&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Geomorphology – Dr Li Sijin and Dr Chen Yang&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Zhang Minghua&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>The DDE Platform and related major geoscience
initiatives:&lt;/strong> (10 min + 5 min discussion each)&lt;/p>
&lt;ol start="11" type="1">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>OneGeology – Matt Harrison&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>GSEU – Jasna Sinigoj&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>The DDE Platform – Du Zhenhong&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Discussion on current geoscience standards needed for DDE and
concurrent initiatives.&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>François Robida,&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mark Rattenbury&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>15:00-15:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Afternoon break&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>15:30-17:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>DDE Secretariat &amp;amp; RCE Suzhou visit&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>18:00-19:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Reception&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th rowspan="9">&lt;p>8 Nov&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Wed&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="3">&lt;strong>Day 2. Geoscience information technologies and
standards&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>9:00 – 10:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>The DDE Knowledge System:&lt;/strong> (20 min + 10
discussion each)&lt;/p>
&lt;ol start="14" type="1">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>The DDE Knowledge System – Prof. Zhu Yuanqiang&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Construction of Knowledge Graphs for Petroliferous Basin Evaluation –
Dr Tang Xianming&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Sedimentology Knowledge Graph – Prof. Hu Xiumian&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Zhang Minghua&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>10:30-11:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Coffee Break&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>11:00-12:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>DDE Knowledge System and global geoscience
information&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;ol start="17" type="1">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Keynote:&lt;/strong> Machine-Readable Semantics in Data Science
for Geosciences – Prof. Marshall Ma&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>CGI and DDE: geoscience terminology – Dr Mark Rattenbury&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>LOOP Knowledge Management – Dr Steve Richard&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Discussion&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>François Robida&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>12:30-13:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Lunch&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>13:30-15:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;ol start="20" type="1">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Lightning talks, 6 presentations, 4 min talk, 1 min discussion&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;p>Panel discussion – status, needs and challenges for geoscience
standards&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>Harvey Thorleifson,&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Francois Robida, Zhang Minghua, Mark Rattenbury&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>15:00-15:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Afternoon break&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>15:30-17:10&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;ol start="21" type="1">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Planning for DDE success – vision, progress, plans, actions (1)
Leadership presentation,&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>(2) Breakouts,&lt;/p>
&lt;p>(3) Open Discussion,&lt;/p>
&lt;p>(4) Actions&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>Harvey Thorleifson,&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Francois Robida, Zhang Minghua, Mark Rattenbury&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>17:10-17:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>Closing&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI Chair Prof. Harvey Thorleifson/ DDE Secretary General&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;/thead>
&lt;tbody>
&lt;/tbody>
&lt;/table>
&lt;h2 id="future-geoscience-information-standards-forum---9---10-november-2023">Future Geoscience Information Standards Forum - 9 - 10 November 2023&lt;/h2>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Kunshan Xin Place Hotel, Suzhou, China&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI)&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Deep-time Digital Earth Standards Task Group (DDE-STG)&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;p>Building on the geoscience information standards needs of IUGS’s Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) project, the subject of a workshop in the preceding two days, CGI as the lead IUGS commission for developing and promoting geoscience information standards is organizing this forum to look at future geoscience information standards requirements. The &lt;strong>objective&lt;/strong> is to anticipate needs for and better support emerging projects such as DDE and Digital Twins that require efficient communication of information across borders and between agencies, institutions, companies and even beyond geosciences. The role of geoscience information standards in assisting technologies such as Artificial Intelligence is also within scope. The organizers invite experts and leaders from partner organizations to attend and contribute to forward-looking in this crucial field. Planned &lt;strong>topics&lt;/strong> include**:**&lt;/p>
&lt;ol>
&lt;li>Current status of global geoscience information standards&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Emerging geoscience information standards and future opportunities&lt;/li>
&lt;li>New technologies such as knowledge graph, artificial intelligence&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;h3 id="agenda-as-participants-are-confirmed-this-agenda-will-be-updated">Agenda (as participants are confirmed, this agenda will be updated)&lt;/h3>
&lt;table style="width:100%;">
&lt;colgroup>
&lt;col style="width: 8%" />
&lt;col style="width: 14%" />
&lt;col style="width: 62%" />
&lt;col style="width: 14%" />
&lt;/colgroup>
&lt;thead>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Date&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Time&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Topics&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;strong>Chair&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th rowspan="11">&lt;p>9 Nov&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Thu&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>8:00-9:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Registration&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>09:00-09:15&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>&lt;strong>Opening&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome by CGI chair – Prof. Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>CGI&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th colspan="3">&lt;strong>Geoscience information standards; now and
next&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>09:15-10:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>The present geoscience standards landscape; geoscience data
models maturity and geoscience terminology.&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>10-minute talks on:&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;ol type="i">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Mature data models – Michael Sexton&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Emerging data models – Dr Mickael Beaufils&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Geoscience vocabularies – Dr Mark Rattenbury&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Discussion 1&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>François Robida&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>10:30-11:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Coffee Break&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>11:00-12:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>The need for geoscience standards; why and how.&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>10-minute talks on:&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;ol type="i">
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Promoting and influencing geoscience standards –François Robida&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Resourcing and governance of geoscience standards –TBA&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Connecting geoscience domains together – Dr Lesley Wyborn&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Connecting geoscience standards with other disciplines – TBA&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>Discussion 2&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Mark Rattenbury&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>12:30-13:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Lunch&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th colspan="3">&lt;strong>Future geoscience information projects and
initiatives&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>13:30-15:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>Future geoscience standards needed; why and how.&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>5-10 minute talks on the gaps and opportunities for new and refined
geoscience standards – Clinton Smyth (industry application), Steve
Richard (ontologies), TBA&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Discussion 3&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>François Robida&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>15:00-15:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Coffee Break&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>15:30-17:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>Current, emerging and future projects and technologies and their
geoscience standards needs for human and machine information
exchange.&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>5-10 minute talks on DDE, Digital Twins, Data Science, AI –Prof.
Marshall Ma, Prof. Harvey Thorleifson &amp;amp; others&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;p>Discussion 4&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Mark Rattenbury&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th rowspan="4">&lt;p>10 Nov&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Fri&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="3">&lt;strong>Future geoscience information projects and
initiatives (continued)&lt;/strong>&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>9:00-10:30&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>Specific ideas for future geoscience standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>5-10 minute talks on potential geoscience standards initiatives&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;p>Discussion 5&lt;/p>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>François Robida&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="header">
&lt;th>10:30-11:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th colspan="2">Coffee Break&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr class="odd">
&lt;th>11:00-12:00&lt;/th>
&lt;th>&lt;p>Next steps for geoscience standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>General discussion&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Wrap up&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>&lt;/th>
&lt;th>Mark Rattenbury&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;/thead>
&lt;tbody>
&lt;/tbody>
&lt;/table>
&lt;p>The Future Geoscience Information Standards Forum is an opportunity afforded to CGI to capitalize on an adjacent workshop of geoscience standards implementation for the DDE major science programme. The Forum aims to briefly look to the past, assess the present and look forward to the future regarding geoscience information standards. With a small group of invited experts, the Forum will follow a flexible and lightly structured agenda with plenty of time for discussion and brain-storming. The Forum aims to conclude with a sense of purpose and direction around further development of geoscience information standards that are needed.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="background-of-geoscience-information-standards">Background of Geoscience Information Standards&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Many of the geoscience information standards we have today had their origins in geological maps, particularly those produced by geological surveys as part of map series. Map series typically require and achieve levels of consistency around, for example, mapping philosophy, scale, stratigraphic and technical terminology, colour and symbology. These elements were expressed in map style guides, procedures and other technical documentation. Consistency of approach benefits not only the map compiler but also the map user who can switch between maps more easily. The advent of digital geological maps, particularly those built with GIS software, facilitated exchange of information through common software formats and contained feature attributes. One of the drivers was wanting to share geoscience information across jurisdictional borders, whether they be state, province or country. Development of the North America Data Model (NADM) through 1996-2006 involved US and Canada and evolved into Geoscience Markup Language (GeoSciML) through greater international participation involving UK, France, Australia and wider through CGI and more recently the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The seminal OneGeology global geological map project, started in 2007 and involving more than 40 countries, provided the quintessential use case for utilizing geoscience information standards and this accelerated their development and implementation. Geoscience information is much wider than that contained in geological maps and the role of standards is fundamentally to convey information in an understandable way.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="present-geoscience-information-standards-landscape">Present Geoscience Information Standards Landscape&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The present landscape of geological information standards consists of a mature geology data model (GeoSciML), an advanced minerals and mining data model (EarthResourceML) and many of the geoscience vocabularies needed to support them.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GeoSciML is a model of geological features commonly described and portrayed in geological maps, cross sections, geological reports and databases. It covers the domain of geology (earth materials, geological units and stratigraphy, geological time, geological structures, geomorphology, geochemistry) and sampling features common to the practice of geoscience, such as boreholes and geological specimens. The specification describes a logical model and GML/XML encoding rules for the exchange of geological map data, geological time scales, boreholes, and metadata for laboratory analyses and its primary goal is to enable information systems to interoperate with such data. GeoSciML’s latest iteration (version 4.1) has been released as an OGC standard. GeoSciML development has tailed off, apart from GeoJSON implementation.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>EarthResourceML is a model of economic geology encompassing mineral occurrences, commodity resource, mining activity, mineral processing and mining waste. Its latest published iteration (version 2.0), implemented by many countries, is undergoing a significant overhaul.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GroundwaterML is a data model for hydrogeology and there are other data models for specialised geoscience domains such as seismology and emerging areas such as geotechnical. Thus, most of the wider geoscience domain is or will be catered for by logical data models.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The geoscience logical data models are supported by controlled vocabularies, that is, lists of terms that are describe properties and relationships of objects. Vocabularies supporting the above logical data models are typical hierarchical with parent-child associations, with synonyms and multi-lingual equivalents, include definitions and sources and are made available in machine-readable formats. CGI’s vocabularies currently number 60.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="the-ongoing-need-for-geoscience-information-standards">The Ongoing Need for Geoscience Information Standards&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The requirement to share geoscience information is as important as ever, particularly in an era where machine-to-machine sharing is commonplace and artificial intelligence applications grow. Well-organized geoscience data conforming to information standards are always going to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty to enable clearer patterns to emerge and make possible the production of FAIR data by scientists.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Among the questions that this Forum is addressing are:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>How fit-for-purpose are existing geoscience information standards?&lt;/li>
&lt;li>What improvements are needed for existing geoscience information standards?&lt;/li>
&lt;li>What new geoscience information standards are needed e.g., new data models, ontologies?&lt;/li>
&lt;li>What is the role of international groups in guiding and governing geoscience information standards?&lt;/li>
&lt;li>How are geoscience information standards development and maintenance resourced and by whom?&lt;/li>
&lt;li>What are the emerging projects and technologies that will benefit from geoscience information standards?&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Who will benefit by using geoscience information standards?&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Who are the geoscience information standards leaders, compilers and implementers of the future?&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul></description></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 8</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-8/</link><pubDate>Sun, 04 Sep 2022 14:19:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-8/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter-9--issue-8--august-2022">Newsletter 9 | Issue 8 | August 2022&lt;/h1>
&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#feb-24th-geoinfo-summit--harvey-thorleifson">Feb 24th GeoInfo Summit – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi--françois-robida">CGI – François Robida&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-work-groups--harvey-thorleifson">CGI Work Groups – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgmw--manuel-pubellier-and-benjamin-sautter">CGMW – Manuel Pubellier and Benjamin Sautter&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#codata--alena-rybkina">Codata – Alena Rybkina&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#dde--junxuan-fan">DDE – Junxuan Fan&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#loop--laurent-ailleres">Loop – Laurent Ailleres&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#ogc--mickaël-beaufils">OGC – Mickaël Beaufils&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#onegeology--matt-harrison">OneGeology – Matt Harrison&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-renewal--mark-rattenbury">CGI renewal – Mark Rattenbury&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geoinfo-summit-discussion-session--harvey-thorleifson">GeoInfo Summit discussion session – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#future-events">Future Events&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_August_2022.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#feb-24th-geoinfo-summit--harvey-thorleifson">Feb 24th GeoInfo Summit – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi--françois-robida">CGI – François Robida&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-work-groups--harvey-thorleifson">CGI Work Groups – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgmw--manuel-pubellier-and-benjamin-sautter">CGMW – Manuel Pubellier and Benjamin Sautter&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#codata--alena-rybkina">Codata – Alena Rybkina&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#dde--junxuan-fan">DDE – Junxuan Fan&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#loop--laurent-ailleres">Loop – Laurent Ailleres&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#ogc--mickaël-beaufils">OGC – Mickaël Beaufils&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#onegeology--matt-harrison">OneGeology – Matt Harrison&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-renewal--mark-rattenbury">CGI renewal – Mark Rattenbury&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geoinfo-summit-discussion-session--harvey-thorleifson">GeoInfo Summit discussion session – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#future-events">Future Events&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;h2 id="feb-24th-geoinfo-summit--harvey-thorleifson">Feb 24th GeoInfo Summit – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/01Zoom.jpg" alt="GeoInfo Summit participants, May 19th">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/02HarveyThorleifson.jpg" alt="Harvey Thorleifson">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI is the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information. The goal of CGI is to foster the interoperability and exchange of geoscience information, through community leadership, collaboration, education, as well as development and promotion of standards and best practices.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>On 24 February 2022, at 10 AM UTC, CGI and partner agencies hosted a 3-hour online GeoInfo Summit attended by geoscience information leaders from around the world. CGI Chair Harvey Thorleifson stated that geoscience information is of escalating importance to worldwide society, with increasing emphasis on standardized, machine-readable, data-rich knowledge.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He noted that respected international geoscience information organizations happily support each other, and we are coordinating our plans, for example as we prepare for upcoming high-level IUGS meetings. He was pleased that there had been unanimous support for this joint, informal meeting, which had not included ambitious pre-meeting effort.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>There were talks from CGI, CGI Work Groups, CGMW, Codata, DDE, Loop, OGC, OneGeology, and CGI Planning. Speakers had been asked to present an overview of their background, status, and plans, as well as mention of leadership recruitment, government-university-industry coordination, ensuring sustainability, and defining coordinated and achievable goals.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Harvey expressed appreciation to the speakers whose presentations are summarized here. Subsequently, on May 19th, a GeoInfo Summit discussion session was held.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi--françois-robida">CGI – François Robida&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/03FrancoisRobida.jpg" alt="François Robida">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>François, CGI Past Chair, described how CGI, which focuses on geoscience while benefiting from broader Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) arrangements, emanated from a 2003 Edinburgh meeting of geological survey and industry people, when multiple geological data model initiatives in the context of new standards such as GML, WMS, and WFS resulted in a consensus to build a common model that would permit the interoperability that is essential for humans and machines to conduct data-driven science.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>To overcome the tendency for everyone to reinvent their own standard, he asserted that we must work together on standards that will be built by recognized and respected, broadly knowledgeable scientists, data scientists, and technical experts, and that are needed, endorsed, and used by the community.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>François stressed the need to manage scientists’ tendency to over-specify complexity, to improve or extend existing standards, to reconcile standards in related fields such as multiple borehole standards, to import procedures from related fields such as 3D, to publicize our work broadly, and to validate our work through testbeds and flagships, through an open consensus-building process.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>In 2022, he sees a need for renewed coordination among geoscience information organizations, in part by clarifying complementary roles, as well as with industry and academia, as we did in 2003, although we now have a new context such as semantic web, linked data, big data, AI, and 3D, and a need for us to coordinate with ocean and atmosphere. In closing, François stated that we can do nothing without standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-work-groups--harvey-thorleifson">CGI Work Groups – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>To praise superb work by CGI Work Groups and partner groups, Harvey presented a summary of the CGI webinar that had been held in June 2021, that is available on YouTube, and that was summarized in the August 2021 CGI Newsletter. He also mentioned the September 2021 technical seminar on geoscience ontology and knowledge graph that also is available on YouTube. In addition, he described the comprehensive, 15-hour DDE Geoscience Standards Training in October 2021, for which videos are available on the DDE web site.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He described how the OGC Geoscience Domain Working Group (DWG) partners with CGI and others to make geoscience information findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). Key DWG goals are interoperability, data definitions, formats, and services for publishing, search, and exchange; thematic/semantic coherence with related domains; interfaces with city/infrastructure and risk domains; showing value added by interoperability; best practices; and standards for spatial and temporal features, metadata, and other information.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>In addition, an OGC Standard Working Group (SWG) manages GeoSciML (Geoscience Markup Language), an XML- and GML-based machine-readable format for geological maps. EarthResourceML (ERML) is a markup language for the delivery of mineral occurrence, deposit, mining, and resource data. Nineteen ERML vocabularies include mine status, commodity, and reserves; data delivery and implementation are well accommodated.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group maintains terms for earth features, properties, quantities, techniques, and processes that are agreed upon and made widely accessible, including to machines. Geoscience ontology research is being conducted in association with Loop. The Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) Standards Task Group (DDE-STG) is facilitating adoption of CGI standards and terminology by DDE, the first IUGS-recognized big science programme that was launched in 2019.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgmw--manuel-pubellier-and-benjamin-sautter">CGMW – Manuel Pubellier and Benjamin Sautter&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/04ManuelPubellier.jpg" alt="Manuel Pubellier">
&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/05BenjaminSautter.jpg" alt="Benjamin Sautter">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Manuel, with Benjamin Sautter, provided an update on the work of the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW), an international non-profit association governed by French law that is responsible for designing, coordinating, preparing, and publishing small-scale thematic earth science maps of the globe, continents, major regions, and oceans. CGMW was established as an outcome of the International Geological Congress (IGC), first held in 1878. The commission was conceived in 1910 at the 11th IGC in Stockholm, and established in 1913 at the 12th IGC in Toronto.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGMW has several thematic sub-commissions, and an important role in preserving the legacy of important paper maps produced over a century and more, while using current technology to produce the geological mapping databases that are needed for our future. The maps need to be freely accessible on an international basis, and at the same time, someone has to pay. CGMW is working, particularly with CGI and OneGeology, to take forward thinking on development of global seamless 3D databases at multiple levels of resolution.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>An exciting and important current activity is a new 1:5M seamless geological map of the world, being produced in association with DDE, including much reconciliation aided by imagery and elevation databases, and updated bathymetry and seafloor geology, including mid-oceanic ridges, transforms, seafloor age, and hydrothermal vents.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="codata--alena-rybkina">Codata – Alena Rybkina&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/06AlenaRybkina.jpg" alt="Alena Rybkina">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Alena described the role of Codata, the Committee on Data of the International Science Council, in building a foundation for a world of open data, by promoting open science and FAIR data. CODATA convenes a global expert community and provides a forum for international consensus building and agreements around a range of data science and data policy issues, from the fundamental physical constants to cross-domain data specifications.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Codata has national committees, scientific union members, institutional members, and partner organizations. Codata advances data policies, data science, data skills, and data documentation. While citing a report on Advancing Science as a Global Public Good, she stated that the major, pressing global scientific and human issues of the 21st century can only be addressed through research that works across disciplines to understand complex systems, and which uses a transdisciplinary approach. She noted that there are major challenges for many scientific domains that require work on data specifications, semantics, infrastructures, and more, as estimates imply 80% of our effort is spent on data wrangling, due to suboptimal data stewardship.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Nevertheless, much cross-domain collaboration is quickening, to address current global grand challenges. Alena then outlined the FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management and stewardship, and a document on Turning FAIR into reality. The Codata data documentation initiative is a cross-domain integration collaboration designed to interface with other standards and to help interoperability between different data types, standards, and formats.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="dde--junxuan-fan">DDE – Junxuan Fan&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/07JunxuanFan.jpg" alt="Junxuan Fan">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Junxuan Fan described DDE, for which the kick-off meeting was held at Beijing in February 2019, with representatives of 40 geoscience organizations in attendance, and with 12 founding organizations signing the accord to initiate the DDE program. DDE is a big science program dedicated to facilitating innovation in understanding the Earth&amp;rsquo;s evolution and applications as well as the Sustainable Development Goals utilizing Big Data analytics, internet cloud computing, data mining, machine learning, and AI. The principal theme is harmonizing global deep time geoscience data. The governance includes a governing council, executive committee, science council, science communities, working groups, and task groups. The primary goals are to establish an international consortium, linking isolated databases into an open, distributed system, making data FAIR, linking earth spheres, and promoting innovative earth system research, through data-driven knowledge discovery.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>DDE data-driven knowledge discovery is addressing: 1. Integrating a uniform high-resolution earth time system; 2. Origin and evolution of life and biodiversity; 3. How did sedimentary matter evolve and cycle?; 4. Reconstructing earth climate and atmosphere history from big data of multiple geochemical indices; 5. Global sea-level change through deep time; 6. Quantifying plate tectonics and deformation in 4D; 7. 4D architecture and evolution of deep-earth materials and dynamics; 8. Mineral evolution beyond 4D; 9. A globally shared big-data energy resource system for sustainable development; 10. Geophysical fields for prediction of seismic hazard.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="loop--laurent-ailleres">Loop – Laurent Ailleres&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/08LaurentAilleres.jpg" alt="Laurent Ailleres">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Laurent described Loop, an integrated and interoperable platform enabling 3D stochastic geological modelling. The focus of Loop is on providing solutions for subsurface resource management, managing geological knowledge, 3D geological and geophysical modelling, as well as uncertainty risk mitigation. Loop knowledge management is using AI for knowledge extraction from literature, maps, and reports using geological ontology, with geological rules being encoded to ensure proper knowledge extraction.
Loop is a time-aware geological modelling platform, and the geological event management is capturing topological and time relationships between geological objects and structural events. Loop forward and inverse structural modelling is encoding structural geological rules in a time-aware context to account for folds, faults, shear zones, unconformities and intrusions. The modelling is based on probabilistic modelling and allows for the definition of an objective function for geology and quantification of uncertainty via posterior probabilities.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A milestone was reached recently with release of the GeoScience Ontology (GSO). In addition, Map2Loop data pre-processing and input now involves automation of data input for Loop modelling methods, geometrical analysis of geological maps, and topological analysis of the map. Secondary geological information automatically derived from maps includes normalized local formation thickness, and apparent fault throw. Loop Resources involves reducing the mining footprint with curvilinear geostatistics using structural frames.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Plans for the future include Loop Vision, an interoperable, integrative, automated and update-able workflow to model geology based on structural geological rules and geophysics. A platform will integrate geophysical modelling/constraints upstream with structural geological modelling/constraints. Loop provides a means to characterize and mitigate uncertainty that will guide further data acquisition. The framework accommodates lithology, alteration, mineralogy, metallurgy, geotechnical parameters, and grades, allowing a better characterization of mining block and process optimization.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="ogc--mickaël-beaufils">OGC – Mickaël Beaufils&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/09Micka%C3%ABlBeaufils.jpg" alt="Mickaël Beaufils">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mickaël provided an overview of OGC and the GeoScience DWG, that partners with CGI and many other organizations in making geospatial information findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). For findability, he cited persistent identifiers (PIDs), rich metadata, indexed data repositories, and PIDs in metadata; for accessibility, he cited standard communication protocols, open and free protocols, authentication where necessary, and metadata always available; for interoperability, he cited vocabularies, FAIR vocabularies, and linked metadata; and for reusability, he cited multiple attribute metadata, usage licenses, provenance, and community standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He outlined the OGC innovation continuum, in which an innovation cycle links to a standardization cycle. The innovation cycle involves project identification, call for sponsors, creation of a public call, selection of members, an executive project, and generation of results. This links to the standardization cycle, built on domain and standards working groups, involving DWG discussion, SWG formation, standards development, DWG/SWG presentations, formulation of enhancements, and interest gathering, which links back to the innovation cycle.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Key DWG goals are interoperability, data definitions, formats, and services for publishing, search, and exchange; thematic/semantic coherence with related domains; interfaces with city/infrastructure and risk domains; showing value added by interoperability; best practices; and standards for spatial and temporal features, metadata, and other information. Emphasis has been on the BhML borehole conceptual model, as well as (Geo)JSON(- LD), 3D-4D, BIM, geotechnics, ISO19156 for observations and measurements, OGC SensorThings API, OGC-API features, and SMART Data Loader. Much emphasis is now on geotech interoperability.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="onegeology--matt-harrison">OneGeology – Matt Harrison&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/10MattHarrison.jpg" alt="Matt Harrison">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Matt spoke on OneGeology, which has 189 member organizations, and is dedicated to providing geoscience data globally. OneGeology technical principles are based on interoperability with emphasis on GeoSciML, data on distributed servers sent directly to the web client, participants delivering map data through a standard OGC web service, cookbooks and online help and buddy systems so all nations can serve their data, a central catalog of services, and a portal that can display and aggregate all of the maps.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>According to the 2007 Brighton Accord, OneGeology is a geological survey initiative that will make public and internet-accessible the best available digital geological map data, with priority on interoperable, Internet-accessible, scientifically-attributed data and to make progress at levels appropriate to participants&amp;rsquo; capability.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>OneGeology is now migrating its focus to the application, technology and opportunities arising from developing a multiscale suite of digital twin earth system models. These will enable the better prediction and understanding of subsurface processes and their properties, and how these influence the world around us. The existence and use of an earth system digital twin could, for example, allow users to sample a volume of rock and run numerical simulations to understand the impacts of various inputs and changes to that system, such as alternative energy storage technologies.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>These digital twin models will be an ensemble of 4D geospatial data, models, and visualizations. One of the key elements will be the cyber–physical interaction, whereby sensor perturbation monitored in the real world will ultimately be reflected within the virtual twin model in near-real time. A realistic model of the natural environment will provide new virtual opportunities to test and improve our understanding of these systems and to model and predict their behaviors into the future.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-renewal--mark-rattenbury">CGI renewal – Mark Rattenbury&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter8/11MarkRattenbury.jpg" alt="Mark Rattenbury">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>As an illustration of planning and renewal, Mark, a CGI Councilor, discussed how CGI has initiated draft steps toward renewal. He described how the Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI) is a Commission of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), and is an international scientific, technical non-governmental, non-political, and non-profit-making organization.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mark then outlined how CGI aims to: help in exchanging knowledge on geoscience information and systems; support dissemination of best practice in geoscience information; encourage the development of geoscience information standards; play a full part in the international geoscience information community and represent IUGS on geoscience information matters; bring together individuals and organizations with an interest in the management and application of geoscience information; and provide open access to the standards and outputs it delivers, for the benefit of all.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He then noted that CGI: has been very successful and influential since its inception; has worked widely across the international community; has led with development of the GeoSciML and EarthResourceML data; has led model standards for information transfer with publishing of internationally agreed geoscience vocabularies; and continues to support these and other initiatives such as OGC&amp;rsquo;s Geoscience Domain Working Group and IUGS&amp;rsquo;s Deep-time Digital Earth.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He further described how CGI collaborates on focused projects; provides continuity between peaks in project activities; and offers trusted, stable and enduring governance capability to the geoscience information community.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He then suggested that CGI should: assess the maturity of current geoscience information standards; identify opportunities that lie ahead in the geoscience information standards domain; signal what could be achieved in the next four years; signal what could be achieved in the next ten years; and identify collaborators and resources that could help achieve the goals.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geoinfo-summit-discussion-session--harvey-thorleifson">GeoInfo Summit discussion session – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The 90-minute GeoInfo Summit discussion session on May 19th at 10 UTC was a great success. Partner organization leaders noted that technical challenges cannot be addressed by a single organization. We need to address societal challenges, to attract young people, and to work efficiently. Leaders stressed the importance of concrete products. We emphasized the need for a shared vision that we all can rally around.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We asserted that we need to be needed, by making sure that our activity is relevant, in part by utilizing new capabilities. We stressed sustainability of our activity, and efficiency through coordination. We stated that standards are maintained if used, and we need to find a problem that calls for what we do. We thus saw the need for a community that uses what we do, with standards reaching critical mass.
We then talked about how to go forward. We noted that in-person meetings allow serendipity, social interaction, and meeting people. We then focused on a global solid earth digital twin as a focal point, perhaps to be a highlight of upcoming IUGS meetings. We saw that we need a workshop that reaches conclusions. We understand that we need a goal, for initial delivery at the IGC in 2024.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>It was noted that a global solid earth digital twin would be inclusive of everyone, under a ‘Save the Planet’ sort of banner that attracts young people, for very legitimate reasons. We discussed the concurrent digital twin of the oceans, and there was mention of soil/geology coordination. We recognized that we should not promise something by a date, or stress that major funding should come first – but rather we need a roadmap for what each organization needs to do.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>In closing, Harvey Thorleifson noted that we are operating as a multi-agency network, so each agency would have to respect its governance. He suggested that we plan for additional multi-agency, online meetings in September, to take the next step in bringing the solid earth digital twin concept into focus, for example in coordination with DDE.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="future-events">Future Events&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>On September 20-21, 2022, for 90 minutes each day at 10 UTC, we will hold GeoInfo Summit Follow-Up, to be attended by leaders of global geoscience information organizations.&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>If you wish to attend, please contact the CGI Chair at &lt;a href="mailto:thorleif@umn.edu">thorleif@umn.edu&lt;/a>.&lt;/strong>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2022</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2022/</link><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jun 2022 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2022/</guid><description/></item><item><title>DDE Geoscience Information Metadata Standard</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/dde-metadata-standard-v1/</link><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jun 2022 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/dde-metadata-standard-v1/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Geoscience Standards Training for DDE</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/ddetraining/</link><pubDate>Mon, 25 Oct 2021 23:01:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/ddetraining/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="information">Information&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>Free 3 day training event on open standards applicable to the geoscience community&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Session Chair: prof Zhang Minghua. &lt;a href="mailto:zminghua@mail.cgs.gov.cn">zminghua@mail.cgs.gov.cn&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Registration: &lt;a href="https://www.wjx.top/vm/wFHGCwg.aspx">https://www.wjx.top/vm/wFHGCwg.aspx&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Zoom meeting link: &lt;a href="https://zoom.us/j/83452380461?pwd=U0plLytDRUZoWno2MEIyZWhBeEc1Zz09">https://zoom.us/j/83452380461?pwd=U0plLytDRUZoWno2MEIyZWhBeEc1Zz09&lt;/a>
Meeting ID : 834 5238 0461
Meeting Code: ddestg
Date: 8:00am 26th- 13:00pm 28th Oct. UTC time&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="agenda">Agenda&lt;/h1>
&lt;h2 id="25th-oct">25th Oct.&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Registration Online and Zoom meeting system dry-run test.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="day-1-26th-oct">Day 1, 26th Oct.&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>08:00-08:40: Opening Ceremony: Addresses from DDE GC by prof Jennifer McKinley. Addresses from DDE-STG and CGI by prof Harvey Thorleifson. Addresses from CODATA by Dr Alena Rybkina.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>08:30-08:40: Group photo and break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>08:40-9:00: Introduction to CGI and its main partners on geoscience standards by Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/p>
&lt;p>9:00-10:00: Introduction to CGI and OGC standards by Francois ROBIDA and Mickael Beaufils&lt;/p>
&lt;p>10:00-10:15: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>10:15-11:00: Geoscience terminology by Mark Rattenbury&lt;/p>
&lt;p>11:00-11:15: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>11:15-11:50: Geoscience terminology (continued) by Mark Rattenbury&lt;/p>
&lt;p>11:50-12:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>12:00-12:45: Geoscience ontology by Boyan Brodaric and Steve Richard&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="day-2-27th-oct">Day 2, 27th Oct.&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>8:00-8:45: GeoSciML: Geology data model and exchange standard by Oliver Raymond&lt;/p>
&lt;p>8:45-9:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>9:00-9:45: GeoSciML(continued)&lt;/p>
&lt;p>9:45-10:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>10:00-10:45: EarthResourceML: Mineral resource and mining data model and exchange standard by Michael Sexton&lt;/p>
&lt;p>10:45-11:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>11:00-11:45: EarthResourceML (continued)&lt;/p>
&lt;p>11:45-12:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>12:00-12:45: DDE metadata standard draft by Zhang Minghua, Liu Rongmei and Wang Yongzhi&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="day-3-28th-oct">Day 3, 28th Oct.&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>08:00-08:45: Metadata standard and practice by James Passmore and Tim Duffy&lt;/p>
&lt;p>08:45-09:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>09:00-09:45: OneGeology data and standard technology by Edward Lewis and James Passmore&lt;/p>
&lt;p>09:45-10:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>10:00-10:45: OneGeology(continue)&lt;/p>
&lt;p>10:45-11:00: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>11:00-11:40: CODATA FAIR data principles and GOFAIR practice by Alena Rybkina&lt;/p>
&lt;p>11:40-12:20: A vision on DDE data science with FAIR data by Ma Xiaogang&lt;/p>
&lt;p>12:20-12:30: Break&lt;/p>
&lt;p>12:30-13:00: Closing ceremony: Certifications to participants registered and lecturers of the training. Closing speech/remarks form DDE-STG by prof Harvey Thorleifson and DDE-EC by prof Natarajan Ishwaran.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 7</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-7/</link><pubDate>Fri, 13 Aug 2021 14:19:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-7/</guid><description>&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">&lt;/nav>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_August_2021.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="overview-of-cgi-activities--harvey-thorleifson">Overview of CGI activities – Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/ht.png" alt="Harvey Thorleifson">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI is the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information. The goal of CGI is to foster the interoperability and exchange of geoscience information, through community leadership, collaboration, education, as well as development and promotion of standards and best practices.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>On 23 June 2021, from 10 AM to Noon UTC, CGI hosted a webinar attended by 91 experts from around the world.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/webinar.png" alt="CGI Webinar participants">
&lt;em>CGI Webinar participants&lt;/em>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Harvey Thorleifson, Director of the Minnesota Geological Survey in the USA and CGI Chair, indicated that the objective of the webinar was to share updates on the work that CGI is carrying out with partners, and to hear discussion. He thanked partners who were mentioned in the six presentations that followed. Discussion and feedback indicated that the webinar was a great success. Videos are available on
&lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pXVKSWT17M&amp;amp;list=PLwnk6y1Q6xcZ2Ty2Akl1_sUY3Ob8Zocd9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="future-events">Future Events&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>On September 9, 2021, at 10 UTC, we will hold an informal technical seminar on geoscience ontology and knowledge graph, to be attended by members and friends of relevant working groups of CGI and partner organisations. If you wish to attend, please contact the CGI Chair at &lt;a href="mailto:thorleif@umn.edu">mailto:thorleif@umn.edu&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="ogc-geoscience-domain--mickaël-beaufils">OGC Geoscience Domain – Mickaël Beaufils&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/mb.png" alt="Mickaël Beaufils">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mickael Beaufils of BRGM spoke as Chair of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Geoscience Domain Working Group (DWG), that partners with CGI and many other organizations in making spatial information findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>For findability, he cited persistent identifiers (PIDs), rich metadata, indexed data repositories, and PIDs in metadata; for accessibility, he cited standard communication protocols, open and free protocols, authentication where necessary, and metadata always available; for interoperability, he cited vocabularies, FAIR vocabularies, and linked metadata; and for reusability, he cited multiple attribute metadata, usage licenses, provenance, and community standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Key DWG goals are: interoperability, data definitions, formats, and services for publishing, search, and exchange; thematic/semantic coherence with related domains; interfaces with city/infrastructure and risk domains; showing value added by interoperability; best practices; and standards for spatial and temporal features, metadata, and other information.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Emphasis has been on the BhML borehole conceptual model, as well as (Geo)JSON(- LD), 3D-4D, BIM, geotechnics, ISO19156 for observations and measurements, OGC SensorThings API, OGC-API features, and SMART Data Loader.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The DWG has been active since being conceived at Dublin in 2016; the next meeting is in September.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="geosciml--éric-boisvert">GeoSciML – Éric Boisvert&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/eb.png" alt="Éric Boisvert">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Éric Boisvert of the Geological Survey of Canada spoke on behalf of the OGC Standard Working Group (SWG) for GeoSciML (Geoscience Markup Language), an XML- and GML-based machine-readable format for geological maps that has been stable for almost two decades since emanating from work such as XMML, NADM, and G-XML. Although V1 in 2005 was monolithic, V2 in 2009 had properties grouped, with boreholes and fossils added.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>V3 in 2012 was packaged as 13 schemas, with themes added, OGC versions of some dependencies, custom elements dropped, external vocabularies, and explicit nil required. V4 in 2015, packaged as basic and extended, became OGC V4.1 in 2017, with reversion to optional properties, profiling, and Portrayal (Lite) integrated. The scope covers geology, including boreholes and specimens, with limited applicability to specialized domains, or symbology.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GeoSciML Lite, based on simple features and thus comparable to a SHP file, is widely compatible, although with limited expressiveness, and thus limited to simple applications. Extensions include GroundwaterML2, EarthResourceML, and geotechnics for civil engineering. OGC, and thus GeoSciML, is transitioning from XML to JSON (OGC API); future work will address knowledge encoding such as RDF and ontologies.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="earthresourceml--michael-sexton">EarthResourceML – Michael Sexton&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/ms.png" alt="Michael Sexton">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Michael Sexton of Geoscience Australia provided an overview of EarthResourceML (ERML), a markup language for the delivery of mineral occurrence, deposit, mining, and resource data that was initiated in 2006 as a collaboration between Australian state and federal agencies. The name was adopted and a CGI working group formed in 2010.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>ERML is an extension of GeoSciML, with a mineral occurrence being a subtype of Geologic Feature; the mining feature types of ERML are not part of GeoSciML.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The earth resource concept encompasses geology, economics, environment, and society. Through international collaboration, ERML has a minimum set of features and attributes for describing and communicating information about earth resources in a standardized way. Nineteen CGI vocabularies include mine status, commodity, and reserves; data delivery and implementation are well accommodated.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>ERML v3, which is near completion, has an improved resources model to represent resources as reported, addition of processing plants, and removal of mandatory attributes and relationships. ERML v3 will have GeoServer feature templating and a smart data loader, with JSON outputs.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="cgi-geoscience-vocabularies--mark-rattenbury">CGI Geoscience Vocabularies – Mark Rattenbury&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/mr.png" alt="Mark Rattenbury">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mark Rattenbury of GNS Science in New Zealand, Te Pū Ao, spoke for the CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group, which has been separate from the GeoSciML group since 2014, and which maintain lists of terms for earth features, properties, quantities, techniques, and processes that are collaboratively agreed upon and are widely accessible, including to machines. The terminology conveys unambiguous meaning, offers translations, reduces confusion, utilizes natural hierarchies, and supports data models.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Working Group supports interoperability, develops and enables vocabularies, has 30 members in 16 countries, collaborates with partner groups, has had six face-to-face meetings, and has had much online interaction. A formal vocabulary development and adoption process is used. The vocabularies are somewhat FAIR, but there are many competing vocabularies. Ideally, CGI vocabularies will be better known and more widely used, because they are international, they support data models, and they are supported through enduring governance. Working Group priorities are to publish remaining vocabularies identified by working groups, update published vocabularies, add multilingual terms, and promote application of CGI vocabularies, especially in academic and industry contexts.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Challenges include aligning to international projects, finding time to make progress, and pandemic-related restrictions on travel.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="loop-geoscience-ontology--boyan-brodaric-and-stephen-richard">Loop GeoScience Ontology – Boyan Brodaric and Stephen Richard&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/bb.png" alt="Boyan Brodaric">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Boyan Brodaric of the Geological Survey of Canada, and Stephen Richard of the USGIN Foundation in USA, reported on GeoScience Ontology (GSO) research being conducted in association with Loop, an integrated and interoperable platform enabling 3D stochastic geological modeling. Knowledge management at present is a very active topic, due to the activities of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. The Google Knowledge Graph initially released in 2016, the basis for their infobox, is built on a schema.org ontology, and a query API such as SPARQL.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The GSO incorporates a framework with entities, relations, and rules, as well as an OWL2 language. The GSO builds on NADM, GeoSciML, and DOLCE Rocks, and work in several ongoing projects. In association with GeoSciML, the activity includes, for example, an OWL conceptual schema and re-conceptualization, UML logical schema, XSD application schema, and XML instance documents.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Development will have to be broad and deep, modular, and standalone. The modular organization will be a layercake ontology, from common, to geology, to modules. Context dependency is an important concept, and relations include fundamental, spatial, temporal, and geological. Next steps include public feedback, knowledge repository testing, and integration with Loop 3D modeling code.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="dde-standards-task-group--zhang-minghua">DDE Standards Task Group – Zhang Minghua&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter7/zm.png" alt="Zhang Minghua">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Zhang Minghua of the China Geological Survey, Co-Secretary General of CGI, described the work of the Deep-time Digital Earth Standards Task Group (DDE-STG). DDE is an IUGS big science program focused on data-driven discovery regarding the evolution of life, matter, geography, and climate. DDE will be an international consortium that will link databases, make data FAIR, unify earth science, and promote research.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The kickoff meeting at Beijing in February 2019 was attended by representatives of 40 geoscience organizations, and founding organizations signed an accord. The DDE roadmap encompasses the 2019 accord, formal launch in 2020, midterm reporting in 2024, and final reporting in 2028. For the geoscience knowledge system, DDE has adopted CGI terminology, and knowledge system graphs have been in development since 2019.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The DDE-STG, now consisting of 28 leading professionals who held their first in-person meeting in January 2020, will now work in close collaboration with CGI and partners such as CODATA, to coordinate standards identification and development, survey stakeholders, develop the metadata standard based on ISO19115-2014(E), oversee review of the semantic knowledge system, provide advice to DDE working groups, provide training, and maintain the portfolio of standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="join-us">Join Us&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>Please visit the CGI web site at &lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.org/,">https://cgi-iugs.org/,&lt;/a> and if you aren’t a member, please click the Join Now button!&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>CGI Flyer Rollup</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/flyerrollup/</link><pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2021 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/flyerrollup/</guid><description/></item><item><title>CGI Flyer Trifold</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/flyertrifold/</link><pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2021 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/flyertrifold/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2021</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2021/</link><pubDate>Thu, 01 Jul 2021 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2021/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 6</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-6/</link><pubDate>Sun, 09 May 2021 23:46:24 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-6/</guid><description>&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#docker-packages-geological-survey-of-canada">Docker Packages  (Geological Survey of Canada)&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#vocabulary-improvement-acceleration-british-geological-survey">Vocabulary Improvement Acceleration (British Geological Survey)&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#harvey-thorleifson">Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#christelle-loiselet">Christelle Loiselet&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#edd-lewis">Edd Lewis&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-hosting-dde-standards-task-group">CGI hosting DDE Standards Task Group&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#6th-dde-working-group-meeting-at-suzhou">6th DDE Working Group Meeting at Suzhou&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#dde-standards-working-group-meeting-at-the-dde-suzhou-center">DDE Standards working group meeting at the DDE Suzhou center.&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_May_2021.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="cgi-supports-interoperabity-projects">CGI Supports Interoperabity projects&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>In 2021 the CGI grant was awarded to two data interoperability projects of high relevance to CGI work:&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="docker-packages-geological-survey-of-canada">Docker Packages  (Geological Survey of Canada)&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The project will package ERML and GeoSciML service inside docker images. Containerisation, technology that allows to deploy self contained services and GeoSciML alternate encoding has been kick started with first assessment of issues.    Discussion material is published on OGC GitHub &lt;a href="https://github.com/opengeospatial/GeoSciML/blob/master/geojson/REAME.MD">https://github.com/opengeospatial/GeoSciML/blob/master/geojson/REAME.MD&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A new publication will be released soon on Geology ontology (Brodaric and Richard) developed under the project LOOP3D&amp;rsquo;s Geoscience Knowledge manager.  The ontology (knowledge representation) is built on top on several initiatives, including GeoSciML model and GeoSciML vocabularies.  (&lt;a href="https://github.com/Loop3D/GKM">https://github.com/Loop3D/GKM&lt;/a>) . &lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="vocabulary-improvement-acceleration-british-geological-survey">Vocabulary Improvement Acceleration (British Geological Survey)&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The project will update and then publish SKOS-RDF files for all vocabularies with translated Multi-Lingual Thesaurus of Geosciences terms and links added to related INSPIRE vocabularies. Github architecture will be streamlined for vocabulary hosting, customised vocprez instance and deployment to &lt;a href="http://cgi.vocabs.ga.gov.au/vocab/">http://cgi.vocabs.ga.gov.au/vocab/&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>CGI webinar on 23 June 2021 featuring the working groups:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>GeoSciML Standards&lt;/li>
&lt;li>EarthResourceML&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Geoscience Terminology&lt;/li>
&lt;li>CGI/OGC Geoscience Domain&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) Standards Task Group&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h1 id="cgi-council-news">CGI Council News&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>The CGI Council held its 2020 annual meeting via zoom in October. The councillors discussed council membership, activities for CGI funding in 2021 and the need to recruit and rejuvenate active membership.&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>better promotion of CGI activities and standards&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>New councillors joined CGI. The current council members are:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>Harvey Thorleifson - Chair&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Kombada Mhopjeni - Co-Secretary&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Zhang Minghua - Co-Secretary&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Mark Rattenbury &amp;ndash; Treasurer&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Kazu Miyazaki&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Christelle Loiselet&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Eric Boisvert&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Edd Lewis&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>Past chair, François Robida and councillors - Ollie Raymond and David Percy remain as observers.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Since then the council held three business meetings addressing review of CGI grant proposals, status of CGI activities, increasing CGI visibility and membership in CGI working groups.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image3.png" alt="CGI council business meeting in April 2021">
&lt;em>CGI council business meeting in April 2021.&lt;/em>&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/h2>
&lt;h3 id="harvey-thorleifson">Harvey Thorleifson&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>The new Chair of CGI. Since 2003, Harvey has been Director of the Minnesota Geological Survey in the USA, State Geologist of Minnesota, and Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota. His undergrad and Masters were completed in Canada, his PhD is from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and from 1986 to 2003, he was a Geological Survey of Canada research scientist.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image4.jpeg" alt="Harvey Thorleifson">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He is Information Committee Chair for the Association of American State Geologists (AASG), and he completed two terms with the US National Geospatial Advisory Committee. He was a member of a National Academy panel that prepared a report on the international role of the US Geological Survey, and he was a member of the team that launched OneGeology. Harvey was 2003-2004 President of the Geological Association of Canada, 2004-2006 President of the Canadian Geoscience Council, and 2012-2013 President of AASG.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Harvey was excited to have joined CGI leadership in 2016, and is now pleased and humbled to follow Past CGI Chair François Robida, whose superb leadership will be a model for Harvey to aspire to. In his work, Harvey&amp;rsquo;s focus has been on accelerating static-publication-based geological mapping, enhanced development of and adherence to standards, and accelerated provision of regularly-updated, seamless geological mapping databases assembled from many published geological maps. Contact
&lt;a href="mailto:thorleif@umn.edu">Harvey&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="christelle-loiselet">Christelle Loiselet&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image5.jpeg" alt="Christelle Loiselet">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Has a PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Rennes. She is a geologist modeller with experience in 3D geodynamics modelling and basin modelling applied to georesources. Within BRGM, she works on 3D geological modelling and she manages a research project on 3D Geo Information Systems. For the past four years, she has lead the IT team working on developing IT systems to deliver geological and mineral resources information using standards such as O&amp;amp;M, GeoSciML and EarthRessourceML in national (RGF, BSS, Gaia Data, etc) and international projects (EPOS, GeoERA, Mineral4EU, etc). She is a member of the Form@Ter executive board and she joined the CGI council in 2020. Contact
&lt;a href="mailto:C.Loiselet@bgrm.fr">Christelle&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="edd-lewis">Edd Lewis&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image6.jpeg" alt="Edd Lewis">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Standards Lead at the British Geological Survey, with responsibility of improving the organisation and our partners data provision by using geospatial data standards to better align with FAIR data principles (&amp;amp; hopefully driving economic growth through improved data accessibility&amp;hellip;).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>He is a member of the British Standard Institute IST/36 Geographic Information committee, Association of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Specialists (AGS) AGS Data Format committee, MEDIN data standard committee and contributor to ISO/TC 211 &amp;amp; OGC standards. Edd join the CGI council in 2020. Contact
&lt;a href="mailto:edlew@bgs.ac.uk">Edd&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-hosting-dde-standards-task-group">CGI hosting DDE Standards Task Group&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>CGI leads the work of the IUGS Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) Standards Task Group (DDE-STG) on implementing the use of CGI standards and vocabularies by DDE and metadata for DDE. The CGI chair, Harvey Thorleifson, was appointed as the Principal Investigator (PI) for the DDE-STG with co-PIs Zhang Minghua, Alena Rybkina, François Robida, and Tim Duffy.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Several CGI council members attended the DDE-STG meeting in January 2020 in Beijing. Currently, Francois Robida is sustaining his role in DDE-STG supported by Zhang Minghua and Alena Rybkina (CODATA form Russia) as co-chairs.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="dde">DDE&lt;/h1>
&lt;h2 id="6th-dde-working-group-meeting-at-suzhou">6th DDE Working Group Meeting at Suzhou&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>On 23-24 March 2021, co-leader of the DDE -STG Prof Zhang Minghua accompanied by STG members Dr Liu Rongmei, Dr Ren Wei and Dr Zhang Sheng attended the 6th DDE working group meeting at Kunshan, Suzhou center of DDE with a parallel meetings on DDE Standards and Knowledge.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image7.jpeg" alt="">&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="dde-standards-working-group-meeting-at-the-dde-suzhou-center">DDE Standards working group meeting at the DDE Suzhou center.&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Prof Zhang presented the DDE-STG work, achievements and 2021 work plan based on the DDE-STG annual proposal, submitted in November 2020, on behalf of the of DDE-STG. Four main activities for 2021 are:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>DDE knowledge system review report;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Standards training courses;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>DDE metadata standard (draft version);&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Working Teams for DDE geosciences data standards.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>The discussions included coverage of a variety of issues/topics such as the DDE data and knowledge groups, geological timeline, global 1:5million map, Eurasian margin sea and DDE-China and CODATA roles on open science facilities. Standards including metadata standards, DDE standards architecture, and disciplinary specified standards, etc were requested. These requests are critical and helpful, and will direct the work of the DDE-STG.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image8.jpeg" alt="Prof Zhang">
&lt;em>Prof Zhang at the DDE knowledge system group meeting.&lt;/em>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>At the parallel meeting of the DDE Knowledge Group, Prof Zhang replied on some common concerns about knowledge system/graph review procedure from DDE working groups, like sedimentology, paleogeography and petroleum geology working group, based on the first product of DDE-STG &amp;ldquo;Formal Review Procedures for the Geoscience Knowledge System of IUGS Deep-time Digital Earth Program (version of Aug 28,2020)&amp;quot;. Zhang asked these working groups to submit their comparison results of vocabulary difference with CGI Geoscience Terminology to DDE-STG for a review.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The meeting was attened by 43 scientists, 23 on site and 20 virtually.&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="cgi-website">CGI Website&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image9.png" alt="">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The CGI website received a fresh make-over from new councillor Edd Lewis. &lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.org/">https://cgi-iugs.org/&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h1 id="join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>We invite all CGI members to join our
&lt;a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn group&lt;/a>. The group provides a forum for CGI and LinkedIn members to connect with other geoscience professionals, post news of upcoming events, ask questions and discuss your issues.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/newsletter6/image10.png" alt="LinkedIn">&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>DDE Standards Task Group</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/ddestandards/</link><pubDate>Fri, 01 Jan 2021 11:50:03 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/ddestandards/</guid><description>&lt;p>A collaborative task group implementing geoscience information standards for IUGS’s flagship Deep-time Digital Earth Project - &lt;a href="https://www.iugs.org/dde">https://www.iugs.org/dde&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Election of Council 2020 - 2024</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/2020council/</link><pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2020 23:01:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/2020council/</guid><description>&lt;p>The Council was elected in 2020 for the term 2020-2024. The newly elected Council members are widely distributed across many of the continents.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The planned annual face to face Council meeting in Delhi, India at the 36th IGC was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. CGI Council thus held two online meetings on Oct. 7 and Nov. 12, 2020 to elect the new Council and to manage progress. New CGI Council Chair Harvey Thorleifson thanked outgoing CGI Council members François Robida, Ollie Raymond and Jouni Vuollo for their dedication and contributions to CGI in his remarks.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The CGI Council members are:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>Harvey Thorleifson (Chair) – USA&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Zhang Minghua (Co-Secretary General) – China&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Kombada Mhopjeni (Co-Secretary General) – Namibia&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Mark Rattenbury (Treasurer) – New Zealand&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Kazuhiro Miyazaki – Japan&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Éric Boisvert – Canada&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Christelle Loiselet – France&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Edward Lewis – UK&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Ollie Raymond (Observer) – Australia&lt;/li>
&lt;li>David Percy (Observer) – USA&lt;/li>
&lt;li>François Robida (former Chair) – France&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul></description></item><item><title>Four Year Report 2016 - 2020</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport1620/</link><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2020 11:12:01 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport1620/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2020</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2020/</link><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2020 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2020/</guid><description/></item><item><title>EarthResourceML</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/earthresourceml/</link><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2020 11:49:44 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/earthresourceml/</guid><description>&lt;p>
&lt;a href="mailto:michael.sexton@ga.gov.au?subject=Application%20to%20join%20the%20EarthResourceML%20Working%20Group">Join the EarthResourceML team&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="what-is-earthresourceml">What is EarthResourceML?&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>EarthResourceML (ERML) is an XML-based data transfer standard for the exchange of digital information for mineral occurrences, mines and mining activity. EarthResourceML describes the geological characteristics and setting of mineral occurrences, their contained commodities and their mineral resource and reserve endowment. It is also able to describe mines and mining activities, and production of concentrates, refined product and waste materials.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>EarthResourceML makes use of the existing GeoSciML data standard for describing geological materials associated with mineral deposits. It is also underpinned by established OGC and ISO standards, including web feature service (WFS - ISO 19142), geography markup language (GML - ISO 19136), and SWE Common.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A parallel data standard for simple visualisation, EarthResourceML-Lite (ERML Lite), has also been developed. It enables the portrayal of a simplified set of the ERML data model using web map services (WMS) or simple web feature services (WFS).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Example uses:&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.europe-geology.eu/mineral-resources/mineral-resources-map/critical-raw-materials-map/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/egdi_2019.jpg" alt="EGDI">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://portal.geoscience.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ausgin_2019.jpg" alt="AUSGIN portal">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://portal.onegeology.org/OnegeologyGlobal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/oneGeology_2019.jpg" alt="OneGeology">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="history-of-earthresourceml">History of EarthResourceML&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>EarthResourceML (ERML) was born from a model developed by the Australian Government Geoscience Information Committee (GGIC) from 2004–2008. The CGI took over governance of the Australian model in 2008, and, after modifications by the CGI Interoperability Working Group, EarthResourceML version 1.1 was published in 2009. After some further revision, mainly to accommodate the needs of the European INSPIRE Directive, EarthResourceML version 2.0 was published in 2013.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Future development of ERML, and the simple-feature variant of ERML (ERML Lite), which supports simple portrayal requirements (e.g. WMS), will be undertaken by the EarthResourceML Working Group.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>ERML Lite version 1.0 was published in 2016 and the current version (2.0) was accepted in 2017 and published in 2018.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The international ERML development team meets at least annually to ensure that ERML continues to address the needs of data providers and users. Recent meetings have been held in St Petersburg (2013), Tuscon (2014), Ispra (2015), Vienna (2017) and Vancouver (2018).&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="downloads-and-other-resources">Downloads and other resources&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.earthresourceml.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.earthresourceml.org&lt;/a>: documentation, UML models, examples, and XML schemas for ERML and ERML Lite&lt;/li>
&lt;li>XSD schemas for
&lt;a href="http://schemas.earthresourceml.org/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">version 2.0&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>XSD schemas for
&lt;a href="http://www.earthresourceml.org/earthresourceml/1.1/xsd/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">version 1.1&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/CGIModel/EarthResourceML" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wiki&lt;/a> for the development of the ERML data standard&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resource.geosciml.org&lt;/a>: the GeoSciML vocabulary repository contains useful vocabularies to support delivery of interoperable geological data for mineral occurrences and mines&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/CGIModel/EarthResourceMLPresentations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">publications and presentations&lt;/a>: conference abstracts, posters and presentations describing ERML and related projects from 2007 to 2016. (Please respect the copyright of the authors of these publications.)&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="global-use-of-erml">Global use of ERML&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>ERML is used or endorsed as the mineral resources data transfer standard by data-sharing initiatives across the world. Some examples include:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">European INSPIRE Directive&lt;/a>: uses ERML as its data standard for exchange of mineral resource information between countries of the European Union. The implementation projects are
&lt;a href="http://www.minerals4eu.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Minerals4EU&lt;/a> and
&lt;a href="http://www.europe-geology.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EGDI&lt;/a>.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The Australian
&lt;a href="http://auscope.org.au/site/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AuScope&lt;/a> and
&lt;a href="http://www.geoscience.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AUSGIN&lt;/a> projects use ERML Lite to deliver mineral resource data from state and territory agencies.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OneGeology project&lt;/a> uses ERML Lite web feature services in its portal of worldwide geological map and mineral resource data.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="working-group">Working group&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The SWG contains members from all over the world, including:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="mailto:michael.sexton@ga.gov.au">Michael Sexton&lt;/a> (Chair; GA, Australia)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Daniel Cassard (BRGM, France)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Tjerk Heijboer (GEUS, Denmark)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>James Passmore (BGS, UK)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Mark Rattenbury (GNS, New Zealand)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Oliver Raymond (Geoscience Australia)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>François Tertre (BRGM, France)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>plus other observers&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/inspire_2019.jpg" alt="">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://www.minerals4eu.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/minerals4u_logo.jpg" alt="">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://www.geoscience.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ASGIN_logo.jpg" alt="">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/onegeology_logo_large.png" alt="">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://www.europe-geology.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/egdi_logo.jpg" alt="">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="https://www.auscope.org.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/auscope.jpg" alt="">&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>GeoSciML</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geosciml/</link><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2020 11:49:33 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geosciml/</guid><description>&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="#what-is-geosciml">What is GeoSciML?&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="#why-do-we-need-geosciml">Why do we need GeoSciML?&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="#history-of-geosciml">History of GeoSciML&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="#downloads-and-other-resources">Downloads and Other Resources&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="#geosciml-standards-working-group">GeoSciML Standards Working Group&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="#global-use-of-geosciml">Global Use of GeoSciML&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="mailto:eric.boisvert2@canada.ca?subject=Application%20to%20join%20the%20GeoSciML%20Standards%20Working%20Group">Join the GeoSciML team&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="what-is-geosciml">What is GeoSciML&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/map_image.jpg" alt="GeoSciML map">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>GeoSciML&lt;/strong> is an XML–based data transfer standard for the exchange of digital geoscientific information. It accommodates the representation and description of features typically found on geological maps, as well as being extensible to other geoscience data such as drilling, sampling, and analytical data.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GeoSciML provides a standard data structure for a suite of common geologic features (eg, geologic units, structures, earth materials) and artefacts of geological investigations (eg, boreholes, specimens, measurements). Supporting objects such as the geologic timescale and vocabularies are also provided as linked resources, so that they can be used as classifiers for the primary objects in the GeoSciML standard.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The GeoSciML data standard is underpinned by several established OGC and ISO standards, including Web Feature Service (WFS – ISO 19142), Geography Markup Language (GML – ISO 19136), Observations &amp;amp; Measurements (O&amp;amp;M – ISO 19156), and SWE Common.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A parallel data standard for simple map visualisation, &lt;strong>GeoSciML-Portrayal&lt;/strong>, has also been developed. It enables portrayal of a small simplified subset of the GeoSciML data model using Web Map Services (WMS) or simple Web Feature Services (WFS).&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="why-do-we-need-geosciml">Why do we need GeoSciML&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Users of geoscience maps and data know that geological features have no respect for national or provincial borders. Inevitably users of geoscience data will need to source data from more than one data provider. Receiving data in a number of local data formats is recognised as a major impediment to efficient and effective use of data.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GeoSciML seeks to provide a single, open source, globally agreed data structure that is used to deliver digital geological data over the internet. Additionally, the use of agreed vocabularies of geoscience terminology provides consistency in the semantic language used across geological datasets. Data providers do not need to change their internal databases to match the GeoSciML structure, but instead translate their data to the GeoSciML structure at the point of delivery.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="history-of-geosciml">History of GeoSciML&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The GeoSciML project was initiated in 2003 under the auspices of the CGI Working Group on Data Model Collaboration. The project was incorporated into the newly formed CGI Interoperability Working Group in 2004. In 2013, development of GeoSciML was moved to the current GeoSciML Standards Working Group, a collaboration between the CGI and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A number of predecessor projects from North America, Europe, Australia and Asia have had a strong influence on the development of GeoSciML. These include activities undertaken within national statutory bodies (eg, British and Japanese Geological Surveys), in multi-jurisdictional contexts (eg, the
&lt;a href="http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/www-nadm/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">North American Data Model&lt;/a> for geological maps) or oriented to an industry sector (eg, the Australian Exploration and Mining Markup Language -
&lt;a href="https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/bin/view/Xmml/WebHome" target="_blank" rel="noopener">XMML&lt;/a>).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The international GeoSciML development team meets at least annually to ensure that GeoSciML continues to address the needs of data providers and users. Most recent meetings have been held in St Petersburg (2013), Tuscon (2014), Ispra (2015), Dublin (2016) and Vienna (2017).&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="downloads-and-other-resources">Downloads and Other Resources&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.geosciml.org&lt;/a> — Documentation, cookbooks, UML models, examples, and XML schemas for GeoSciML and GeoSciML-Portrayal.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://schemas.geosciml.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">schemas.geosciml.org&lt;/a> — XML schemas for GeoSciML and GeoSciML-Portrayal.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resource.geosciml.org&lt;/a> — Geoscience vocabularies to support the GeoSciML data model, developed by the CGI Geoscience Terminology Working group and its predecessors.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/CGIModel/GeoSciMLPresentations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Publications and presentations&lt;/a> — Articles and conference abstracts, posters and presentations describing GeoSciML and related projects from 2006 to 2016. (Please respect the copyright of the authors of these publications.)&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="geosciml-standards-working-group">GeoSciML Standards Working Group&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/geoscimlswg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GeoSciML SWG&lt;/a> is responsible for development and governance of GeoSciML. Members of the OGC can join the OGC GeoSciML Standards Working Group (SWG) as observers through the
&lt;a href="https://portal.opengeospatial.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OGC Portal&lt;/a>, and can apply to be full SWG members after a short period.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>A
&lt;a href="https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/geosciml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mailing list&lt;/a> is available for anyone interested in GeoSciML development. You do not have to be a member of OGC or the GeoSciML SWG to be on this mailing list.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/GeoSciMLswg/WebHome" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wiki&lt;/a> - The work of the GeoSciML SWG is recorded on its
&lt;a href="http://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/GeoSciMLswg/WebHome" target="_blank" rel="noopener">public wiki site&lt;/a>. The wiki also contains links to all previous development of the GeoSciML model which was done under the CGI Interoperability Working Group.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>The SWG contains members from all over the world, including:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>Eric Boisvert (Chair - Geological Survey of Canada)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Oliver Raymond (Geoscience Australia)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Sylvain Grellet (BRGM, France)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Tim Duffy (British Geological Survey)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Marcus Sen (British Geological Survey)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>James Passmore (British Geological Survey)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Jouni Vuollo (Geological Survey of Finland)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Mark Rattenbury (GNS, New Zealand)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Alistair Ritchie (Landcare Research, New Zealand)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Carlo Cipolloni (APAT, Italy)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Simon Cox (CSIRO, Australia)&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>as well as many observers.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="global-use-of-geosciml">Global Use of GeoSciML&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>GeoSciML is used, or is endorsed, as the geoscientific data transfer standard by data sharing initiatives across the world. Some examples include:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OneGeology project&lt;/a> is currently demonstrating the use of GeoSciML web feature services and GeoSciML-Portrayal web map services in its portal of world-wide geological map data.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">European INSPIRE Directive&lt;/a> is using GeoSciML as its data standard for exchange of geological information between countries of the European Union.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://usgin.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">US Geoscience Information Network&lt;/a> is using GeoSciML-Portrayal and GeoSciML to share geological data between government agencies, educational and private institutions.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://ngwd-bdnes.cits.nrcan.gc.ca/service/api_ngwds/en/wmc/aquifermap.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Canadian Groundwater Information Network&lt;/a> uses an extension of GeoSciML – GroundwaterML – to integrate water well information from multiple jurisdictions.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://portal.geoscience.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Australian Geoscience Information Network&lt;/a> and
&lt;a href="http://auscope.org.au/site/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AuScope&lt;/a> projects are using GeoSciML to deliver borehole data from Australian state and territory agencies.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="http://www.aegos-project.org/index.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African-European Georesources Observation System&lt;/a> is promoting GeoSciML as the standard for geoscience data exchange across Africa.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/onegeology.jpg" alt="OneGeology logo">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/inspire_logo.jpg" alt="INSPIRE logo">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://usgin.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/l-logo-usgin-75.png" alt="USGIN logo">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://ngwd-bdnes.cits.nrcan.gc.ca/service/api_ngwds/en/wmc/aquifermap.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/CanGIN.png" alt="Groundwater Information Network logo">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://portal.geoscience.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/AUSGIN-logo.jpg" alt="AUSGIN logo">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="https://www.auscope.org.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/auscope_2019.png" alt="AuScope logo">&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/89340/factsheet/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/aegos.png" alt="AEGOS logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>CGI council elections</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/elections/</link><pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2020 23:01:15 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/elections/</guid><description>&lt;p>Nominations for CGI Council for 2020–24 are open. Any CGI member can nominate to serve on the council to help organise CGI&amp;rsquo;s standards programme and the outreach activities of the CGI. Councillors must have support to be able to attend annual council meetings (the next one will be at the 36th IGC in Delhi in March 2020) and to devote time to implement CGI&amp;rsquo;s mission.
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/misc/councilapp/">Full procedures&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>CGI Award for Young Earth Scientists at the 36th IGC</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/cgiaward/</link><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2020 23:01:43 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/cgiaward/</guid><description>&lt;p>CGI sponsors an award to assist early career scientists to present at conferences such as the IGC on the use of CGI standards in data delivery and analysis. The award covers up to US$2000 towards the cost of travel and accommodation at the IGC in Delhi. Registration cost is covered by the Young Earth Scientists (YES) Network.
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_YES_award_2019-20.pdf">Full details&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Applications for the 36th IGC award close on 15 October 2019.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>36th International Geological Congress</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/36thigc/</link><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2020 23:01:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/36thigc/</guid><description>&lt;p>Abstracts are invited to the special symposium
&lt;a href="https://www.36igc.org/science-program" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Advances in geoscience data sharing and processing&lt;/a> (Theme 45.10) at the 36th International Geological Congress (IGC). The symposium will highlight new techniques, standards, and algorithms for managing, delivering, visualising and analysing geoscience data both globally and regionally, including &amp;lsquo;big&amp;rsquo; data. The symposium is jointly organised by CGI, IAMG, and OneGeology.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2019</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2019/</link><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jul 2019 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2019/</guid><description/></item><item><title>OGC-CGI Geoscience Domain Working Group</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geosciencedwg/</link><pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2019 11:50:14 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geosciencedwg/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="geoscience-domain-working-group">Geoscience Domain Working Group&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="https://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/geosciencedwg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Geoscience Domain Working Group&lt;/a> (DWG) is a working group of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) that is co-chaired by OGC and CGI. It aims to connect people to develop, improve and promote technologies for geoscience data description and sharing.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The DWG will:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>develop communications materials that focus on the technical problem area of geoscience data management and exchange&lt;/li>
&lt;li>engage members of the geospatial data community (including relevant OGC working groups) and the geoscience community&lt;/li>
&lt;li>conceive, design, coordinate and implement projects that demonstrate technical approaches to geoscience data management and exchange within the context of the OGC suite of technologies and other relevant emerging technologies&lt;/li>
&lt;li>as appropriate, serve as a forum for the development of specification profiles and application schemas for geoscience purposes&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>The DWG maintains an
&lt;a href="https://portal.opengeospatial.org/?m=projects&amp;amp;a=view&amp;amp;project_id=539" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OGC mailing list&lt;/a> (requires an OGC login) and is currently chaired by Mickaël Beaufils from BRGM. Read
&lt;a href="https://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/pub/GeoScienceDWG/WebHome/OGC_GeoScience_Standards_AGU2018.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mickaël’s presentation&lt;/a> illustrating the linkages between CGI, OGC, and other related projects.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="borehole-interoperability-experiment">Borehole Interoperability Experiment&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ogc_x.png" alt="GeoSciML logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Geoscience DWG is currently undertaking a
&lt;a href="https://github.com/opengeospatial/boreholeie" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Borehole Interoperability Experiment&lt;/a>. This activity aims to clarify the commonalities between several existing data standards for describing a borehole, its associated data and their position along a borehole, including some OGC and CGI standards such as GroundwaterML and GeoSciML. These approaches are largely restricted to a specific borehole viewpoint (e.g. groundwater, petroleum, engineering). The IE aims to provide a semantic umbrella linked to the pre-existing work by distilling the core elements shared by all disciplines.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>To join the Borehole Interoperability Experiment (with or without an OGC login), contact the project leader
&lt;a href="mailto:S.Grellet@brgm.fr">Sylvain Grellet&lt;/a> (BRGM).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/boreholes.jpg" alt="Boreholes">&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Geoscience Terminology Working Group (GTWG)</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geoscienceterminology/</link><pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2019 11:50:03 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geoscienceterminology/</guid><description>&lt;p>
&lt;a href="mailto:chair.gtwg@gmail.com?subject=[Application]%20to%20join%20the%20Geoscience%20%20Working%20Group">Join the Geoscience Terminology team&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="what-gtwg-does">What GTWG does&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The Geoscience Terminology Working Group develops, reviews, adopts, publishes and acts as steward for internationally accepted geoscience vocabularies under the auspices of the Commission for the Application and Management of Geoscience Information (CGI). The GTWG manages these vocabularies and their associated documentation for use in geoscience information systems, in particular for the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geosciml/">GeoSciML&lt;/a> and
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/earthresourceml/">EarthResourceML&lt;/a> data transfer standards. The group assesses proposals for new geoscience vocabularies and change requests for existing CGI vocabularies. GTWG also liaises with other semantic interoperability groups to ensure cross-domain interoperability and promotes the use of vocabularies for enhanced dataset interoperability.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="our-vocabularies">Our vocabularies&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>More than 100 geoscience vocabularies have been identified to support the
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GeoSciML&lt;/a> and
&lt;a href="http://www.earthresourceml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EarthResourceML&lt;/a> data models and over 50 of these have now been compiled and adopted. These are available through the
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/def/voc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI vocabularies register&lt;/a>. These vocabularies include key lists such as:&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/classifier/cgi/lithology" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lithology&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>265 lithological rock names, hierarchically organised around up to six levels e.g. tholeiitic basalt, basalt, basic igneous rock, basic igneous material, igneous material, compound material&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/classifier/cgi/commodity-code" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resource commodity types&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>293 types of earth-sourced commodity, hierarchically organised around up to six levels e.g. anthracite, coal, carbonaceous material, organic material, industrial material, direct use commodity&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/classifier/cgi/contacttype" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nature of rock unit contacts&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>36 types of geological contacts, hierarchically organised around up to five levels, e.g. angular unconformable contact, unconformable contact, depositional contact, lithogenetic contact, contact&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/classifier/cgi/boreholedrillingmethod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">borehole drilling method&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>30 types of drilling technology, hierarchically organised around up to three levels e.g. gravity core, direct push, core drilling&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The important
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI geological time vocabulary service&lt;/a> will be merged into the main CGI vocabularies register in the near future. The geological time vocabulary draws on age definitions established by the
&lt;a href="http://www.stratigraphy.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">International Commission on Stratigraphy&lt;/a> and was the first CGI vocabulary to provide multi-lingual terms, currently in 19 languages.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The CGI vocabulary service is hosted by the
&lt;a href="http://www.ands.org.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Australian National Data Service&lt;/a> and is administered through
&lt;a href="http://www.ga.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Geoscience Australia&lt;/a>. Additional resources are available from the
&lt;a href="https://vocabs.ands.org.au/search#!/?q=&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;publisher=CGI%20Geoscience%20Terminology%20Working%20Group" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Research Vocabularies Australia website&lt;/a>, including downloadable code-lists in Resource Description Framework (RDF) formats (e.g. RDF/XML, JSON, Turtle) and Linked Data APIs.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="background">Background&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The CGI has had two previous workgroups involved in vocabulary production. The Multi-lingual Thesaurus Working Group was formed in 2003 to continue work of the Multhes working group of the 1990s. The Concept Definition Task Group was formed by the CGI Interoperability Working Group in 2007 to develop concept vocabularies for populating GeoSciML interchange documents. Because of the overlapping interests the CGI council has determined that it will be more efficient and effective to merge the efforts. The Geoscience Terminology Working Group was established early in 2013 to undertake this combined role.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="why-are-vocabularies-needed">Why are vocabularies needed?&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/granite_lithology.jpg" alt="Granite lithology">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Vocabularies are restricted lists of agreed terms that describe features contained in database fields. By limiting database values to the contents of common agreed vocabularies the interoperability and interchange of the information is enhanced. The list contents are also multi-lingual where translations of the originating list language are made available in other languages. Vocabularies also organise their terms hierarchically so that terms can be parts of a group that is a valid term itself. For example &amp;ldquo;basalt&amp;rdquo; and &amp;ldquo;gabbroic rock&amp;rdquo; are narrower adopted CGI terms for the broader level &amp;ldquo;basic igneous rock&amp;rdquo;. and this enables database searching or map portrayal based on either the broader or the narrower term.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="how-vocabularies-are-adopted">How vocabularies are adopted&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Proposals for new geoscience vocabularies or change requests for existing CGI vocabularies, are lodged with the GTWG, usually instigated from within the group but can be initiated from outside for a specific requirement. Each proposal is assessed by the group to establish whether the changes are minor and do not require the GTWG&amp;rsquo;s formal consultation, review and adoption process or whether the proposed changes are significant and need input from the group. Each new or changed vocabulary proposal is assigned a &amp;lsquo;shepherd&amp;rsquo; responsible for developing a draft vocabulary if new, or modifying a version of an existing vocabulary. The vocabulary proposal is then reviewed by the GTWG and through them colleagues and the wider community. After consultation and response to comments, the shepherd recommends voting for its adoption to the GTWG. Upon adoption, the vocabulary is registered in the CGI vocabulary repository.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Initial vocabulary development typically begins with a spreadsheet compilation of candidate terms using Excel and Google Sheets shared spreadsheets on the GTWG Google Drive facility. When a vocabulary has been completed, reviewed and adopted, it is migrated into
&lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SKOS&lt;/a>, an
&lt;a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/RDF" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RDF&lt;/a> application for encoding concepts with identifiers, definitions, source information, standard thesaurus type relationships, and language-localized labels. The RDF-encoded file is then migrated on to the vocabulary server, for example the
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/classifier/cgi/commodity-code/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">commodity code vocabulary&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="how-to-lodge-a-request-for-change">How to lodge a Request for Change&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>A Request for Change refers to a proposal to modify an adopted existing CGI vocabulary or to propose a new geoscience vocabulary. The GTWG recognise that the adopted vocabularies will not always suit all user requirements and that needs of the wider geoscience community will evolve. Adopted vocabularies should be regarded as live working versions rather than irrevocably finalised. The GTWG will consider a Request for Change from groups or individuals outside of the working group. These Requests for Change can be sent to the working group via an email request to &lt;a href="mailto:chair.gtwg@gmail.com">chair.gtwg@gmail.com&lt;/a>. Alternatively a Request for Change can be sent to a GTWG member directly.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="membership">Membership&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The GTWG contains members from all over the world. The current membership of 27 includes representatives from geological surveys of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden and USA.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The GTWG needs active participation in the construction of geoscience vocabularies. Participants with expertise in specialist geoscience domains, information science and data models are particularly welcomed. For those who would like to contribute to the GTWG should contact the Chair, outlining their areas of expertise and their capacity to assist.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>New EarthResourceML-Lite v2.0.1</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/ermllitereleased/</link><pubDate>Sun, 14 Oct 2018 23:02:08 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/ermllitereleased/</guid><description>&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://earthresourceml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EarthResourceML-Lite&lt;/a> is a data model and schema for simple map services (e.g. WMS and WFS Simple Features). It is an abridged version of the full EarthResourceML model and can be used to deliver simplified views on mineral occurrences and their commodities, mines, mining activities and mine waste products.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2018</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2018/</link><pubDate>Sun, 01 Jul 2018 11:11:29 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2018/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Council Elections</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/misc/councilapp/</link><pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/misc/councilapp/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/cm519.jpg" alt="CGI Elections">&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="procedure-for-the-election-of-cgi-council-members">Procedure for the Election of CGI Council Members&lt;/h2>
&lt;h3 id="background">Background&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>A CGI council member&amp;rsquo;s term is 4 years, starting and ending at the CGI General Assembly at International Geological Congress. The process for application and election of CGI Councillors starts several months in advance of the CGI General Assembly and is described below.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="the-application-process">The Application Process&lt;/h3>
&lt;h4 id="call-for-applications">Call for Applications&lt;/h4>
&lt;p>Applications for Council will be received for a period of 1 month after the call for applications which will be posted on the CGI web site and circulated to CGI members by email.&lt;/p>
&lt;h4 id="application-requirements">Application Requirements&lt;/h4>
&lt;ol>
&lt;li>Applicants must be CGI members.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Applicants must have substantial expertise in the management and dissemination of digital geoscience data in corporate environment and a strong motivation to contribute.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Applicants must be able to communicate orally in English and have experience as participants in international collaborative team environments.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Applicants must be able to verify that they will be active in taking forward the work of CGI and supported to attend at least the annual meeting of the CGI Council.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;h4 id="application-process">Application Process&lt;/h4>
&lt;p>Members wishing to stand for election for Council must prepare a letter of application (in English) to the Secretary General and Chair where they outline how they meet the application requirements and :&lt;/p>
&lt;ol>
&lt;li>Expertise and experience relative to the CGI mandate and activities.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Their motivation to contribute to the CGI&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The region(s) they work in and have experience (Africa, Asia &amp;amp; Oceania, North America, Latin &amp;amp; South America, Europe;
&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Geography" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Geography&lt;/a>)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Identify leadership and participation in collaborative international, regional, or specialist groups relevant to the mandate and operation of CGI.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The source of funding for travel expenses to attend CGI meetings.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Send applications to
&lt;a href="mailto:CGIsecretariat@geo-zs.si">CGIsecretariat@geo-zs.si&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;h4 id="review-of-applicants-by-cgi-council">Review of Applicants by CGI Council&lt;/h4>
&lt;p>The CGI Council will review the applications based on the criteria outlined above and select a maximum of 30 applicants to stand for election for the 12 possible Council positions. A principal objective of the selection process will be to identify a group of applicants with diverse and complementary expertise and regional affiliation. In the case of Council members standing for re-election, their contribution and meeting attendance during the current term will be amongst the factors considered.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="the-election-process">The Election Process&lt;/h3>
&lt;ol>
&lt;li>CGI members will be emailed by the Secretary General voting instructions and a list of candidates and asked to vote for a maximum of 12 councillors. Four weeks will be allowed for voting.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Approximately 2 months before the annual General Assembly at the International Geological Congress, the identity of all selected candidates will be put on the CGI Website accompanied by a brief description of their background and skills. New CGI members who join CGI after this date will not be permitted to participate in this election process.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>At the end of the voting period, the CGI Council will compile the votes and identify the successful candidates. To fill the geographical requirement and ensure that all regions of the world are represented, a minimum of 1, and a maximum of 4 candidates, will be selected from each of the 5 identified geographic regions of the globe. This will be achieved by choosing an initial candidate with the most votes for every one of the 5 regions, then the other candidates will be selected according to the number of votes they have obtained, with a limit of 4 per region.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The successful candidates will be contacted by email to request that they confirm in writing that they will have support of their agencies to participate in CGI Council activities and attend annual CGI Council meetings.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Upon receipt of confirmation of support, the new Council will be announced to CGI members and the IUGS Secretariat by email; and also posted on the CGI website approximately 2 months in advance of the IGC.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;h3 id="selection-of-the-cgi-council-chair-secretary-general-and-treasurer">Selection of the CGI Council Chair, Secretary General, and Treasurer.&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>The new Council will meet and take over from the old Council at the IGC and agree who will take on the specific roles of CGI Council Chair, Secretary General, and Treasurer. The result will be announced to CGI members and the IUGS Secretariat by email; and also posted on the CGI website.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Reports</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/misc/reports/</link><pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/misc/reports/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="commission-documents">Commission Documents&lt;/h1>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-annual-reports-to-the-iugs">CGI annual reports to the IUGS&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI-annual-report-2018.pdf">2018&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2017.pdf">2017&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_four_year_report_2012-2016.pdf">Four year report 2012-16&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2016.pdf">2016&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2015.pdf">2015&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2014.pdf">2014&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2013.pdf">2013&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2012.pdf">2012&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_four_year_report_2008-2011.pdf">Four year report 2008-11&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2011.pdf">2011&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2010.pdf">2010&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2009.pdf">2009&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2008.pdf">2008&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_four_year_report_2004-2007.pdf">Four year report 2004-07&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2007.pdf">2007&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2006.pdf">2006&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2005.pdf">2005&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2004.pdf">2004&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="other-cgi-documents">Other CGI documents&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_Statutes_v2_Jan_2005.pdf">CGI statutes&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-council-meeting-minutes">CGI Council Meeting Minutes&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/members/home.cfm">Please login&lt;/a> to view council minutes&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul></description></item><item><title>Useful Links</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/misc/links/</link><pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/misc/links/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="standards">Standards&lt;/h1>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-developed-data-standards">CGI-developed data standards&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GeoSciML&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://earthresourceml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EarthResourceML&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="ogc-data-standards">OGC data standards&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Full list of OGC standards&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>XML encoding standards that support GeoSciML and EarthResourceML
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Geography Markup Language&lt;/a> (GML) - also published as ISO 19136&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/om" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Observations &amp;amp; Measurements (O&amp;amp;M)&lt;/a> - also published as ISO 19156&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/swecommon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SWE Common Data Model&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Web service interface specifications
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Web Map Service&lt;/a> (WMS)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wmc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Web Map Context&lt;/a> (WMC)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sld" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Styled Layer Descriptor&lt;/a> (SLD)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wfs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Web Feature Service&lt;/a> (WFS)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/filter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Filter Encoding&lt;/a> (FES)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wcs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Web Coverage Service&lt;/a> (WCS)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/cat" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Catalogue Services Specification&lt;/a> (CSW)&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="iso-data-standards-for-geographic-informationgeomatics-tc211">ISO data standards for Geographic Information/Geomatics (TC211)&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.isotc211.org/Outreach/Overview/Overview.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Overview and introduction&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_tc_browse.htm?commid=54904" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Published standards&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="ontologies-vocabularies-semantic-web-principles-and-technologies">Ontologies, vocabularies, semantic web principles and technologies&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI geoscience vocabularies&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Semantic Web&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RDF - Resource Description Framework&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SKOS - Simple Knowledge Organization System&lt;/a>
&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OWL - Web Ontology Language&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="useful-geoscience-information-links">Useful geoscience information links&lt;/h2>
&lt;table>
&lt;thead>
&lt;tr>
&lt;th align="center">International Professional Organisations&lt;/th>
&lt;th align="center">&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;/thead>
&lt;tbody>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">International Council for Science (ICSU)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.icsu.org">www.icsu.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.iugs.org">www.iugs.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.iamg.org">www.iamg.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;/tbody>
&lt;/table>
&lt;table>
&lt;thead>
&lt;tr>
&lt;th align="center">International and National Standards Bodies and Data Sharing Collaborations&lt;/th>
&lt;th align="center">&lt;/th>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;/thead>
&lt;tbody>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">OneGeology&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org">www.onegeology.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org">www.opengeospatial.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology (ICSU-CODATA)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.codata.org">www.codata.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">ICSU World Data System&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.icsu-wds.org">www.icsu-wds.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.ccgm.org">www.ccgm.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">International Geoscience Programme (ICGP)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/earth-sciences/international-geoscience-programme/">www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/earth-sciences/international-geoscience-programme/&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">IUGS International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.stratigraphy.org">www.stratigraphy.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">GEO Group on Earth Observations&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.earthobservations.org">www.earthobservations.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">inspire.ec.europa.eu/&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Australia/NZ Government Geoscience Information Committee&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.geoscience.gov.au">www.geoscience.gov.au&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">AuScope (Australia)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.auscope.org.au">www.auscope.org.au&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Geoscience Information in Africa (GIRAF)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.giraf-network.org">www.giraf-network.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.usgin.org">www.usgin.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">US National Geologic Map Database Project (NGMDB)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.ngmdb.usgs.gov/Info">www.ngmdb.usgs.gov/Info&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Digital Mapping Techniques (DMT) workshops&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.ngmdb.usgs.gov/Info/dmt">www.ngmdb.usgs.gov/Info/dmt&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">National and Provincial Geological Surveys&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Global directory of geological surveys (maintained by the Geological Survey of Japan)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.gsj.jp/information/gsj-link/dir/index.html">www.gsj.jp/information/gsj-link/dir/index.html&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">EuroGeoSurveys&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.eurogeosurveys.org">www.eurogeosurveys.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Applied geoscience and Technology Division (SOPAC)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.sopac.org">www.sopac.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Association of American State Geologists (AAGS)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.stategeologists.org">www.stategeologists.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;tr>
&lt;td align="center">Geoscience Information Consortium (GIC)&lt;/td>
&lt;td align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.g-i-c.org">www.g-i-c.org&lt;/a>&lt;/td>
&lt;/tr>
&lt;/tbody>
&lt;/table></description></item><item><title>IUGS Deep-time Digital Earth program</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/iugsdde/</link><pubDate>Thu, 14 Jun 2018 23:02:58 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/iugsdde/</guid><description>&lt;p>IUGS President Qiuming Cheng announcing the DDE program at the opening of the DDE Forum.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI is a founding partner in the new IUGS big science program, the
&lt;a href="https://iugs.org/uploads/Reports/IUGS_Deep_Time_Digital_Earth_Launched.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Deep-time Digital Earth&lt;/a> (DDE). DDE was kicked off at the recent IUGS Executive Council meeting in Beijing.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Recent CGI Meetings</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/recent-meetings/</link><pubDate>Thu, 14 Jun 2018 23:02:31 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/recent-meetings/</guid><description>&lt;p>Members of the EarthResourceML Working group met at IGME (the Spanish Geological Survey) in Madrid in May. L-R: Wang Yongzhi, Jouni Vuollo (chair), Mark Rattenbury, Ollie Raymond, Katarzyna Sadlowska, and Zhang Minghua.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The CGI Council and two of its standards working groups — Geoscience Terminology and EarthResourceML — convened in May in Madrid in conjunction with the
&lt;a href="http://www.geology.cz/gic" target="_blank" rel="noopener">34th Geoscience Information Consortium&lt;/a> (GIC) conference at the Spanish Geological Survey, IGME. Progress was made towards publishing several new geoscience vocabularies. Progress was also made towards publication of a new version of EarthResourceML (version 3.0), to address some issues identified by current users of the EarthResourceML v2.0 data transfer standard.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 5</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-5/</link><pubDate>Fri, 14 Jul 2017 23:46:24 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-5/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter--issue-5--july-2017">Newsletter | Issue 5 | July 2017&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_july17.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome to Edition #5 of the CGI Newsletter. In this edition we report on the progress of the CGI Working Groups and the recent meetings of CGI members.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#a-busy-time-for-cgi">A Busy Time for CGI&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geosciml-standards-working-group">GeoSciML Standards Working Group&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#towards-a-new-version-of-erml">Towards a New Version of ERML&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geoscience-vocabularies">Geoscience Vocabularies&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-asia">News from Asia&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#ccop-workshop-on-igdp-and-compilation-technology">CCOP Workshop on IGDP and Compilation Technology&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#information-sharing-for-the-belt-and-route-region">Information Sharing for the &amp;lsquo;Belt and Route Region&amp;rsquo;&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-south-america">News from South America&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#ibero-american-open-science-meeting-in-buenos-aires">Ibero-American Open Science Meeting in Buenos Aires&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-standards-in-new-zealand">CGI Standards in New Zealand&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-council-news">CGI Council News&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#32nd-annual-gic-conference">32nd Annual GIC Conference&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#resources-for-future-generations--vancouver-june-2018">Resources for Future Generations — Vancouver, June 2018&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;h2 id="a-busy-time-for-cgi">A Busy Time for CGI&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>May and June was a busy time for many CGI members. Three of CGI&amp;rsquo;s standards working groups, the CGI Council, the OneGeology Technical Implementation Group, and the 32nd annual Geoscience Information Consortium (GIC) conference all met over a period of two weeks in Vienna, Austria and Orleans, France.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geosciml-standards-working-group">GeoSciML Standards Working Group&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/geosciml.jpg" alt="GeoSciML logo">&lt;br>
&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ogc_logo.jpg" alt="OGC logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The OGC/CGI GeoSciML Standards Working Group (SWG) held its
&lt;a href="http://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/GeoSciMLswg/ViennaFace2FaceJune2017" target="_blank" rel="noopener">annual face-to-face meeting&lt;/a> at Geologische Bundesanstalt (Geological Survey of Austria) in Vienna in May. This was the first meeting since the GeoSciML v4.1 data standard was ratified and
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/2563" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published by OGC&lt;/a> in March. All current documentation and schemas are now hosted on the
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/geosciml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OGC website&lt;/a>. The original
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI website&lt;/a> still maintains access to all historic versions of GeoSciML and links to other supporting resources like UML models and
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vocabularies&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/Eric_boisvert.jpg" alt="Eric Boisvert">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>After 8 years as Chair of the Working Group, Ollie Raymond stepped down and Eric Boisvert (pictured) from the Geological Survey of Canada has taken on the role. We wish Eric and the team every success as the SWG enters a new phase in GeoSciML development. The working group discussed minor corrections to the version 4.1 standard, considered a GML version 3.2 profile of GeoSciML-Lite, and reviewed the best practice of delivering data using the GeoSciML-Lite data standard.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Members also considered the future direction of the SWG, in particular towards potential new standard encodings of the GeoSciML data model, such as RDF and JSON.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="towards-a-new-version-of-erml">Towards a New Version of ERML&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/working_group_BRGM_cropped.jpg" alt="EarthResourceML (ERML) Working Group">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The annual EarthResourceML (ERML) Working Group meeting was held in June in Orleans, France, hosted by BRGM. CGI members from France, Finland, Australia and New Zealand attended the one day meeting.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The working group discussed a proposal from Geoscience Australia for a modification to way that the ERML-Lite data standard delivers commodity resource and reserve amounts. This request was based on the Australian and New Zealand experience of recently establishing the world&amp;rsquo;s first
&lt;a href="http://services.ga.gov.au/earthresource/ows?service=wfs&amp;amp;version=1.1.0&amp;amp;request=GetCapabilities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ERML-Lite WFS services&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The EU-funded
&lt;a href="http://www.prosumproject.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ProSum project&lt;/a> also presented a proposal to extend the ERML full model. The proposal will add Processing Activity and Processing Plant to the model. Other technical changes, including links to GeoSciML v4 and implementing recent GeoSciML modelling patterns, will be added to the EarthResourceML and after a review and voting period, a new version ERML v 3.0 will be published later in 2017.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/erml-logo.jpg" alt="ERML logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI intends to have a strong presence at the
&lt;a href="http://rfg2018.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RFG2018 conference&lt;/a> in Vancouver in June 2018, in particular to promote ERML and ERML-Lite to North America. New ERML and ERML-Lite implementations and use cases will be demonstrated there. Documentation and schemas for EarthResourceML v2.0 and EarthResourceML-Lite v1.0 are available on the
&lt;a href="http://www.earthresourceml.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.earthresourceml.org&lt;/a> website.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geoscience-vocabularies">Geoscience Vocabularies&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group (GTWG) met for its fourth face-to-face meeting at the Geological Survey of Austria in Vienna on May 26. Twenty-two people participated in person or remotely. Several key vocabularies that are in advanced stages of preparation have been prioritised for completion, notably the Natural Geomorphologic Feature, Mineral Deposit Type and Regional Lithological Unit Synthesis vocabularies.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A presentation by Chris Schubert from the Austrian Climate Change Centre outlined development on federated registries of vocabularies in Europe, and has helped confirm that GTWG’s role in providing globally-relevant geoscience terms that can work in parallel with geological surveys’ more local vocabulary requirements.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/wordmap.jpg" title="Wordmap">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/wordmap.jpg" alt="Word map">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://def.seegrid.csiro.au/sissvoc/cgi201211/collection" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI Vocabulary Service&lt;/a>, hosted by Australia’s CSIRO for around a decade, is in the process of being moved to its new hosting organisation, Geoscience Australia. As part of the move to new hosting arrangements, all 2016 editions of CGI&amp;rsquo;s vocabularies are also incorporated in the
&lt;a href="https://vocabs.ands.org.au/search/#!/?q=&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;publisher=CGI%20Geoscience%20Terminology%20Working%20Group" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Research Vocabularies Australia vocabulary service&lt;/a>, a broader science vocabularies service that is available online globally.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-asia">News from Asia&lt;/h2>
&lt;h3 id="ccop-workshop-on-igdp-and-compilation-technology">CCOP Workshop on IGDP and Compilation Technology&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>A cooperation project between China and the Southeast Asia Geoscience Program Coordinating Committee (CCOP) on Integrated Geological Data Processing (IGDP) was kicked off at a workshop hosted by the China Geological Survey (CGS) on 22–24 May in Beijing.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/CCOP_workshop_2017.jpg" alt="CCOP Workshop on IGDP and Compilation Technology">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The workshop included training for CCOP member countries on data processing techniques for geological, geophysical and geochemical data. Twenty participants from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam and the CCOP Technical Secretariat joined a discussion on OneGeology geological map data delivery technologies, and regional geoscience map compilation techniques. A work plan for the next two years was prepared.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="information-sharing-for-the-belt-and-route-region">Information Sharing for the &amp;lsquo;Belt and Route Region&amp;rsquo;&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>A seminar was held at the China Geological Survey in Beijing on 16–20 May, 2017, aimed at geoscience information sharing amongst the vast region of the so-called the &amp;lsquo;Belt and Route Region&amp;rsquo;. The region, coined by the Chinese government, covers part or all of Oceania, Asia, Europe, Arab and Africa. More than 50 officials and experts from different geological organisations exchanged views and shared current technology for data exchange and information sharing. CGI-IUGS standards and the CCOP metadata standard will be used for data transfer once the cooperation project application is approved by the Chinese government.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/Belt_and_Route_workshop_2017.jpg" alt="&amp;lsquo;Belt and Route Region&amp;rsquo; workshop">&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-south-america">News from South America&lt;/h2>
&lt;h3 id="ibero-american-open-science-meeting-in-buenos-aires">Ibero-American Open Science Meeting in Buenos Aires&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>An international
&lt;a href="http://www.mincyt.gob.ar/agenda/seminario-internacional-practicas-experiencias-y-estrategias-en-ciencia-abierta-en-iberoamerica-12885" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seminar on Open Science&lt;/a> was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina from May 31 to June 2. The seminar was organised under the auspices of the Ibero-American States Organizations, Portugal, Uruguay, and the Argentina Ministry of Science and Technology. Science, technology and innovation agencies from Spain, Brasil and Colombia also participated.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The seminar discussed &amp;lsquo;Open Science&amp;rsquo; to enable collaborative research and knowledge distribution by digital means. In particular, the regional science community see it as a way to improve science and technology development and performance in South America.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/Sth_America_news_2017.jpg" alt="Ibero-American Open Science Meeting in Buenos Aires">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The meeting was focused mainly on open digital repositories. In this context, not only will written publications be reviewed, but also their supporting data and results. It is hoped that in the future this initial step by Latin American countries will facilitate the access to and development of interoperable data and methods for any kind of scientific data. The regional science community intends to facilitiate the development of initiatives currently occurring at different levels and domains in international organisations like IUGS CGI,
&lt;a href="https://www.icsu-wds.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ICSU&lt;/a>, and the
&lt;a href="https://www.rd-alliance.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Research Data Alliance&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-standards-in-new-zealand">CGI Standards in New Zealand&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/NZ_map.jpg" alt="Geological map of New Zealand">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GNS Science, the New Zealand government geoscience agency, is just one example of a data provider embracing CGI data standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>As mentioned in the EarthResourceML news above, an EarthResourceML-Lite-compliant web service of New Zealand&amp;rsquo;s mineral occurrences is available (see
&lt;a href="http://maps.gns.cri.nz/geoserver/web" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gns:GERM_ERML_VIEW&lt;/a>). Two New Zealand geological map datasets — the 1:1M Geological map of New Zealand and the 1:250k Geological Map of Southern Victoria Land (Antarctica) — are now available as GeoSciML Lite-compliant web services, have been accredited with 4-star OneGeology status, and can be accessed from the
&lt;a href="http://maps.gns.cri.nz/geology/web" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GNS web service interface&lt;/a>. The layers include links to CGI codelists for age terms, unit types, representative lithology and metadata records.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The 2017 version of the
&lt;a href="https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Our-Science/Earth-Science/Regional-Geology/Geological-Maps/1-250-000-Geological-Map-of-New-Zealand-QMAP" target="_blank" rel="noopener">QMAP 1:250 000 Geological Map&lt;/a> of New Zealand seamless GIS dataset contains links to CGI code-lists for age terms, unit types, representative lithology and metadata records amongst others. New Zealand’s Petlab Geoanalytical Database of rock and mineral properties has also incorporated CGI vocabulary terms for rock names and geological age.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-council-news">CGI Council News&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The CGI Council held its 2017 annual meeting in Vienna in June.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/CGI_Council_cropped.jpg" alt="CGI Council">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The councillors addressed:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>activities for CGI funding in 2017–18&lt;/li>
&lt;li>planning for the RFG 2018 conference in Vancouver next year&lt;/li>
&lt;li>a proposal for the coordination of hydrogeology data standards development in CGI and OGC&lt;/li>
&lt;li>the need to recruit and rejuvenate active membership in CGI working groups&lt;/li>
&lt;li>better promotion of CGI activities and standards&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="32nd-annual-gic-conference">32nd Annual GIC Conference&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/32_GIC_1.jpg" alt="32nd Annual GIC Conference">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://www.g-i-c.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Geoscience Information Consortium&lt;/a> (GIC) is an annual gathering of information managers from international government Geological Survey agencies. The 32nd GIC Conference was held from May 29 to June 3 at the Geological Survey of Austria (GBA) in Vienna. Many CGI members attended, and shared their work with Geological Survey representatives from 35 countries from every continent.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The conference heard a wide range of presentations on current best practice in data management and data delivery from many individual Geological Surveys, as well as collaborative data sharing initiatives from around the world. Panel discussion sessions also shared the experiences and requirements of the Geological Surveys in managing and delivering 3D geological models, future data management strategies, and emerging technologies.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/images/newsletters/32_GIC_2.jpg" alt="32nd Annual GIC Conference">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Government Geological Survey information managers are encouraged to join the 33rd annual GIC conference which will be hosted by Geoscience Australia in Canberra, Australia in mid 2018.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/h2>
&lt;h3 id="resources-for-future-generations--vancouver-june-2018">Resources for Future Generations — Vancouver, June 2018&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/RFG_2018.jpg" alt="RFG 2018">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI cordially invites its members to the
&lt;a href="http://rfg2018.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RFG 2018&lt;/a> conference in Vancouver, Canada, 16–21 June 2018. IUGS is a partner organisation at this conference and CGI encourages all its members to at the conference to demonstrate how CGI&amp;rsquo;s standards and best practice in data delivery and analysis supports and enables sustainable resource discovery and exploitation. It is anticipated that the use of web service data delivery, in particular using the EarthResourceML and EarthResourceML-Lite data transfer standards, will be a feature. The conference will be a forum for industry stakeholders to discuss their research initiatives and activities as well as the key issues and trends shaping the future of energy, minerals and water resources.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/Minghua_Zhang.jpg" alt="Dr Zhang Minghua">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Dr Zhang Minghua is co-Secretary General of CGI and Director of Geoinformation and Engineering at the Development Research Center of the China Geological Survey. Zhang has a MSc and PhD from the China University of Geosciences, Beijing and has conducted post-doctoral research in GIS in geological exploration at the Beijing University of Science and Technology. Zhang also previously worked at the Institute of Geophysical Exploration, Ministry of Metallurgy, and the Chinese Academy of Geoexploration. Zhang has been project leader and a key researcher of Chinese national geoinformation projects since 2000, including geophysical and geochemical exploration software development, CCOP geoinformation metadata standards, CCOP/ASEAN geodata processing, and is currently the leader of China’s participation in OneGeology.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Zhang is also a senior member of several Chinese professional organisations, including council member of the Chinese Geophysical Society, Deputy Secretary General of Exploration Geophysics Committee of the Geological Society of China, Geoinformation coordinator of China to CCOP, and council member of the Geophysical and Geochemical Standard Committee of the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources. Contact
&lt;a href="mailto:zminghua@mail.cgs.gov.cn">Zhang&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="https://www.epos-ip.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">European Plate Observing System&lt;/a> (EPOS) is a long-term plan to facilitate integrated use of data and facilities from distributed research infrastructures for solid Earth science. It aims to establish a comprehensive multidisciplinary research platform for the Earth sciences in Europe. EPOS aims to facilitiate the integration of a wide range of heterogeneous data and services, including seismology, volcanology, geology and surface dynamics, geodesy, geomagnetism, analytical and experimental laboratory research, rock physics and petrology, and satellite information.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/epos.jpg" alt="EPOS">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>European CGI members are engaged in EPOS workshops and hackathons with a view to having an operational infrastructure by 2020. IUGS and CGI data standards will no doubt play a large role in enabling data transfer to and from EPOS researchers.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/linkedin.jpg" alt="LinkedIn logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We invite all CGI members to join our
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn group&lt;/a>. The group provides a forum for CGI and LinkedIn members to connect with other geoscience professionals, post news of upcoming events, ask questions and discuss your issues.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2017</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2017/</link><pubDate>Sat, 01 Jul 2017 11:10:42 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2017/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 4</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-4/</link><pubDate>Wed, 14 Dec 2016 23:46:20 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-4/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter--issue-4--december-2016">Newsletter | Issue 4 | December 2016&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_dec16.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome to Edition #4 of the CGI Newsletter. In this edition we provide a look back at 2016 and a taste of what is to come in 2017.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geosciml---ogc-accreditation">GeoSciML - OGC Accreditation&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#earthresourceml-lite">EarthResourceML-Lite&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#2016-iugs-science-excellence-award">2016 IUGS Science Excellence Award&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geoscience-vocabularies">Geoscience Vocabularies&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#a-successful-35th-igc">A Successful 35th IGC&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-africa">News from Africa&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-china">News from China&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-council-news">CGI Council News&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geoscience-information-consortium--vienna-may-2017">Geoscience Information Consortium — Vienna, May 2017&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#resources-for-future-generations--vancouver-june-2018">Resources for Future Generations — Vancouver, June 2018&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;h2 id="geosciml---ogc-accreditation">GeoSciML - OGC Accreditation&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/geosciml.jpg" alt="GeoSciML logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GeoSciML&lt;/a> data transfer standard was recently accepted by a unanimous vote of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Technical Committee. This significant milestone cements GeoSciML&amp;rsquo;s place as the international geological data transfer standard.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Documentation and schemas for GeoSciML version 4.1 will be available on the OGC and &lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org">www.geosciml.org&lt;/a> websites early in 2017. Due to some changes required by the OGC review process, GeoSciML will move from version 4.0 to version 4.1. The most significant change in version 4.1 is the renaming of &lt;strong>GeoSciML-Portrayal&lt;/strong> to &lt;strong>GeoSciML-Lite&lt;/strong> to avoid confusion with use of the word &amp;lsquo;portrayal&amp;rsquo; in other standards domains. The only other changes from version 4.0 to 4.1 are minor bug fixes and improvements to documentation.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ogc_logo.jpg" alt="OGC logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The considerable documentation required for OGC accreditation was compiled by Eric Boisvert of the Geological Survey of Canada, with assistance from Ollie Raymond (Geoscience Australia) and Marcus Sen (British Geological Survey). Many thanks for a great effort!&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="earthresourceml-lite">EarthResourceML-Lite&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>A new abridged, simple feature (WFS SF-0) version of the
&lt;a href="http://www.earthresourceml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EarthResourceML&lt;/a> data model was released by CGI in August 2016. EarthResourceML-Lite (or ERML-Lite) can be used to deliver simplified views on mineral occurrences and their commodities, mines, mining activities and mine waste products.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/erml-logo.jpg" alt="ERML logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>ERML-Lite has a similar purpose to GeoSciML-Lite, in that it enables delivery of a simplified view of the full EarthResourceML model which can be used for exchange of data in simple formats that can be easily rendered in GIS applications and web mapping portals (e.g., WMS, simple WFS, shapefiles, CSV tables).&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="2016-iugs-science-excellence-award">2016 IUGS Science Excellence Award&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/steve_richard_home_page.jpg" alt="Dr Stephen Richard">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Dr Stephen Richard, recently of the Arizona Geological Survey and now at Columbia University, USA, was awarded the 2016 IUGS Science Excellence Award in Geoscience Information at the 35th Intern-ational Geological Congress.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve was a research geologist and Head of Geoinformatics at the Arizona Geological Survey from 1992 until 2016, but his influence on North American and international geoinformatics extends way beyond the borders of Arizona. Steve was a leading member of the North American Geological Map Data Model (NADM) Steering Committee from 2000 to 2007. He worked with this consortium of American and Canadian geoscientists, database designers, and developers of geologic map information to develop a comprehensive geological data model that would form one of the foundations for global standards development.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve was a founding member of the CGI Interoperability Working Group in 2004. As part of this group, Steve was a leading force for over 10 years in the development of the GeoSciML standard for geoscience data transfer.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve has also been deeply involved in development of international geoscience vocabularies through the IUGS CGI Controlled Vocabularies Working Group, and was the founding Chair of the CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group. Over 30 internationally-agreed vocabularies were published under Steve&amp;rsquo;s leadership.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve has also been a leader in technical development of the US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN) - especially as chief architect of the US National Geothermal Data System - to deploy web services for geoscience information exchange. His advocacy of OGC and CGI standards in US geological surveys has led to these global standards being embedded in North American data delivery best practice.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geoscience-vocabularies">Geoscience Vocabularies&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The Geoscience Terminology Working Group (GTWG) has been working away compiling key vocabularies to support the GeoSciML and EarthResourceML geoscience data models. The
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI vocabulary service&lt;/a> has been hosted by CSIRO in Australia from its inception, but is soon to be migrated onto a server hosted by Geoscience Australia. The GTWG is very appreciative of the efforts of CSIRO in developing and maintaining the vocabulary service for over a decade and thanks Geoscience Australia for agreeing to support the service into the future.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The important
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/static/vocabulary/earthresourceml/2016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Commodity Code vocabulary&lt;/a> was compiled and adopted in 2015; a highly hierarchically organised vocabulary of 291 terms describing natural and processed earth resource commodities. This vocabulary is showcased in the
&lt;a href="http://minerals4eu.brgm-rec.fr/minerals4EU/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Minerals4EU Map Viewer&lt;/a> web application for mineral commodities around Europe.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/minerals4EU.jpg" alt="Minerals4EU Map Viewer">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The EarthResourceML vocabularies have been translated into 22 other European languages through the INSPIRE directive and these multi-lingual vocabularies will be adapted for delivery through the CGI vocabulary service. Many more vocabularies are still required, particularly for the Extension schema of the GeoSciML model.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Working Group is always looking for more active members to contribute to compilation of geoscience vocabularies, particularly in languages other than English. Contact the group&amp;rsquo;s chair, compose(&amp;lsquo;M.Rattenbury&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;gns&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;cri.nz&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Mark Rattenbury&amp;rsquo;);, if you would like to contribute to the work.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="a-successful-35th-igc">A Successful 35th IGC&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/IGC2016.jpg" alt="IGC logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A successful &amp;ldquo;Geoscience Data &amp;amp; Information Systems&amp;rdquo; symposium was held at the 35th International Geological Congress in Cape Town in August. Over 40 presentations were given on a wide range of digital geological data management, data analysis, and data delivery topics.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>More than 20 people attended the CGI workshop on geoscience web services. Presentations were given by the leaders of all the CGI working groups, and experts from the OneGeology and INSPIRE projects.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-africa">News from Africa&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://www.giraf-network.org/GIRAF2009/EN/Home/home_node.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GIRAF Network&lt;/a> was transferred fully into African hands at the 26th Colloquium of African Geology (CAG26) in Ibadan in November. The network coordinator since 2009, Dr Kristine Asch (BGR and CGI) ceremonially handed over the reins to Ibrahim Shaddad, Director of the African Mineral and Geosciences Centre in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where the new GIRAF office will be located.&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>&amp;ldquo;Knowledge-based geoscience information is more important than ever, especially in Africa&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;p>said Kristine.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/giraf2016.jpg" alt="26th Colloquium of African Geology (CAG26)">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GIRAF was founded in 2009 as a platform for African geoscience information experts to share information and experience to understand the needs and issues in geoscience information management, delivery and technology in Africa. Its aim is to improve the environmental conditions and economic circumstances of Africa though the application of information technology based on geoscience data and information.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Since its inauguration, the network has been primarily supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), BGR, UNESCO Nairobi, the Geological Society of Africa, AusAid (Australia), the United Nations Development Programme, the IUGS Commission for Geoscience Information (CGI) and many more organizations. GIRAF has more than 400 members from more than 30 African and 12 non-African countries.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-china">News from China&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ollieKristineZhang.jpg" alt="Ollie and Kristine were hosted by Dr Zhang Minghua, Director of Geoinformation and Engineering at the CGS Development Research Center.">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GeoSciML Standards Work-ing Group chair Ollie Raymond, and recent CGI Councillor Dr Kristine Asch visited the China Geological Survey (CGS) in Beijing in November to present a
&lt;a href="http://www.cgs.gov.cn/xwl/gjhz/201611/t20161116_416640.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">series of talks on geoscience information standards&lt;/a>. Ollie and Kristine were hosted by Dr Zhang Minghua, Director of Geoinformation and Engineering at the CGS Development Research Center.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/beijingTalk.jpg" alt="The presentations were attended by 30 staff from the Beijing and provincial offices of the CGS.">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The presentations were attended by 30 staff from the Beijing and provincial offices of the CGS.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-council-news">CGI Council News&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>A new CGI Council for 2016–2020 was sworn in at the 35th International Geological Congress in Cape Town in September 2016. Founding CGI member and CGI Secretary-General, Kristine Asch, left the Council to take up a role as a Vice-President of IUGS. Thank you Kristine for your many years of commitment to CGI.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/CGI_Council.jpg" alt="CGI council 2016">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Kombada Mhopjeni (Namibia) and Zhang Minghua (China) were elected as joint Secretary-General, and Francois Robida (France) remains as CGI Council Chair. The Council also welcomed two new members, Tomasz Nałęcz (Poland) and Harvey Thorleifson (USA).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The CGI 2012–2016 four-year report was also submitted to the IUGS council at the 35th IGC in Cape Town. Read about all
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_four_year_report_2012-2016.pdf">CGI&amp;rsquo;s activities and achievements over the past four years&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/h2>
&lt;h3 id="geoscience-information-consortium--vienna-may-2017">Geoscience Information Consortium — Vienna, May 2017&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>CGI will hold its annual Standards Working Groups and Council meetings in conjunction with the 32nd annual
&lt;a href="http://www.g-i-c.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Geoscience Information Consortium&lt;/a> (GIC) conference in Vienna, Austria, 29 May – 2 June, 2017.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/building-in-Vienna.jpg" alt="A building in Vienna">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>GIC is an international forum to exchange information among Geological Surveys Organisations (GSOs) related to the use and management of geoscience information systems in support of the earth sciences.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="resources-for-future-generations--vancouver-june-2018">Resources for Future Generations — Vancouver, June 2018&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/rfg2018.jpg" alt="RFG 2018 logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI has begun planning to have a substantial presence at the
&lt;a href="http://rfg2018.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RFG 2018&lt;/a> conference in Vancouver, Canada, 16–21 June 2018. IUGS is a partner organisation at this conference. The conference will be a forum for industry stakeholders to discuss their research initiatives and activities as well as the key issues and trends shaping the future of energy, minerals and water resources including the science of the earth that underpins their sustainable discovery and extraction.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/Kombada_Mhopjeni.jpg" alt="Kombada Mhopjeni">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Kombada Mhopjeni is joint Secretary General of CGI, and is Chief Geologist in the Regional Geoscience Division in the Geological Survey of Namibia (GSN). At GSN, Kombada has been involved in several mapping projects including detailed geological mapping in the northern and central parts of Namibia. She has also assisted in the maintenance and standardisation of geoscience data at the Survey. Her research interests are in the geological application of remote sensing and geoscience data management. Kombada has an MSc (Geology) from the University of Western Australia. Since 2008, Kombada has served as a committee member of the Geological Society of Namibia and has been involved in the organisation of conferences and workshops, including GIC-26 held in Windhoek in 2011. Kombada has keen interest in geoscience outreach and has partaken in several outreach activities including the International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE). Contact compose(&amp;lsquo;kkmhopjeni&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;mme&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;gov.na&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Kombada&amp;rsquo;); .&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The Australian Geoscience Information Network (AusGIN) is a collaboration between the State, Territory and Commonwealth geological surveys of Australia. Its flagship is the
&lt;a href="http://portal.geoscience.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AusGIN Geoscience Portal&lt;/a> which delivers geoscience maps and data using OGC and CGI standards-based web services from all Australian governments through a single web mapping application.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ausginPortal.JPG" alt="AusGIN Portal">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Datasets available through the Portal include mines and mineral occurrences, boreholes, mineral exploration tenements, geological maps, and supporting infrastructure data layers. The Portal also enables users to search for further data and publications from the metadata catalogs of six Australian geoscience agencies using ISO and OGC catalog web service standards (CSW).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Portal provides access to the National Virtual Core Library, a repository of high resolution photographic imagery and scanned hyperspectral data from borehole core. Users can view and analyse the hyperspectral data within the Portal interface or download the data for further analysis.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/National-Virtual-Core-Library.JPG" alt="National Virtual Core Library">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>AusGIN is an enthusiastic supporter of the CGI data transfer standards, GeoSciML and EarthResourceML. AusGIN plans to be using the new EarthResourceML-Lite data standard for mineral resources web services, and GeoSciML v4.1 for borehole web services in 2017.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/linkedin.jpg" alt="LinkedIn logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We invite all CGI members to join our
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn group&lt;/a>. The group provides a forum for CGI and LinkedIn members to connect with other geoscience professionals, post news of upcoming events, ask questions and discuss your issues.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Four Year Report 2012 - 2016</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport1216/</link><pubDate>Fri, 01 Jul 2016 11:12:01 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport1216/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2016</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2016/</link><pubDate>Fri, 01 Jul 2016 11:10:39 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2016/</guid><description/></item><item><title>2016 IUGS Science Excellence Award in Geoscience Information</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/award2016/</link><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jun 2016 20:18:37 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/award2016/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/steve_richard.jpg" alt="Dr Stephen Richard">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Dr Stephen Richard&lt;/strong>&lt;br>
Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance&lt;br>
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, New York, USA&lt;br>
(previously Senior Geologist and Head of Geoinformatics, Arizona Geological Survey, Tucson, USA)&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="award-citation">Award Citation&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>Steve Richard has been a global leader in the field of geological informatics for many years, and is well known and respected by the entire community. It is the CGI Council&amp;rsquo;s pleasure to nominate him for the outstanding scientist award.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve was a research geologist and Head of Geoinformatics at the Arizona Geological Survey from 1992 until 2016, but his influence on North American and international geoinformatics extends way beyond the borders of Arizona.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve was a leading member of the North American Geological Map Data Model (NADM) Steering Committee from 2000 to 2007. He worked with this consortium of American and Canadian geoscientists, database designers, and developers of geologic map information to develop a comprehensive geological data model that would form one of the foundations for global standards development through the IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve was a founding member of the IUGS CGI Interoperability Working Group in 2004. As part of this group, Steve was a leading force for over 10 years in the development of the GeoSciML standard for geoscience data transfer. In 2016, GeoSciML is now recognised as the data transfer standard for geoscience data sharing projects around the world, including OneGeology, INSPIRE, USGIN, AuScope and others.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve has also been deeply involved in development of international geoscience vocabularies through the IUGS CGI Controlled Vocabularies Working Group, and was the founding Chair of the successor CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group. Over 30 internationally-agreed vocabularies were published under Steve&amp;rsquo;s leadership.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve has been a leader in technical development of the US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN) - especially as chief architect of the US National Geothermal Data System - to deploy web services for geoscience information exchange. His advocacy of OGC and CGI standards in US geological surveys has led to these global standards being embedded in North American data delivery best practice.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Steve has also recently worked with the International Organization for Standardization as the editor of the ISO19115-3 geospatial metadata standard, and is an active participant in the Earth Cube geoscience community in the USA.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&amp;ldquo;I am deeply honoured to have received the Science Excellence Award 2016 In Geoscience Information. Thank you for the nomination!&amp;rdquo; said Steve.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Metadata</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/metadata/</link><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jun 2016 19:59:03 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/metadata/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="metadata">Metadata&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>The rapid growth of the internet as a means of searching for, disseminating and receiving data has given rise to a corresponding increase in interest in metadata. As a result of this there has been a considerable amount of effort put into developing metadata standards which, for spatial data, has resulted in the recent ratification of ISO19115. Many organisations in the geoscience community are working to implement this and related standards, but often as separate and uncoordinated activities.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Although the CGI does not have any formal working group concerned with geoscience metadata it was felt that it could help geoscience organisations develop their metadata implementations by providing a forum for posting work and discussions. Hopefully this will enable organisations to learn from one another and thus save development time.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The ISO19115 standard recognises that different organisations or user communities may wish to specify their own implementations of the standard, for example by making specific restrictions on the values that can be entered to particular fields or adding extensions to meet their specific needs. These can be defined, and registered, as ISO community profiles. There may be advantages in developing such a profile for the geoscience community, and if so this forum could be the first step in this direction. If there is sufficient interest from the community in developing a geoscience profile then a formal CGI working group might be needed.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="metadata-posted-document-list">Metadata Posted Document List&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The following documents concerned with geoscience metadata have been submitted. To post a document please contact us. (Unfortunately for security reasons we are not able to allow direct posting of documents to the web site.)&lt;/p>
&lt;p>All documents are in PDF format. The name of the contributor and the date the document was posted appear in brackets.&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/Explanations_KAH_ECol.pdf">Explanations of the metadata elements implemented by BGS&lt;/a> &lt;em>(John Laxton, 28/01/2005)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/tabledesign.pdf">An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)&lt;/a> showing the BGS implementation of the ISO19115 core metadata &lt;em>(John Laxton, 29/06/2004)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Documentation describing the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/tabledesigndocumentation.pdf">BGS Oracle implementation&lt;/a> of the ISO19115 core metadata &lt;em>(John Laxton, 29/06/2004)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/namingconventions.pdf">Naming conventions&lt;/a> used in the BGS implementation of the ISO19115 core metadata &lt;em>(John Laxton, 29/06/2004)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/diagramconventions.pdf">Conventions used in the ERD diagrams&lt;/a> &lt;em>(John Laxton, 29/06/2004)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>An ERD showing the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/Visio-ISO19115DEVPart.pdf">full BGS metadata implementation&lt;/a>, including those non-core ISO19115 elements used, and extensions &lt;em>(John Laxton, 29/06/2004)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>A spreadsheet showing the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/BGSDGSMProfile.pdf">ISO19115 elements implemented by BGS&lt;/a> and their relationship with legacy BGS metadata &lt;em>(John Laxton, 29/06/2004)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>The
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/BusinessRules.pdf">Business Rules&lt;/a> used by BGS in implementing ISO19115 &lt;em>(John Laxton, 04/10/2004)&lt;/em>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul></description></item><item><title>GIRAF</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/giraf/</link><pubDate>Sun, 12 Jun 2016 11:50:24 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/giraf/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2015</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2015/</link><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2015 11:10:36 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2015/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 3</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-3/</link><pubDate>Wed, 14 Jan 2015 23:46:16 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-3/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter--issue-3--january-2015">Newsletter | Issue 3 | January 2015&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_jan15.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome to Edition #3 of the CGI Newsletter. In this edition we particularly highlight the achievements of CGI members honoured with international awards in 2014.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-members-honoured">CGI Members Honoured&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#new-working-group-chair">New Working Group Chair&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#new-geoscience-vocabularies">New Geoscience Vocabularies&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-south-america">News from South America&lt;/a>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-and-onegeology">CGI and OneGeology&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-in-argentina">CGI in Argentina&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-2014-annual-report">CGI 2014 Annual Report&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#giraf-at-cag-25-in-dar-es-salaam">GIRAF at CAG 25 in Dar es Salaam&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-members-honoured">CGI Members Honoured&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Three members of CGI have recently been honoured with awards from international information management and data standards organisations.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/XiaogangMa.jpg" alt="Dr Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Dr Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma&lt;/strong> was awarded the
&lt;a href="https://www.icsu-wds.org/news/news-archive/wds-stewardship-award-201320132014" target="_blank" rel="noopener">World Data System (WDS-ICSU) Data Stewardship Award&lt;/a> for 2014 at the SciDataCon 2014 Conference in New Delhi. The award highlights exceptional contributions to the improvement of scientific data stewardship by early career researchers through their engagement with the community, academic achievements, and innovations.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Marshall is a geoinformatics and data science researcher with extensive research in geoscience ontologies, and has worked recently on the capture and representation of data provenance in scientific workflows. Marshall is a member of the CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group, the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG; founder and first president of IAMG&amp;rsquo;s student chapter in 2010), the American Geophysical Union, and the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners. Marshall was coordinator for the GeoData 2014 workshop (highlighting inter-agency data networks in the US), and the 2014 Deep Carbon Observatory Data Science Day symposium, and organizer of a data provenance session for the Association of American Geographers 2014 Annual Meeting.
&lt;a href="http://www.slideshare.net/MarshallXMa/why-data-science-matters" target="_blank" rel="noopener">See slides of Marshall&amp;rsquo;s award lecture &amp;ldquo;Why Data Science Matters&amp;rdquo;&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/peterBaumann.jpg" alt="Dr Peter Baumann">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Dr Peter Baumann&lt;/strong>, Professor of Computer Science at Jacobs University and a current CGI council member, was awarded the
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/awards/gardels" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kenneth D. Gardels Award by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)&lt;/a> for 2014. The award is in recognition of his &amp;ldquo;significant contribution to the OGC&amp;rsquo;s essential role and mission in the global Information Technology community&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Jeffrey K. Harris, Chairman of the OGC Board of Directors, said: &amp;ldquo;We wish to express our deep appreciation for the extraordinary contribution you have made to the OGC community and to people around the world who are the ultimate beneficiaries of improvements in the development, management and use of geoscientific data. Devoting your time and bringing your dedication, expertise, critical thinking and leadership to OGC working groups has resulted in significant and enduring advances in technical standards. The value you&amp;rsquo;ve createdhas been leveraged, and the OGC&amp;rsquo;s work overall has been leveraged, through your active participation in other standards bodies, expert groups, councils and commissions. We thank you for this collaborative work, for it benefits us all.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Peter is editor of twelve adopted standards related to the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) suite of Big Geo Data standards. Recently he has been instrumental in establishing a new Big Data Domain Working Group within the OGC which he also co-chairs. Peter&amp;rsquo;s research focuses on large-scale scientific information services, in particular: massive multi-dimensional data cubes. He has architected the
&lt;a href="http://www.rasdaman.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rasdaman&lt;/a> (&amp;ldquo;raster data manager&amp;rdquo;) technology which has pioneered a new research field, Array Databases.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ianJackson.jpg" alt="Ian Jackson">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Geological Society of America honoured &lt;strong>Ian Jackson&lt;/strong> with their
&lt;a href="http://www.geosociety.org/awards/14speeches/geoinfo.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Outstanding Contributions in Geoinformatics award&lt;/a> for 2014. The award recognises an individual who has contributed in an outstanding manner to geology through the application of the principles of geoinformatics.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Ian was a councillor of CGI from 2004 to 2012. Ian understood the importance of standards to achieve the opening of geoscientific data for diverse uses, and took a decisive part in the recreation of the IUGS-CGI.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The award citation notes Ian&amp;rsquo;s long and superb service to advance the field of geoinformatics through his pioneering work at the British Geological Survey, to the establishment and unprecedented success of the OneGeology initiative. A dominant theme throughout Ian&amp;rsquo;s career has been the wide application of geoscience data for societal benefit, a goal he continues to promote as a consultant on the international stage. Ian has been one of the first in geological survey organizations worldwide to understand, and more importantly, to change the organization of the survey to fulfill its role of &amp;ldquo;information agency.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Among his many accomplishments, Ian is perhaps best known as the primary instigator of OneGeology - a global initiative to make digital geological map data accessible throughout the world. Ian&amp;rsquo;s colleagues uniformly refer to his ability to inspire others on the OneGeology concept and build a strong team with the skills to create OneGeology, his keen awareness of how to get things done, and his ability to find constructive ways around obstacles as key to the success of the initiative.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="new-working-group-chair">New Working Group Chair&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/markRattenbury.jpg" alt="Mark Rattenbury">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mark Rattenbury from GNS-New Zealand is the new chair of the CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group. Mark took over from Steve Richard who handed over the reins after many years of inspirational leadership of CGI&amp;rsquo;s vocabulary development team. Mark has extensive experience in geological mapping, particularly of complexly deformed and metamorphosed basement terranes of Australia, Antarctica, and New Zealand. He led the 1:250 000 scale Geological Map of New Zealand programme to its conclusion in 2010 and is a specialist in geological map data management and dissemination using GIS software and web services. Mark is also a participant in the OGC/CGI GeoSciML Standards Working Group, as well as being the New Zealand representative on the OneGeology Technical Implementation Group.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="new-geoscience-vocabularies">New Geoscience Vocabularies&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/mine.jpg" alt="Mine">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group (GTWG) recently published 18 new geoscience vocabularies at the
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI&amp;rsquo;s vocabulary resources website&lt;/a>. The vocabularies describe features of mineral resources such as resource shape and form, exploration and mining activities, and resource and reserve classifications. The GTWG worked in collaboration with the EarthResourceML Working Group to compile the new vocabularies to support the EarthResourceML data transfer standard, most importantly as the standard for mineral resource data transfer for the EU INSPIRE initiative.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/IGC2016.jpg" alt="35th International Geological Congress logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.35igc.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;strong>35th International Geological Congress&lt;/strong>&lt;/a>, Cape Town&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Preliminary planning has begun within CGI Council for the Geoinformatics Symposium at the 2016 International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. If you would like to volunteer to help organise the symposium, please contact
&lt;a href="mailto:Kristine.Asch@bgr.de">Kristine Asch&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-south-america">News from South America&lt;/h2>
&lt;h3 id="cgi-and-onegeology">CGI and OneGeology&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/1GsouthAmerica.jpg" title="CGI members presented at the South American OneGeology workshop in October in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/1GsouthAmerica.jpg" alt="CGI members presented at the South American OneGeology workshop in October in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Several CGI members presented at the South American OneGeology workshop in October in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Tim Duffy and Steve Richard outlined how CGI standards such as GeoSciML-Portrayal and CGI&amp;rsquo;s geoscience vocabularies can be used to publish digital map data through the OneGeology Portal. The value of OneGeology as a vehicle to promote data sharing and data standards was emphasised, and Santiago Muñoz Tapia, president of the Ibero-American Geological and Mining Surveys Association (ASGMI), offered to host a future OneGeology/GeoSciML-Portrayal training course in the Dominican Republic.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="cgi-in-argentina">CGI in Argentina&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/cgiArgentina.jpg" title="Left to right: CGI councillor Gabriel Asato, Dr Ruben Matheos (UnderSecretariat), Dr Cecatto (Secretariat Joint Science Technological, Ministry of Science, Technology and Production Innovation).">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/cgiArgentina.jpg" alt="Left to right: CGI councillor Gabriel Asato, Dr Ruben Matheos (UnderSecretariat), Dr Cecatto (Secretariat Joint Science Technological, Ministry of Science, Technology and Production Innovation).">&lt;/a> Left to right: CGI councillor Gabriel Asato, Dr Ruben Matheos (UnderSecretariat), Dr Cecatto (Secretariat Joint Science Technological, Ministry of Science, Technology and Production Innovation).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Argentina recently enacted ministerial decisions concerning the development of national science digital repositories. An interview was conducted during 2014 with the Joint Science and Technology Secretariat. Then a meeting with the Secretariat, Dr Alejandro Ceccatto was arranged where the aims and activities of CGI-IUGS were presented to him by CGI councillor Gabriel Asato. Dr Ceccatto was very pleased to know about CGI-IUGS activities and expressed that it could be important to have a geoscience digital information chapter in the national science repositories project.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-2014-annual-report">CGI 2014 Annual Report&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The 2014 annual report of CGI to the IUGS is now available from the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_annual_report_2014.pdf">CGI website&lt;/a>. The report describes the broad range of activities undertaken by CGI technical working groups and regional groups in 2014.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="giraf-at-cag-25-in-dar-es-salaam">GIRAF at CAG 25 in Dar es Salaam&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/GIRAF_CAG25.jpg" alt="GIRAF at CAG 25 in Dar es Salaam">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Since its foundation in 2009, the
&lt;a href="http://www.giraf-network.org/GIRAF2009/EN/Home/home_node.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GIRAF network&lt;/a> has been present at each Colloquium of African Geology (CAG) with a workshop or a session. A GIRAF workshop was held during 2014 &amp;ldquo;CAG 25&amp;rdquo; and the 3rd YES Network Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The workshop was opened by the IUGS president Professor Roland Oberhänsli and supported by GSAf president Aberra Mogessie. The workshop was convened by Kristine Asch (CGI, BGR), Mesfin Gebremichael (SEAMIC), Terence Ngole (Geological Survey of Tansania) and Salvatore Mondlane Junior (Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo). It encompassed seven presentations and additional contributions on geoscience information projects and initiatives in Africa, the African Mining Vision, and the role of GIRAF at universities, followed by discussions and the start of preparation for the next GIRAF workshop in Maputo, Mozambique in 2015. The event was concluded successfully and attended by 49 participants, mostly from Africa, and 20 new members joined GIRAF network. The GIRAF network was kindly mentioned at the final CAG 25 assembly by one of the main organizers, Nelson Boniface, in his concluding remarks as a positive and driving factor for geoscience information issues in Africa.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ollieRaymond.jpg" alt="Ollie Raymond">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Ollie Raymond has been involved in compiling and managing digital geological maps and databases at Geoscience Australia for over 20 years. He is currently the data management leader for national geological maps and databases, including the Australian 1:1M scale surface geology dataset, and the national geological provinces and stratigraphy databases. Ollie has extensive experience of regional geological mapping in Paleozoic and Proterozoic terranes, and pior to joining Geoscience Australia, Ollie was a mine and exploration geologist at the Mt Isa mine in Queensland. He is a graduate of the Australian National University (BSc) and the University of Tasmania (MSc) in economic geology.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Ollie has been involved in geoscience standards and data modelling since 1994, initially as coordinator of the first GIS data dictionary at Geoscience Australia, and more recently of databases and vocabularies for geological maps, stratigraphy, mineral deposits, geomorphology, and rock properties. Since 2006, Ollie has been a member of, and is currently chair of, the GeoSciML Standards Working Group. He is also an active member of the CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group. Ollie was part of the Australian team which designed the mineral deposit data transfer standard which is now developed internationally as EarthResourceML. Ollie is a representative on the Australia/NZ Government Geoscience Information Committee, and is the Australian representative on the OneGeology Technical Implementation Group.
&lt;a href="mailto:oliver.raymond@ga.gov.au">Contact Ollie&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ngds.jpg" title="NGDS Data Explorer">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ngds.jpg" alt="NGDS Data Explorer">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://data.geothermaldatasystem.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NGDS Data Explorer&lt;/a> is a web application designed to load and display WFS data from the US
&lt;a href="http://geothermaldata.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Geothermal Data System&lt;/a>, a project of the
&lt;a href="http://usgin.org/page/usgin-action-ngds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN)&lt;/a>. NGDS provides access to over 30 types of data representing more than 9 million data points and over 17,000 reports and documents. Users can find geothermal-related data from a text or location search. When a WFS has been loaded, a user can then export attributes (standardized data) from this service as an HTML table, CSV file, or Microsoft Excel workbook.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/linkedin.jpg" alt="LinkedIn logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We invite all CGI members to join our
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn group&lt;/a>. The group provides a forum for CGI and LinkedIn members to connect with other geoscience professionals, post news of upcoming events, ask questions and discuss your issues.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2014</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2014/</link><pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2014 11:10:33 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2014/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 2</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-2/</link><pubDate>Sat, 14 Jun 2014 22:30:35 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-2/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="newsletter--issue-2--june-2014">Newsletter | Issue 2 | June 2014&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_June14.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome to Edition #2 of the CGI Newsletter. In this edition we welcome three new CGI councillors, and we kick off efforts to coordinate standards for 3D geological models.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#new-members-of-cgi-council">New Members of CGI Council&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-working-group-news">CGI Working Group News&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#3d-geological-data-models--a-call-for-participants-in-a-review-of-3d-standards">3D Geological Data Models — a call for participants in a review of 3D standards&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geosciml-news">GeoSciML News&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-china">News from China&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-africa">News from Africa&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#more-upcoming-events">More Upcoming Events&amp;hellip;&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;h2 id="new-members-of-cgi-council">New Members of CGI Council&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Three new members have been elected to CGI Council to replace the recently retired Richard Hughes and to fill two other vacancies. We welcome
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/author/kombada-mhopjeni/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kombada Mhopjeni&lt;/a> (Geological Survey of Namibia),
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/author/dr-zhang-minghua/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zhang Minghua&lt;/a> (China Geological Survey), and Santiago Munoz (Geological Survey of the Dominican Republic).&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-working-group-news">CGI Working Group News&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/images/newsletters/wordmap.jpg" title="Wordmap">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/wordmap.jpg" alt="Word map">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geoscienceterminology/">Geoscience Terminology Working Group&lt;/a>, in collaboration with the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/earthresourceml/">EarthResourceML Working Group&lt;/a> recently approved the adoption of 18 new vocabularies to support delivery of mineral occurrence and mine data using the EarthResourceML data transfer standard. The vocabularies have been developed in collaboration with the European Union’s Minerals Intelligence Network for Europe (Minerals4EU), so that Minerals4EU vocabularies use either exactly the same terms or have mappings to CGI terminology. The vocabularies are to be published soon through the
&lt;a href="http://resource.geosciml.org" title="http://resource.geosciml.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI&amp;rsquo;s vocabulary service&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="3d-geological-data-models--a-call-for-participants-in-a-review-of-3d-standards">3D Geological Data Models — a call for participants in a review of 3D standards&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/3d.jpg" title="3D geological data model">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/3d.jpg" alt="3D geological data model">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>By nature, geological information is 3D (or even 4D). To date, CGI efforts to support geological data interoperability have focused on exchange of geological map and borehole information with GeoSciML and EarthResourceML, using GML as the underlying spatial data engine. With the growing demand for exchanging 3D geological models in many domains (eg, oil and gas, mining, groundwater, design of infrastructure), there is a clear need for standardizing the exchange of 3D models independently of the data format used by the modeling software.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>There is currently no accepted generic exchange model for 3D geological models, although there have been some attempts in different organizations or projects. The CGI Council considers it a priority for the Commission to&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>review the current situation in the delivery of 3D geological models, and&lt;/li>
&lt;li>propose a strategy for identifying or developing an agreed standard possibly in partnership with other standardization bodies.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>We are now calling for volunteers to participate in an ad-hoc group to be setup in CGI on this topic. If you are interested, please email the CGI Chair,
&lt;a href="mailto:f.robida@brgm.fr">Francois Robida&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geosciml-news">GeoSciML News&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/GeoSciML_logo.jpg" alt="GeoSciML logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The joint OGC/CGI GeoSciML Standards Working Group (SWG) has recently held two teleconference meetings – one of them as part of the quarterly OGC Technical Committee meeting in Washington DC. Steve Richard provided a summary of his recent work to document the use cases needed for development of the GeoSciML version 4 standard. The working group will gather together in Tucson, USA from June 29 to July 3 for its annual face-to-face meeting. This will be held in conjunction with similar meetings of the EarthResourceML and Geoscience Terminology working groups, and the OneGeology Technical working group.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/news_20142904_geoserver_cookbook.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A new user guide for GeoSciML data providers&lt;/a> has also just been published by the
&lt;a href="http://www.bgs.ac.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">British Geological Survey&lt;/a> as part of their contribution to the EU INSPIRE initiative. The new user guide and other GeoSciML resources can be found on the
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" title="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GeoSciML website&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-china">News from China&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/onegeology.jpg" alt="OneGeology logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>A 1:1 million scale geological map of China has recently been released by the China Geological Survey as a contribution of China to the
&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OneGeology initiative&lt;/a>. The 1:1M geological map data cover most of the land areas of China and is now available as a OGC Web Map Service (WMS). Map layers include bedrock lithology, lithostratigraphy and major faults. For further information, contact your CGI councillor from China,
&lt;a href="mailto:zminghua@mail.cgs.gov.cn">Zhang Minghua&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-africa">News from Africa&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/giraf_logo.png" alt="GIRAF logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The 25th Colloquium of African Geology will be held in conjunction with the 3rd Congress of the Young Earth Scientists network (YES) in August 2014, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. During the conference, the GIRAF Network and the Southern and Eastern African Mineral Centre (SEAMIC), is organising a session on geoscience information in Africa. Other conference participants are expected to include the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf), The African Association of Women Geologists (AAWG), OneGeology, AEGOS, and UNECA.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The geoscience information session will include presentations and discussions on the building of spatial data infrastructure in Africa, regional geoinformation initiatives; interoperability and standards; and best practices in delivery, dissemination and exploitation of geoscience information. Participants are encouraged to submit abstracts on their solutions and experiences of managing and delivering geoscience information to underpin public policy-making, investment, research and education. Contact the CGI secretary general and GIRAF coordinator
&lt;a href="mailto:Kristine.Asch@bgr.de">Kristine Asch&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="featured-project">Featured Project&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/wetGIN_1.jpg" title="Water wells and supporting hydrogeological maps in 2D and 3D">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/wetGIN_1.jpg" alt="Water wells and supporting hydrogeological maps in 2D and 3D">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/wetGIN_2.jpg" title="Water wells and supporting hydrogeological maps in 2D and 3D">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/wetGIN_2.jpg" alt="Water wells and supporting hydrogeological maps in 2D and 3D">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Canadian
&lt;a href="http://gin.gw-info.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Groundwater Information Network&lt;/a> (GIN) connects water well databases from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatche-wan, Manitoba, Ontario, Québec, Nova-Scotia, and Yukon, and some key aquifer information from Natural Resources Canada.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The GIN
&lt;a href="http://analysis.gw-info.net/gin/public.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">data analysis portal&lt;/a> enables users to view water wells and supporting hydrogeological maps in 2D and 3D, and to display and download geological well logs and water information from wells. The GIN makes use of the
&lt;a href="http://ngwd-bdnes.cits.rncan.gc.ca/service/api_ngwds/en/gwml.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GroundwaterML&lt;/a> data transfer standard for water wells and GeoSciML to deliver the downhole geological information.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://foss4g-e.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/foss4Gpdx2014.jpg" alt="FOSS4G PDX 2014 logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://foss4g-e.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FOSS4G PDX 2014&lt;/a> conference will be held in Portland, Oregon, USA from 8–13 September. The annual FOSS4G conference is the largest global gathering focused on open source geospatial software. FOSS4G brings together developers, users, decision-makers and observers from a broad spectrum of organizations and fields of operation. Through six days of workshops, presentations, discussions, and cooperation, FOSS4G participants create effective and relevant geospatial products, standards, and protocols.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI hopes to sponsor a competition at this conference for developers to design and build an application that displays innovative use of interoperable geoscience data, such as web map and web feature services and standard geoscience vocabularies.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="more-upcoming-events">More Upcoming Events&amp;hellip;&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/inspire_logo.jpg" alt="INSPIRE logo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>CGI members Robert Tomas, Marco Komac and Carlo Cippoloni will be presenting at the
&lt;a href="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2014/page/home" target="_blank" rel="noopener">8th INSPIRE Conference&lt;/a> in Aalborg Denmark, 16–20 June 2014. They will talk on aspects of European and global geoscience interoperability. The European Union’s INSPIRE interoperability initiative has been both a great user of, and valued contributor to the development of, the CGI’s geological data standards - GeoSciML and EarthResourceML.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://www.africageo.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AfricaGEO 2014 Conference &amp;amp; Exhibition&lt;/a> will be held at Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) from 1–3 July 2014. The conference aims at facilitating interaction, discussion, collaboration and capacity building amongst the participants. It will provide a platform to share the latest developments in the industry of surveying and geo-information (including remote sensing and aerial imagery) and the pressing issue of sustainable development.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://foss4g-e.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FOSS4G-Europe&lt;/a>, Europe&amp;rsquo;s largest ever event on free geospatial and location-based software will be held at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany from 15–17 July, 2014. Also at this conference, the winners of the Academic NASA Worldwind Europe Challenge will present their innovative apps to the public. Among the keynote speakers are Jeff McKenna, OSGeo President, and Patrick Hogan from NASA. Students are actively engaged through a summer school on the theme, with presenters from Europe and USA.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://kamchatka2014.fegi.ru/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/kamchatka.jpg" alt="Modern Information Technologies in the Earth Sciences (ITES 2014) conference">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://kamchatka2014.fegi.ru/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Modern Information Technologies in the Earth Sciences (ITES 2014)&lt;/a> conference is coming up in Kamchatka, Russia, from 8–13 September 2014. Topics that the conference will cover include networking for data acquisition, remote sensing, open access to data, virtual research media and laboratories, modelling, cloud technologies, and spatial data infrastructure.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="meet-your-cgi-councillors">Meet Your CGI Councillors&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/mike-frame2.jpg" alt="Mike Frame">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mike Frame is Chief of Scientific Data Integration and Visualization, at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). He is responsible for geospatial, informatics, and technology research and oversight within USGS. Mike has also served as the chief system architect for various national and international distributed biological networks and as a Principle Investigator on several US National Science Foundation projects.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Prior to joining USGS, Mike earned a bachelors degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a masters in Industrial Engineering/Information Systems from the University of Tennessee. Mike was the Deputy Director of Information Systems Development with the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), where he was responsible for the design and implementation of a DoE-wide research and development system. This effort earned a National Partnership for Reinventing Government Hammer Award in 1998.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Mike is currently a USA representative on several international efforts relating to biological and geo-informatics and serves on several Advisory Boards.
&lt;a href="mailto:mike_frame@usgs.gov">Contact Mike&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="join-us-on-linkedin">Join Us on LinkedIn&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/linkedin.jpg" alt="LinkedIn logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We invite all CGI members to join our new
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn group&lt;/a>. The group provides a forum for CGI and LinkedIn members to connect with other geoscience professionals, post news of upcoming events, ask questions and discuss your issues.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Regional Working Groups</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/regionalwg/</link><pubDate>Thu, 12 Jun 2014 11:50:48 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/regionalwg/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="cgi-regional-working-groups">CGI Regional Working Groups&lt;/h1>
&lt;h2 id="the-role-of-regional-working-groups">The Role of Regional Working Groups&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The CGI’s broad aim is to enable the global exchange of geoscience information and systems. Recognising that the CGI council member will be able only to provide continental scale regional representation, the CGI council recognises the potential need to institute working groups that will address the specialised technical or scientific needs of regions defined by culture, geography or politics and encourages the establishment of CGI Regional Working Groups (RWG).&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="rgw-activities">RGW Activities&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>RWGs will be required to respect the aims and policies of the CGI as outlined in the CGI Statutes and organise their own activities. In the interests of maintaining a consistent approach across all CGI activities and regions, RGWs must seek CGI Council approval before endorsing as a CGI product or standard, any locally developed standard, tool, or system. Where appropriate, RWGs can play an important role representing and promoting CGI aims and policies at relevant regional conferences, workshops and meetings but must inform CGI council if doing so.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="funding">Funding&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The CGI is unfortunately unable to provide funding support to RGWs but will work to facilitate their operations wherever possible.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="liaison-with-cgi-council">Liaison with CGI Council&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>CGI council will identify a council member to act as a liaison with the chairman of the RGW. The designated CGI council member will represent the RWG at CGI council meeting and be responsible for keeping their RWG(s) informed of CGI developments. Where appropriate, RGW chairmen may be requested to attend all or part of CGI council meetings.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="application">Application&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Individuals wishing to form a RGW should make a written proposal to the CGI Council including:-&lt;/p>
&lt;ol>
&lt;li>Identification of the region they propose to represent;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Their specific regional issues;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Their proposed activities;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Identification of a chairman and list of interested individuals and their affiliations;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Full contact information for the proposed chairman (phone, address, email, fax).&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol>
&lt;p>Where possible, RGWs are encouraged to include as members, individuals from different institutions such as universities, geological surveys and industry. The CGI Council will evaluate proposals to establish RWGs and respond to the designated chairman within three weeks.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Newsletter Issue 1</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-1/</link><pubDate>Sat, 14 Dec 2013 22:03:07 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/newsletter-issue-1/</guid><description>&lt;p>»
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/CGI_newsletter_dec13.pdf">View this newsletter as a PDF&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Welcome to the new face of CGI. We will be posting out several newsletters each year to keep members up to date with the latest news and events in geoscience information. We hope you enjoy our new newsletter.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2>Table of Contents&lt;/h2>
&lt;nav id="TableOfContents">
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#join-us-on-linkedin">Join us on LinkedIn&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#cgi-working-groups--old-and-new">CGI Working Groups — old and new&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geoscience-terminology-working-group">Geoscience Terminology Working Group&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#earthresourceml-version-2-released">EarthResourceML version 2 released&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geosciml-portrayal-version-2-released">GeoSciML-Portrayal version 2 released&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#geosciml-v32-cookbook-published">GeoSciML v3.2 &amp;ldquo;cookbook&amp;rdquo; published&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#new-managing-director-for-onegeology">New Managing Director for OneGeology&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#news-from-africa">News from Africa&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#featured-projects">Featured Projects&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="#meet-your-councillors">Meet Your Councillors&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;/nav>
&lt;h2 id="join-us-on-linkedin">Join us on LinkedIn&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/linkedin.jpg" alt="LinkedIn logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We invite all CGI members to join our new
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn group&lt;/a>. The group provides a forum for CGI and LinkedIn members to connect with other geoscience professionals, post news of upcoming events, ask questions and discuss your issues.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="cgi-working-groups--old-and-new">CGI Working Groups — old and new&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>At the recent CGI Council meeting in November in Denver, USA, the long-running Interoperability Working Group (IWG) headed by John Laxton from the British Geological Survey, was dissolved. However, that does not mean the work of John and the IWG members is over.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The IWG&amp;rsquo;s
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GeoSciML&lt;/a> Task Group became a Standards Working Group of the
&lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Open Geospatial Consortium&lt;/a> in January 2013, chaired by
&lt;a href="mailto:oliver.raymond@ga.gov.au">Ollie Raymond&lt;/a> of Geoscience Australia. Future development and documentation of GeoSciML will be done under a collaborative arrangement between OGC and CGI.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Development of the EarthResourceML data transfer standard for mines and mineral occurrences will be continued by a new CGI
&lt;a href="https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/CGIModel/EarthResourceML" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EarthResourceML Working Group&lt;/a>, headed by
&lt;a href="mailto:jouni.vuollo@gtk.fi">Jouni Vuollo&lt;/a> of the Finnish Geological Survey.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geoscience-terminology-working-group">Geoscience Terminology Working Group&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The CGI&amp;rsquo;s Geoscience Terminology Working Group is looking for new members to help the global effort to publish multilingual vocabularies to support delivery of standards-based geoscience data.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>If you would like to contribute to the working group, contact the group&amp;rsquo;s chair,
&lt;a href="mailto:steve.richard@azgs.az.gov">Steve Richard&lt;/a>. Read more about
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/geoscienceterminology/">the working group&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="earthresourceml-version-2-released">EarthResourceML version 2 released&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/ernesthenry_big.jpg" alt="Mining photo">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Version 2.0 of the CGI data standard for mineral occurrences and mines has been published.
&lt;a href="http://schemas.earthresourceml.org/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">XML schemas&lt;/a> and
&lt;a href="http://www.earthresourceml.org/earthresourceml/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">documentation&lt;/a> are available from the EarthResourceML (ERML) website. A simple features version of the ERML standard - ERML-Portrayal - is also soon to be published by the CGI
&lt;a href="https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/CGIModel/EarthResourceML" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ERML Working Group&lt;/a>. ERML is now fully compatible with the requirements of the European Commission&amp;rsquo;s
&lt;a href="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">INSPIRE data specification&lt;/a> for Mineral Resources. Geological Surveys in
&lt;a href="http://www.geoscience.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Australia and New Zealand&lt;/a> have also endorsed the ERML standard for delivery of mineral occurrence data.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geosciml-portrayal-version-2-released">GeoSciML-Portrayal version 2 released&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/geosciml.jpg" alt="GeoSciML logo">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Version 2 of the GeoSciML-Portrayal simple features WFS data standard was released in August. The
&lt;a href="http://schemas.geosciml.org/geosciml-portrayal/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">schema&lt;/a> provides a simple attribute structure for digital map portrayal of geologic units, faults, contacts, and now borehole collar locations. GeoSciML-Portrayal is also recommended for use as an attribute standard for WMS web services. The data standard is endorsed by several international data sharing initiatives, including
&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OneGeology&lt;/a> and the
&lt;a href="http://usgin.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN)&lt;/a>. Find out
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/#geosciml-portrayal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more information on GeoSciML-Portrayal&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="geosciml-v32-cookbook-published">GeoSciML v3.2 &amp;ldquo;cookbook&amp;rdquo; published&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>A new instructional
&lt;a href="http://www.geosciml.org/geosciml/3.2/documentation/cookbook/INSPIRE_GeoSciML_Cookbook%20_1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cookbook for GeoSciML web services&lt;/a> has been published by CGI and the European Union&amp;rsquo;s INSPIRE Directive. Although the cookbook has been written mostly to address INSPIRE use cases, all users of the GeoSciML data standard will find it a useful guide.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="new-managing-director-for-onegeology">New Managing Director for OneGeology&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/marko_komac.jpg" alt="Marko Komac">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Marko Komac, Director of the Geological Survey of Slovenia, vice-president of IUGS, and CGI member, has been appointed as the new Managing Director of OneGeology.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The OneGeology initiative is a major partner of CGI in promoting interoperability and delivering geological map data using CGI and OGC data standards. Find out
&lt;a href="http://www.onegeology.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more information about OneGeology&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="news-from-africa">News from Africa&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/giraf_group_2013.jpg" title="GIRAF group 2013">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/giraf_group_2013.jpg" alt="GIRAF group 2013">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://www.giraf-network.org/GIRAF2009/EN/GIRAF2013-Workshop/giraf2013-workshop_node.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">3rd GIRAF Workshop&lt;/a> took place in Accra, Ghana, from 22nd to 27th of September, coinciding with the centennial celebrations of the Geological Survey of Ghana. 121 participants from 26 African and 7 non-African countries took part. The Geoscience InfoRmation in Africa network (GIRAF) was founded in 2009 and currently has 337 Members from 37 African and 15 non-African countries. GIRAF is governed by the CGI and is supported by the UNESCO.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The GIRAF-network brings together African scientists, authorities, national experts and other stakeholders in geoscience. GIRAF provides a platform to address, discuss and raise awareness of what geoscience information can do to - in the long-term - improve the way geoscience information contributes to the health and prosperity of the people in Africa.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="http://foss4g-e.org/" title="FOSS4G Europe conference, Bremen" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/bremen.jpg" alt="FOSS4G Europe conference, Bremen">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The
&lt;a href="http://foss4g-e.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FOSS4G Europe conference&lt;/a> and exhibition will be held in Bremen, Germany, 15–17 July 2014. More than 500 delegates are expected to attend Europe&amp;rsquo;s largest ever event on free geospatial and location-based software. The winners of the
&lt;a href="http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA World Wind Europe Challenge&lt;/a> will present their innovative applications at the conference.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="featured-projects">Featured Projects&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>
&lt;a href="https://www.nectar.org.au/virtual-geophysics-laboratory" title="Virtual Geophysics Laboratory" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/VGL.jpg" alt="VGL screen shot">&lt;/a>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>In each newsletter, we will be featuring an innovative geoscience informatics project from around the world.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>If you would like to promote your project through CGI,
&lt;a href="mailto:CGIsecretariat@geo-zs.si">contact CGI&lt;/a> or tell us on the
&lt;a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6539642" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CGI LinkedIn group&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Australian
&lt;a href="https://www.nectar.org.au/virtual-geophysics-laboratory" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Virtual Geophysics Laboratory&lt;/a> (VGL) is a scientific workflow web portal that provides geo-physicists with an integrated environment that uses cloud-based data processing applications and high performance computing technology. The VGL is an Australian government funded collaboration between CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, and the Australian National University&amp;rsquo;s National Computational Infrastructure (NCI).&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="meet-your-councillors">Meet Your Councillors&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/asato.jpg" alt="Gabriel Asato">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Gabriel Asato, from the Mining and Geological Survey of Argentina (SEGEMAR), has been a CGI Councillor for South America since 2008.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Gabriel has been the Manager of the GIS and Remote Sensing Unit at SEGEMAR since 1997. He has worked in the development of automated cartographic production systems and GIS standards in Argentina since 1994, and of the first Argentinean Geological Map Data Model. Gabriel participated in the Japan-Argentina GEOSAT-AR ASTER technology project in 2000-2004. At present, Gabriel is involved in projects including the Metallogenic Map of South America and the Argentine Satellite Atlas.
&lt;a href="mailto:g_asato2000@yahoo.com">Contact Gabriel&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2013</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2013/</link><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jul 2013 11:10:30 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2013/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Multilingual Thesaurus Working Group</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/multilingualwg/</link><pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:51:20 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/multilingualwg/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="multi-lingual-thesaurus">Multi Lingual Thesaurus&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>The Multilingual Thesaurus Working Group (MLTWG) was merged with the Concept Definitions Task Group in 2012 to form the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/tech_collaboration/geoscience_terminology_working_group.html">Geoscience Terminology Working Group&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="mission">Mission&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The mission of the MLTWG was to enable the global exchange of geoscience information with the help of a common multilingual core vocabulary by developing and expanding the Multilingual Thesaurus of Geosciences.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The Multilingual Thesaurus of Geosciences (MTG) was designed to be easily accessible (including on the web), and available free of charge. The participants recognized the importance of ensuring the compatibility of national information systems with commonly accepted international standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="main-objectives">Main Objectives&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>Updating categories and terms&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Establishing a polyhierarchy&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Adding synonyms and related terms&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Installing the thesaurus as a web based tool&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Adding new languages&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="documentation">Documentation&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/MultlingualThesaurusFacetsAndCategories.pdf">Facets and categories&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/MultilingualThesaurusDefinitionsAndStructures.pdf">Requirements for the MTG structure&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/MultilingualThesaurusTermsRequirements.pdf">Requirements for MTG terms&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/multg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thesaurus development&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/MLTworkinggroup2006no1.pdf">Interim Report, August 2006&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/docs/Multilingual_thesaurus_of_geoscience.pdf">Executive summary, June 2004&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="working-group-members">Working Group Members&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Marielle Arregros-Rouvreau (BRGM, France)&lt;br>
Claude Beaupère (BRGM, France)&lt;br>
Joachim Gersemann (BGR, Germany) [spokesman]&lt;br>
Rachel Heaven (BGS, United Kingdom)&lt;br>
Jan Jellema (TNO-NITG, Netherlands)&lt;br>
Luca Olivetta (ISPRA, Italy)&lt;br>
Maija Pennanen (GTK, Finland)&lt;br>
Sharon Tahirkheli (AGI, USA)&lt;br>
Sven Lundqvist (SGU, Sweden)&lt;br>
Caj Kortman (GTK, Finland) ) [in advisory capacity]&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="multi-lingual-thesaurus-working-group-members-photos">Multi-Lingual Thesaurus Working Group Members&amp;rsquo; Photos&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/caj_maija.jpg" alt="Caj Kortman (GTK, Finland) and Maija Pennanen (GTK, Finland) at MTG kick off meeting in Burgdorf, Hannover, October 2003">
&lt;em>Caj Kortman (GTK, Finland) and Maija Pennanen (GTK, Finland) at MTG kick off meeting in Burgdorf, Hannover, October 2003&lt;/em>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/jan_marco.jpg" alt="Jan Jellema (TNO-NITG, Netherlands) and Marco Amanti (APAT, Italy) at MTG kick off meeting in Burgdorf, Hannover, October 2003 ">
&lt;em>Jan Jellema (TNO-NITG, Netherlands) and Marco Amanti (APAT, Italy) at MTG kick off meeting in Burgdorf, Hannover, October 2003&lt;/em>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/MTGgroup.jpg" alt="Members of the MTG working group at the kick off meeting in Burgdorf, Hannover, October 2003. Left to right:Caj Kortman (GTK, Finland), Joachim Gersemann (BGR, Germany), Sharon Tahirkheli (AGI, USA), Maija Pennanen (GTK, Finland), Jan Jellema (TNO-NITG, Netherlands), Rachel Heaven (BGS, United Kingdom), Tomasz Mardal (PGI, Poland), Marielle Arregros-Rouvreau (BRGM, France), Marco Amanti (APAT, Italy)">
&lt;em>Members of the MTG working group at the kick off meeting in Burgdorf, Hannover, October 2003. Left to right:Caj Kortman (GTK, Finland), Joachim Gersemann (BGR, Germany), Sharon Tahirkheli (AGI, USA), Maija Pennanen (GTK, Finland), Jan Jellema (TNO-NITG, Netherlands), Rachel Heaven (BGS, United Kingdom), Tomasz Mardal (PGI, Poland), Marielle Arregros-Rouvreau (BRGM, France), Marco Amanti (APAT, Italy)&lt;/em>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Interoperability Working Group</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/interoperabilitywg/</link><pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:51:01 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/project/interoperabilitywg/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="interoperability-working-group-2004--2013">Interoperability Working Group (2004 — 2013)&lt;/h1>
&lt;p>The Interoperability Working Group was formed to develop data standards to facilitate the query and exchange of geological information between data providers for environmental, scientific, legal and social purposes. The ultimate objective of the working group was to enable seamless integration over the internet of geological information hosted at different agencies in varied formats. The working group conducted several testbeds to test the viability of technologies and standards within the context of individual agency activities.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The specific objectives of the working group were:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>to develop a conceptual model of geoscientific information drawing on existing data models&lt;/li>
&lt;li>to implement an agreed subset of this model in an agreed schema language&lt;/li>
&lt;li>implement an XML/GML encoding of the model subset&lt;/li>
&lt;li>develop a testbed to illustrate the potential of the data model for interchange&lt;/li>
&lt;li>identify areas that require standardised classifications in order to enable interchange&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>The Interoperability Working Group comprised several task groups to address specific aspects of the work:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>GeoSciML Design&lt;/strong> task group designed the GeoSciML data model and XML schemas for transfer of geological data. The work of the GeoSciML task group is being carried forward by the CGI/OGC
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/tech_collaboration/geosciml.html">GeoSciML Standards Working Group&lt;/a>.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>Use Cases and Requirements&lt;/strong> task group developed technical goals for GeoSciML by describing new use-cases and requirements;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>Service Architecture&lt;/strong> task group developed and documented the formal architecture required to deliver GeoSciML services&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>Implementation Testbed&lt;/strong> task group coordinated interoperability testbeds using GeoSciML;&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>Geoscience Concept Definitions&lt;/strong> task group was responsible for designing vocabulary services that satisfy the requirements of GeoSciML. The work of this task group has been merged with the Multilingual Thesaurus Working Group into the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/tech_collaboration/geoscience_terminology_working_group.html">Geoscience Terminology Working Group&lt;/a>.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>Outreach and Technical Assistance&lt;/strong> task group provided advice and assistance to direct collaborators, assisting them to deploy conformant GeoSciML Services.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>EarthResourceML&lt;/strong> task group developed the CGI data model for mineral occurrences and mines data, based on the Australia/NZ mineral deposits model. This task group has now been elevated to a CGI working group.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>Material developed by the Interoperability Working Group, including the GeoSciML and EarthResourceML UML models, XML/GML schemas, instance documents, documentation, and vocabularies are available through the
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/tech_collaboration/geosciml.html">GeoSciML&lt;/a>,
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/tech_collaboration/earthResourceML.html">EarthResourceML&lt;/a>, and
&lt;a href="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/tech_collaboration/geoscience_terminology_working_group.html">Geoscience Terminology Working Group&lt;/a> web pages.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Annual Report 2012</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2012/</link><pubDate>Sun, 01 Jul 2012 11:10:27 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2012/</guid><description/></item><item><title>2012 IUGS Science Excellence Award in Geoscience Information</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/award2012/</link><pubDate>Sun, 17 Jun 2012 20:18:31 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/post/award2012/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;img src="https://cgi-iugs.github.io/img/johnLaxtonAward.jpg" alt="John Laxton">&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>John Laxton&lt;/strong> British Geological Survey, UK&lt;/p>
&lt;p>John Laxton was the Chair of the CGI Interoperability Working Group from its inception in 2004 until it was replaced in 2012 by the current CGI working groups. John was a major contributor to the development of the GeoSciML data standard, and was the editor of the European Union&amp;rsquo;s INSPIRE Geology and Mineral Resources Technical Working Groups.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Four Year Report 2008 - 2011</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport0811/</link><pubDate>Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:11:55 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport0811/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2011</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2011/</link><pubDate>Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:10:17 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2011/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2010</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2010/</link><pubDate>Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:10:14 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2010/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2009</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2009/</link><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:10:10 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2009/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2008</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2008/</link><pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:10:07 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2008/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Four Year Report 2004 - 2007</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport0407/</link><pubDate>Sun, 01 Jul 2007 11:11:49 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/4yreport0407/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2007</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2007/</link><pubDate>Sun, 01 Jul 2007 11:10:04 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2007/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2006</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2006/</link><pubDate>Sat, 01 Jul 2006 11:10:00 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2006/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2005</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2005/</link><pubDate>Fri, 01 Jul 2005 11:09:57 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2005/</guid><description/></item><item><title>CGI Statutes</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/statutes/</link><pubDate>Sat, 01 Jan 2005 11:12:12 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/statutes/</guid><description/></item><item><title>Annual Report 2004</title><link>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2004/</link><pubDate>Thu, 01 Jul 2004 11:09:54 +0100</pubDate><guid>https://cgi-iugs.github.io/publication/annualreport2004/</guid><description/></item></channel></rss>