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Land-Marine Workshop a success!

Fifty delegates from across Europe attended the Land-Marine Information integration workshop held at Malahide near Dublin, Ireland on 21-23 March 2007. The event was organised by EuroSDR and the International Hydrographic Organization and supported by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and EuroGeographics. Local support came from the Society of Chartered Surveyors and Ordnance Survey Ireland

Four separate sessions of the event focussed on key topic areas:

1. The need for integrated Land-Marine information
2. The state of the art today across Europe
3. A review of the issues and challenges to be addressed
4. A selection of views of the ingredients for success.

Each session of the programme was followed by twin breakout sessions. These then reported back to the plenary, generally all the reports demonstrated a high interest in the topic and a positive need to move forward.
Some of the key issues discussed and reported were:

Session 1: Primary Drivers and Obstacles

Primary drivers
...Societal
...Commercial
...Technological

Major obstacles
...Societal
...Commercial
...Technological

Next Steps
...Examine the obstacles wrt. further research through EuroSDR.
...Examine effect of legacy datasets on the land-marine data user community to adopt holistic data standards.

Session 2: The need to standardise the approach

Standardisation
... Standards are important – but what does it mean in practice?
... Need to define best practice
... Best practice needs to be flexible
... INSPIRE and other initiatives can help – need to lodge information with INSPIRE to influence best practice
... No single body responsible to ensure a joined-up approach
... Need for pan European Forum to keep the Land & Marine communities working together

Session 3. Need for further research

Research Needed
...Datums, Geoid
...Temporal issues

Harmonisation Needed
...Datums generally
...Z Datum model
...Object Catalogues
...Data Models

Issues
...Funding
...Return in investment (science and financial)
...Access to Data
...Data Gaps
...Minimum survey standards
...Generating the knowledge benefits from data
...Application neutral data
...Water penetrating sensors
...Cartography
...Temporal issues
...Sharing knowledge-solutions
...Accuracy of Geoid Models
...Sensor Web
...Classification Schemes - Ontologies
...Quality Metrics

Overarching issues
...“Standards” and wider adoption (international)
...Endeavour/Expectation management
...Use case development to support funding and common models
...Market demands
...Business Cases

Session 4. Taking the initiative

The panel discussion covered several of the above issues, including:
Framework developments
... Role of INSPIRE
... Need to participate in review of draft Implementation Rules and in call for Application Experts (due this summer)
... User needs and Use Cases (these will be required by INSPIRE)
... Funding models
... Need for a pan-European Forum to keep the Land-Marine communities in sync and to share best practice

Components
... Data acquisition methods
... Water penetrating Lidar (state of the art report and tests)

Endnote:
One of the final presentations gave the audience something to think about when Matt Harrison of the British Geological Survey reflected from his own experience (in the context of the launch of www.onegeology.org) that when presented in the right way the reaction is that. “interoperability is cool!”

The topics and issues will be addressed by the organisers in the near future, there is clearly a close link to INSPIRE and SDICs and LMOs were encouraged to load any relevant information (specifications, user needs, use cases, solutions etc) on the INSPIRE website using existing channels in the meantime.

A fuller report of the workshop and the breakout sessions will appear later this year as an Official EuroSDR publication.

In the meantime presentations from the workshop will be found HERE.

The organisers wish to thank all the sponsors, speakers, chairs/facilitators/rapporteurs at the event and the participants for their active involvement throughout the event.

Report Update as of 31st March 2007