James Reid

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• James Reid
• Project Manager
• EDINA

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The geoXwalk project

• funded under JISC IE Development Programme
• builds on Phase I scoping study
• aims to develop a demonstrator gazetteer service
  suitable for extension to full service.
• time-frame start 1 June 2002 for 1 year
• project partners EDINA and UK Data Archive
• aim to develop a proof of concept demonstrator

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JISC Information Environment -geoXwalk as shared
service
Content providers
Shared services
Authentication
Authorisation
Broker/Aggregator
Collectn Desc
Portal
Portal
Portal
Service Desc
Resolver
Instn Profile
End-user
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Geo-referencing thats whats special about the
spatial

• subject content most often referenced by topic
• but much (80?) can be referenced to specific
  geographic places
• broad disciplinary base for more powerful
  geographic searching
• across the social, life physical sciences as
  well as the humanities
• also from libraries, archives and museums
• now from digital libraries, service providers
  data providers
• geo-referencing thus a way of viewing information
  content
• subject, people, place and time
• geographic co-ordinates are persistent regardless
  of name, political boundary or other changes

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Why this is difficult...

• How to search geographically given that
• e.g. a postcode, a placename and an
  administrative area are all valid geographies and
  yet every information system cannot know about
  all the possible variations of what constitutes a
  geography!
• Problem compounded by inconsistency of use even
  in the standards e.g. placenames evolve, have
  alternative names
• Long history in UK of boundary changes and
  changes in the geographies used to record things
  e.g. electoral ward boundary changes

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There is underlying complexity, such as Multiple
Geographies
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The vision

• Make variations in definitions of geography
  transparent
• Provide a means to crosswalk geographies
• i.e. translate one geography into another - hence
  the name
• Geographic agnosticism

• How?
• A digital gazetteer that stores the different
  geographies and can implicitly resolve the
  relationships between them
• Provision as a service to service other services

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• Gazetteer - A list of geographic features
  together with their associated spatial location
• Digital Gazetteer - An electronic list of
  geographic features together with their
  associated spatial location
• (An authority database of places (and
  features?))
• Digital Gazetteer Service - A network-addressable
  middle-ware server supporting geographic
  referencing and searching.
• A shared terminology service.

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Why not just use hierarchical thesauri? (part of
the Document Tradition)
United Kingdom (nation) England
..(country) Devon..
(county) Barton..

• Comment
• one type of simple relationship between entries
  is exploited
• entries ordered from very general to very
  specific (BT, NT)
• can efficiently determine what a given area
  contains
• normally structured to handle alternative names
  (SY)
• rigid structure, one view only, typically
  geo-political
• entities can belong in many hierarchies and new
  relationships evolve
• names may not be unique
• cannot deal with spatial proximity / contiguity
• no way to relate to other geographies, e.g.
  postcodes
• lack of simple hierarchies in UK (and other
  old) geographies

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Uses of geoXwalk Digital Gazetteer Service

• 1. As shared service, enabling other
  information services to support full range of
  spatial searching (query constraints)
• no need to hold all data (at service) to resolve
  spatial query
• uses co-ordinates and (implicit) spatial
  relationships to cross-walk between geographies
• machine-to-machine (m2m) interaction to shared
  service
• 2. As reference facility for researchers,
  libraries museums
• including means to resolve variant names etc.
• 3. As online facility to assist metadata creators
  and means to semi-automatically geo-reference
  existing resources

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geoXwalk Use Cases
Geo-parsing indexing
Searching (1 - use cases)
The geoXwalk Server

• e.g.
• Where is Aberdour?
• On what river is Dundee situated?
• By what alternative names has York been known?
• List me all places ending with kirk

Searching (2)
Reference use
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Supporting cross searching
geoXwalk in the Common Information Environment
Places Barnhill Broughty Ferry Craigie
Douglas And Angus Fintry Lochee Monifieth West
Ferry
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Supporting service searching
Photographs of towns along the River Tweed
Places... Peebles Innerleithen Melrose Kelso Colds
tream Berwick upon Tweed
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As online facility to assist metadata creation

• Most of the extant resources in the JISC IE have
  some form of spatial reference e.g. placename,
  county name, postcode
• A geoparser has been developed which will
  assist in the semi-automatic indexing of these
  resources by using the gazetteer as reference.
• The results of the geoparsing can be used to
  update the documents metadata, making it directly
  geographically searchable.

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Need screen shot of parser here
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Developments to Date

1. Creation population of GB gazetteer database
   with
2. Enhanced OS 150,000 Placename Gazetteer
3. Digital boundary data (UKBORDERS)
4. Additional Place Name Variants (partial for
   Scotland and Wales)
5. Derived multi-source data e.g. named woodlands
   and lakes based on hybrid 150K gazetteer and OS
   products
6. Development of spatial extensions to database to
   support enhanced geographic search capabilities
7. Development of middleware to support m2m and
   interactive searching
8. Support for and testing of alternative query
   protocols -ADL / Z39.50(?)
9. Development of a geoparser to support
   semi-automatic indexing

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Ongoing Work and Issues

• Merging geo-data from different scales from
  different sources
• how to accommodate historical data
• positional accuracy expression of confidence?
• how to minimise effort in de-duplication of
  place(s)?
• places have multiple names, types, and footprints
• need to be able to identify duplicate entries for
  the same place
• Presenting geo-names on different occasions?
• many variant proper names, what is preferred?
• what is the name authority body? - none in the
  Scotland or the UK
• preferred name varies with location and use and
  culture
• there are language and character code set issues
• standard codes for postal addresses and other
  geographies
• IPR issues in metadata and hence terms
  conditions of use
• Service performance issues and appropriate
  protocols

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Contact details

• James.Reid_at_ed.ac.uk
• EDINA, Data Library, University of Edinburgh
• telephone [phone]
• For information on geoXwalk project
• www.geoXwalk.ac.uk

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XML query fragments
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Task Find resource about 'Liverpool
docks Search using a traditional gazetteer
might yield

• 5

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Supporting cross searching different services
Find resources for this postcode (NB postcode
often used to geo-reference survey data files)
Coordinate footprints
Post code L34 0HS?
Place names
Parish names
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