June 18^th and 19^th 2003

European Environment Agency

Copenhagen

Particpants:

Hannu Saarenmaa – GBIF (Thursday)

Bruce Bargmeyer - EPA

Larry Fitzwater -EPA

Stefan Jensen - EEA - chairman

Gordon McInnes – EEA (partly Thursday)

Soren Roug – EEA

Tim Haigh – EEA (partly Thursday)

Palle Haastrup - JRC

Gerard Cunningham – UNEP

Gladys Cotter – USGS (Thursday)

Gail Hodge – USGS (Thrusday)

Paul Thorn - US State Dept (Thursday)

Summary minutes

The two-day meetings saw in its first session presentations by the involved parties on the work they perform and which can be understood as potential contribution to the Ecoinformatics cooperation. From these presentations, several new issues were carried over to the later discussions on concrete actions to take.

The cooperative projects - participants agreed to perform activities under - are:

A) Publicity of International/Interagency Cooperation on Ecoinformatics

1. Develop website - portal to ongoing projects (All to contribute)

• EEA to make Ecoinformatics cooperation website (short term project)

  • Public bulletin board

  • Pointers to relevant documents or web pages for ongoing projects (all partners). E.g.:

    • Pointer to EPA XML Schemas developed for Exchange Network

    • Pointer to EEA open source library

    • Pointer to JRC Water Framework -- XML schema

    • Pointer to EDEN-IW website

    • Pointers to conceptual design and architecture documents, e.g.:

      • UNEP.Net

      • Reportnet

      • GBIF information architecture and Darwin Core schema

    • Pointers to terminology resources (GEMET, TRS, EARTH, Bio-complexity, GBIF (as UDDI and biological taxonomies), EEA Glossary)

  • Meeting arrangements

  • Links to the CIRCA library sections for internal documents

B) IT projects of common interest

1. Open Source ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registry (EEA/EPA)

• EEA develops and provides open source software. Expected date of initial availability is March 2004. The initial release will be a partial implementation of ISO/IEC 11179. Fuller implementations may follow.

• Initially post the open source software to EEA website. EEA already has several open source software packages available.

• EPA assists EEA with interpretation of the 11179 standards documents.

• EPA posts the publicly available ISO/IEC 11179 documents on the open source web location.

2. Register metadata and XML Schemas in a metadata registry (USGS/GBIF)

• GBIF has a federated data exchange standard in XML. Defining the data elements in the XML schemas and registering them in the 11179 registry is an interesting project. Possibly starting with the Darwin Core data.

• USGS will work with GBIF to develop and enter metadata for prioritized Darwin Core data elements.

• Share registry entries between agencies where relevant (all participants).

3. Sharing data via XML (All initially EPA, JRC)

• Share metadata about tags in XML Schemas (“tagsonomy”), tag sharing. JRC and UNEP are interested.

• EPA to post web address for current XML schemas

• EPA posts draft guidelines on EEA Circle (done during the meeting)

4. Thesaurus and terminology (All)

• Web services - USGS will check out and report back at the next Ecoinformatics meeting

• A common form interface to current resources is needed. USGS will investigate the feasibility of a pilot. Report at next Ecoinformatics meeting.

• Future harmonization was discussed

• Thesaurus for environmental terms in international conventions and Global Environmental Facility - UNEP leads on next steps

• GEMET quality assurance and update – details on activities during the July teleconference

• Common exchange formats for terminologies shall be proposed

5. Indicator management tools

• Build on and extend Reportnet tool developments as already started by the listed organisations (EEA, GBIF, JRC)

C) Common IT research activities

These activities will involve EPA and JRC as key players. EEA will communicate its interest in thematic areas to be supported through this work

It was discussed to include activities around the semantic web for environmental data and ontologies into this. The current European discussion and agreements around the Global Monitoring Environment and Security (GMES) initiative and the INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative are a relevant framework. Consequently, spatial information and databases as well as a common information infrastructure for environmental data are an important reference set.

Primarily, the EU 6th framework IST program shall be evaluated for the European contribution while the US work will possibly have to be supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) funds.

D) Any other business

A teleconference is scheduled for July 23^rd 16:00 CET.

Next meeting is planned for January 2004 in Washington DC.

Document history:

Draft version 0.1 27.06.03 Stefan Jensen EEA