Uncertainty-Based Discovery in Marine Spatial Data Infrastructures

Adel Bolbol1 Roger Brackin1 Stefano Cavazzi1

1Envitia Ltd., Horsham, RH12 5UX, United Kingdom

Tel. (+44 (0) 1403 273 173) Fax (+44 (0) 1403 273 123)
adel.bolbol@envitia.com, roger.brackin@envitia.com, stefano.cavazzi@envitia.com,
www.envitia.com

KEYWORDS: Uncertainty, Spatial Data Infrastructure SDI, Maritime, Information Discovery,

Metadata

1. Introduction

1.1 Uncertainty in the Maritime Domain

The nature of scientific theory could be described by several terms such as cause and effect,
predictions, and experiments. Associated with that are words that describe probabilistic measures
such as mean, median and standard error. The concept of probability enables us to understand
what data used in scientific theories means and how to interpret the world and behaviour within it
(Randall, 2012). Even the most solid knowledge carries a level of uncertainty. Some current
philosophical schools of thought even regard knowledge itself as uncertain and probabilistic in
nature (Rovelli, 2012). For example, knowledge of where one lives is subjective to which address-
level is being referred to (postcode, town, city, country, house number, coordinates or a polygon).

A better understanding of the meaning of uncertainty would improve the human conceptual
toolset. Rovelli (2012) argues that in order to take informed decisions, we only need to realise that
we never have perfectly solid facts, and we do not need them, but only a sufficiently high degree
of probability. However, the concept of uncertainty is one of the least well-understood notions in
current science (Krauss, 2012). This is probably due to the wide scope of its elements in different
situations, domains, problems, dimensions and perspectives.

Ideally, an uncertainty framework should involve developing models, techniques and procedures
for handling uncertainty in data capture, production, dissemination and visualisation and
demonstrating how this could be managed and delivered. The research presented in this work
focuses specifically on interoperability standards. The focus on standards is intended to inform
advancement of interoperability between current and emerging geospatial maritime capabilities
that depend on this ease of communication.

Modelling the different aspects of uncertainty has always been a challenge due to its complexity
and lack of understanding. Moreover, capturing uncertainty in metadata standards across domains,
and specifically within the maritime domain, is a major challenge due to the complexity and the
wide variety of its datasets across different nations.

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1.2 Marine SDIs
According to INSPIRE (2007), Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) are viewed to include metadata,
spatial data sets and spatial data services; network services and technologies; agreements on
sharing, access and use; and coordination and monitoring mechanisms, processes and procedures,
established, operated or made available in accordance with legislation. A Marine SDI therefore is
an attempt to add a spatial dimension in marine administration (Strain, et al., 2005). A Marine SDI
is the means by which different nations and organisations could process, publish, access and share
their maritime spatial data in an easily and cost effectively manner (Longhorn, 2009). Among the
benefits of adopting a Marine SDI approach is reducing data acquisition duplication, saving costs,
maintaining common reference data, facilitate cooperation across organisations and nations, and
provoking improved decision making for maritime applications.

The types of data a Marine SDI is likely to hold includes Maritime Baselines, Cadastral (offshore),
Climate, Bathymetry Elevation, Flood Hazards, Hydrography, Marine boundaries, Offshore
Minerals, Shoreline, Marine Transportation, Watershed Boundaries, and Wetlands (Longhorn,
2009). Marine SDIs are of great importance in a plethora of applications such as determining
international fishery zones, management of international water boundaries, Costal management,
alternative energy development on outer continental shelf, hazards mapping, oil spill tracking, and
many more (Longhorn, 2005).

Despite significant initiatives such as the EU (Directive INSPIRE, the Global GEOSS or the
Protocol on ICZM for the Mediterranean of the Barcelona Convention of the United Nation
Environment Programme and the Mediterranean Action Plan), the need for integrating spatial data
and the development of common exchange rules seem to remain somewhat unrelated to the main
core of ICZM (Malvárez, et al., 2013). However, given that a Marine SDI is complete and widely-
adopted, the main problem that seems to be pertinent is the ability to discover data services that
are within the Area of Interest and which are relevant to the task-at-hand.

Effective information management and exploitation (IM/IX) is critical to achieving competitive

and operational advantage. Organisations are being challenged as never before to treat information
as a strategic asset while at the same time trying to manage exponential growth in data flows and
declining or static budgets. In government and maritime sectors, the problem is compounded by
the imperative to share information across organisational, domain and geographic boundaries.

In the geospatial world, the implementation of SDIs has been seen as an important part of the
answer to better IM/IX. From a technology viewpoint, an SDI is characterised by (1) information
modelling as the building block of a sustainable, extensible and business led infrastructure, (2)
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to benefit from decoupled data and service tiers, and the
promise of ‘plug and play’ flexibility and (3) the use of open standards to achieve genuine
interoperability.

Effective cooperation among many different institutions is needed in the management of coastal
areas. An SDI is the mechanism that will ensure this cooperation. The SDIs are interoperability
infrastructures that allow sharing of the data and services among the related institutions or parties.
Service Oriented Architecture and its most common implementation method, web services, are
the latest software architecture that is recommended for realizing interoperability (Akinci, et al.,

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2012). Existing SDIs have often focussed on opening access to static, ‘traditional’ sources of
geospatial information. In the same way as Web 2.0 aims to provide the opportunity for
exploitation of more dynamic data and business focussed services, SDI deployments need to move
in the same direction.

1.2.1 Communicating Uncertainty & Enabling its Discovery in Geospatial Data

In order to effectively capture the various aspects of uncertainty, this work aims to build a model
that documents all the different aspects of uncertainty. This is carried out by breaking the concept
of uncertainty into three components, namely; (1) its Sources, (2) Types, and (3) Dimensions. On
the other hand, in order to understand how these aspects could be captured to be effectively shared
and communicated, this work also provides an in-depth investigation of the capability of existing
geospatial data standards for capturing and enabling exploitation of uncertainty. The research
specifically considers how the ISO 19100 series: Geographical Information, focusing on
geospatial data quality standards, can be exploited to contribute to this capability. The work
therefore also attempts to provide a detailed description of elements of an uncertainty model that
can be found in existing standards (ISO19115, ISO19157, ASRP, WMO Core, S-57, and S-100).

Furthermore, in order to discover maritime spatial data and its uncertainty aspects, we develop and
introduce the “Geo Registry” in this work as a key enabling technology. As an analogy, while a
business can operate with a vast set of individual spreadsheets (the equivalent of individual
catalogues) much more business effectiveness is gained when information is managed in an
enterprise relational database (the equivalent of a registry). When the number of spreadsheets is
small, the ‘catalogue’ type solution is manageable. As the volume and complexity of information
increases and the number of players scale-up, the ‘catalogue’ type solution quickly becomes
unmanageable. As a result, the need for a registry in the maritime domain significantly increases
due to its data complexity and the geographical extent of its data usage across nations and
organisations. By standardising the mechanism of sharing uncertainty information in Marine SDIs
across different nations, a Geo Registry can provide the means to discover and access this
information in an SOA.

2. Handling Uncertainty
The director of MIT’s Centre for Bits and Atoms in 2011 argued that "truth" is just a model, and
that the most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth, which
they never find and resort to making and testing models (Gershenfeld, 2012). This potentially
controversial view implies that uncertainty is intrinsic to the process of gaining an understanding
of what we are ignorant about, and not a weakness to avoid. In a number of contexts, modelling
uncertainty enforces very important concepts such as trust. Trusting geospatial information
establishes other similar concepts in the information receptor's thought process such as credibility,
reliability and honesty (Skarlatidou, et al., 2011), which leads to making more confident and
better-informed decisions.

2.1 Modelling Uncertainty

The term Uncertainty has been known occasionally to be synonymous with other terms such as
risk, quality and confidence. Uncertainty could occur in the spatial and temporal domains, or even
in other dimensions. Therefore, we have developed a framework for modelling uncertainty in order

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to capture all the aspects that are inherent in information uncertainty. As shown in Figure 1, the
model is divided into three different elements from which uncertainty is viewed (or in which it
resides). These are the sources of uncertainty, its types and components.

Figure 1 Uncertainty Model

The dimensions of uncertainty, reflect the dimensional space that uncertainty of spatial data could
fall within (e.g. spatial, temporal, thematic, topological, and documentation). The spatial and
temporal dimensions relate to the uncertainty in space and in time, while the thematic dimension
relates to the uncertainty in the theme values being presented (e.g. population). The topological
dimension refers to the uncertainty in topological relationships between geographical features,
such as between road links or adjacent land parcels. The documentation dimension on the other
hand refers to purely documentation aspects such as the number of geographical features that are
present in the dataset yet not present in the real world. The importance of these uncertainties will
depend on the data requirements and preferences at hand.

The sources on the other hand capture the different lifetime phases of data where uncertainty could
potentially be introduced such as in data collection, analysis and presentation phases. Each phase
has a different impact on the propagation of uncertainty, and hence should be modelled and treated
separately and distinctly.

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The types of uncertainty describe the nature of the uncertainty that the data possesses. This
classification dictates the techniques that could be used to quantitatively calculate and
communicate the uncertainty. In an attempt to identify types of uncertainty present within data, an
extensive review of the existent literature has been conducted. Hence, nine key studies were
selected as a basis for the uncertainty types identified (Bastin, et al., 2012; Chrisman, 1983; Fisher,
1999; Regan, et al., 2002; Ross, et al., 2013; Skeels, et al., 2010; Team Sparta, 2010; Thomson, et
al., 2005; Zimmermann, 2000).The types of uncertainty include accuracy, precision, credibility,
consistency, completeness, ambiguity, vagueness, semantics, mechanism and randomness. They
could be defined as follows in Table 1.

Table 1 Types of Uncertainty

Uncertainty Description

Accuracy The degree to which the measurement matches the intended value

Precision Exactness of measure

Credibility Reliability of the information source

Consistency Some information may point to one type of behaviour, whereas some points
to another; a measure of agreement between components

Completeness There is insufficient information to make an exact decision

Ambiguity Linguistic information can have more than one meaning, which itself may not
be clear

Vagueness Use of a model to determine a classification – may not be exact

Semantics Uncertainty due to the interpretation of data

Mechanism Inclusion of only variables considered to be relevant, yet others may have an
impact on the overall system. It is rarely possible to include all mechanisms
and processes that in reality act on a system

Randomness Measured system cannot be reduced to a deterministic one

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2.2 Capturing Uncertainty
Different aspects of spatial data uncertainty are captured in various data standards. However, there
are aspects that do not seem to have made it yet into these standards due to the lack of a need to
represent and communicate those aspects of uncertainty. In this section, we investigate several
standards that are used across maritime-related domains in the way they capture different elements
of the uncertainty model developed in this research.

2.2.1 Data Standards and Uncertainty in Organisations

Some information providers include metadata and uncertainty information within their products.
This allows the consumer of the product to make their own decisions regarding how to exploit this
information and make better-informed decisions. Some of the aspects of the uncertainty model
developed in this research are captured in elements of these widely-used standards. Elements of
both ISO 19115 and ISO 19157 capture most of these aspects. The main benefit of using these
standards is that they allow metadata to be captured consistently across the maritime domain and
across other domains.

Other standards in the UK include the ARC Standard Raster Product (ASRP) specification used
within the Air domain. The ASRP includes support for recording metadata on data quality
(DGWIG, 1995), which holds some uncertainty elements. Within the Land domain, some of the
geospatial data is based on product specifications of the Multinational Geospatial Co-production
Program (MGCP) which uses Defence Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG) Feature
Data Dictionary (DFDD). In the meteorological domain, an example standard is the World
Meteorological Organization (WMO) profile of ISO 19115 which is in use at the UK Met Office
(Tandy, 2010).

The heterogeneity of standards adopted in this research necessitates the mapping of elements from
one standard to another in case of communication between the different organisations/domains.
There is a shift however in the maritime domain towards adopting the ISO 19115, and specifically
ISO 19157 "Geographic Information - Data Quality" to ensure some form of interoperability with
other domains. For example, the maritime domain is in the process of moving from S-57 to a new
standard named S-100 which is based on ISO 19115.

2.2.2 Uncertainty Model & Standards

As a result of the need for cross-communication between different organisations/domains in many
situations, this section attempts to first map ISO 19115 metadata elements across different
uncertainty Dimensions and Types. A full mapping is then carried out of the ISO 19115, S-57,
ASRP and the WMO Profile; to ISO 19115 and ISO 19157 uncertainty-related metadata elements.
Table 2 was developed to show the ISO metadata elements mapped to elements of the uncertainty
model developed in the previous subsection from across the uncertainty Dimensions and Types.
It can be noted that several uncertainty types such as Accuracy, Precision and Consistency are
well-captured; probably due to their quantitative measurable nature. The gaps in the table show
the absence of elements that capture different aspects of uncertainty in these standards.

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Table 2 ISO 19157 Elements Resident in the Matrix of Dimensions & Types of the Uncertainty
Model developed in this Task

Dimensions

Spatial Temporal Thematic Topological Documentation

Accuracy Positional Temporal Thematic - -

Accuracy Accuracy Accuracy
(Quantitative &
Qualitative)

Precision / Gridded Data Temporal Validity Thematic - -

Resolution Positional Classification
Accuracy & Spatial Correctness
Resolution

Credibility - - - Confidence -

Consistency Conceptual Temporal Domain Topological Format

Consistency Consistency Consistency Consistency Consistency
Types

Completeness - - - - Completeness
(Commission &
Omission)

Ambiguity - - - - -

Vagueness - - - - -

Semantic - - Thematic - -
Classification
Correctness

Mechanism - - - - -

Randomness - - - - -

Table 3 provides a class-level summary of the achievements in this phase (so far) to map
uncertainty dimensions, MGMP metadata elements and ISO metadata elements to similar
elements of existing domain standards. A highly-detailed mapping spread sheet will be available
attached to the final report at the end of this phase, highlighting individual measures and categories
that constitute these classes.

As can be noted from Table 3 more than half of the uncertainty-related elements found in the ISO
standards are non-existent in other internationally used standards. This highlights some of the most
prominent gaps in these standards, and would benefit from capturing. It is also noted that very
rarely do any of the other domain standards expand in the aspects of uncertainty more than the
ISO 19100 series, which is positive from the perspective of good communication between these
standards, yet still highlights gaps in capturing other aspects of uncertainty and data quality.

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Table 3 Mapping Uncertainty Dimensions, Metadata Elements and ISO Metadata Elements, to
Elements of existing Standards

Uncertainty
ISO Standard
Dimensions

AISRP Metadata
S-57 Metadata

Met Metadata
Model Subtype Element No. Standard Definition

Positional Accuracy 19157 Accuracy of the position of features

Closeness of reported coordinate values to values

Absolute external accepted as or being true
positional accuracy
19157 √ √ √

Spatial Accuracy Closeness of the relative positions of features in the

Relative internal scope to their respective relative positions accepted as
positional accuracy
19157
or being true
√ √ √
Spatial

Closeness of gridded data spatial position values to

Gridded data positional
accuracy
19115 values accepted as or being true √

Level of detail expressed as the scale denominator of a

Equivalent scale 19115 comparable hardcopy map or chart √ √ √
Spatial
Resolution
Measure of the granularity of the data (in metres)
Spatial resolution 19115 √ √ √

Adherence to the rules of a conceptual schema

Spatial
Conceptual Consistency 19157
Consistency

Temporal Provides a temporal component of the extent of the

Extent
Temporal Extent 19115 referring object √ √

Reference date for the cited resource (i.e. date of

Dataset
reference date
Dataset reference date 19115 creation, publication or revision) √ √ √

Accuracy of the temporal attributes and temporal

Temporal Quality 19157
relationships of features
Temporal

Correctness of the temporal references of an item

Accuracy of a Time (reporting of error in time measurement)
19157
Measurement
Temporal
Quality Indication that an event is incorrectly ordered against
Temporal Consistency 19157
the other events
Validity of data specified by the scope with respect to
Temporal validity 19157
time
Validity of data specified by the scope with respect to
Temporal validity 19157
time
√
Thematic

Accuracy of quantitative attributes and the correctness

Thematic of non-quantitative attributes and of the classifications
Thematic Accuracy 19157
Accuracy of features and their relationships

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 Uncertainty
ISO Standard
Dimensions

AISRP Metadata
S-57 Metadata

Met Metadata
Model Subtype Element No. Standard Definition

Comparison of the classes assigned to features or their

Classification
19157 attributes to a universe of discourse
correctness

Qualitative 19157 Correctness of non-quantitative attributes

Quantitative 19157 Accuracy of quantitative attributes

Degree of conformity with the product specification or

Thematic
Consistency
Conformity 19115 user requirement against which the resource is being √ √ √
evaluated
Topological

Correctness of the explicitly encoded topological

Topological characteristics of the dataset as described by the scope
Topological Consistency 19157
Errors

Presence and absence of features, their attributes and

Completeness 19157
their relationships
√
Documentation

Completeness Excess data present in the dataset, as described by the

Commission 19157
scope

Omission 19157 Data absent from the dataset, as described by the scope

Degree to which data is stored in accordance with the

Format
Format Consistency 19157 physical structure of the data set
Consistency

3. A Geo Registry as a Concept and Capability

In an ideally-maintained SDI, standard elements that describe the data’s qualitative properties
would be accurately completed to describe all relevant aspects of existing spatial data.
Nevertheless, finding the relevant data of specific quality in the vastness of the different datasets
available across nations and organisations, is a hugely challenging task. The use of SOA and,
specifically in SDIs, has grown significantly over the last few years, delivering map data on-line
as services and for download. Many organisations have rushed to set up SOA/SDI environments
often only to deliver the result to the user via a specific portal. As a result the portal is becoming
the new stovepipe, with systems unable to effectively chain onto a service platform and the users
left with a myriad of portals, each with different interaction styles, to search through to get to the
data they want. We have slowly seen the addition of basic catalogue services such as the EU
INSPIRE catalogue but these only deal with the simple use cases (simple discovery and download
of datasets).

In this section, we introduce the concept of a service registry to be used to catalogue data and
enable its discovery. This section also discusses the international standards that relate to registries
at different levels and domains. Finally, this section introduces our implementation of a Geo
Registry concept that enables this type of discovery. We provide a specific focus on the role Geo

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Registries play in addressing the (well-known) limitations of traditional SDI approaches with
simple catalogues and their potential to allow organisations to benefit from Web 2.0 capabilities.

3.1 Service Registry

The term ‘registry’ is often used interchangeably with the term ‘catalogue’, but an OGC-
Compliant (CSW-ebRIM ) Registry offers a significant jump in capability over and above a simple
catalogue based on the CSW-ISO1 profile (used in INSPIRE). A Registry is specifically designed
to enable machine-to-machine exchange (true ‘Find and Bind’). This means that the Registry can
deal with some key use cases such as cross-organisation federation of services, discovery of
complex data (e.g. MET data), authoritative data access (e.g. ‘Safe for flight’), provision of
reference information, and delivery of user/role-focussed information.

3.2 Elements of a Geo Registry

As shown in Figure 2, the key elements of a Geo Registry exceeds the capabilities of a geospatial
catalogue by providing the following:

• Support for both Discovery and Evaluation; where Discovery is concerned with finding a
resource and Evaluation with checking its fitness for purpose
• Authority: a registry is an authoritative catalogue, allowing verification of information.
• Referencing: referencing to other objects or services allows significant automation to be
implemented in clients
• Classification: associating tags with objects allowing advanced searches on tags
• Migration & Versioning: provides the ability to migrate users to newer versions of data or
services in a controlled way
• Repository: artefact management; where Registries can store metadata, symbology,
portrayal rules, product specifications etc., in an integrated repository
• Federation: can be aligned with other registries to allow discovery across many sources
from one query
• Mediation: supporting harmonisation of information. The referencing capability, together
with the repository, mean the registry is ideal for managing harmonisation/mediation rules

1
The ISO application profile of CSW is a simpler catalogue standard only supports dataset/service artefacts only.

10
 Figure 2 High-level view of ebRIM 3.0 (attributes suppressed) (OGC, 2006)

3.3 Standards related to Catalogues & Registries

There are a number of standards relating to catalogues and registries operating at various levels
and covering a range of domains. Fundamentally all registries support the use of metadata in its
widest sense to support the discovery of information. Discovery capabilities have developed in a
wide range of domains and at various levels in the form of catalogues and registries (see Figure
3). Web service registries such as those complying with UDDI, as well as a range of proprietary
registries integrated with the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), have provided a low-level backbone.
These registries are not really designed or capable of meeting the more advanced requirements of
a geo or other domain-specific registry.

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 Yellow Pages Service Standards snd Bespoke

Proprietary OASIS UDDI

IBM, Microsoft, HP, etc. (Universal Description Discovery and Integration)

Registry Standards Geo Catalogue Standards Generic Search Interfaces

SPARQL
CSD OpenSearch
OASIS ebXML (Semantic Query)
Imagery OGC CSW (Catalogue Services
(electronic Business)
Catalogue For the Web)
Standards Google, Bing etc
ebRS ebRIM (Registry
OGC CSW- OGC CSW-
(Registry Information
Service) Model)
ebRIM ISO

CIM EP

Conceptual Standards Domain

Domain EO EP
ISO 19135 Registration EPs
EPs
ISO 19115 DS Metadata Extension Packages
ISO 19119 S Metadata

Figure 3 Catalogue and Registry Standards

Many application domains have developed a discovery capability or a functional equivalent (e.g.
for imagery). There are more general standards including ebXML (ebRS+ebRIM) as well as
OpenSearch (with significant browser support) and SPARQL providing linked-data search
capabilities. In the geospatial world, the main standard is the OGC CSW abstract standard under
which falls the simple CSW-ISO profile and the ebRIM profile. ebRIM allows a domain
customised data model extension package (EP) to be uploaded whereas CSW-ISO only allows
dataset and service objects. The OGC defined a profile of CSW as the service interface rather than
adopting the OASIS ebRS interface in order to support advanced spatial search. Apart from the
web service interface differences, the model adopted by the CSW and the OASIS ebRS is identical.

The OGC continues to develop extension packages which support different domains (e.g. the Earth
Observation Extension Package or EO EP) and models can also be developed between groups or
organisations to support local interoperability or filed as profiles to allow wider community
collaboration. The Cataloguing ISO Metadata (CIM) extension package provides the equivalent
model to the CSW-ISO catalogue profile, so that in effect the same level of off-the shelf
interoperability is available with either CSW-ISO or CSW-ebRIM, while still allowing users to
benefit from ebRIM’s extra extensibility.

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3.4 Standard Differences
The key-element differences in capability between CSW-ISO (catalogue service) and CSW-
ebRIM (registry service) could be summarised in Table 4 below.

Table 4 Capabilities of CSW-ISO (Catalogue) and CSW-ebRIM (Registry) Application Profiles

of CSW

Searching for Datasets and Services ISO ebRIM

Search for Geospatial Datasets (Based on ISO19115 metadata) Yes Yes
Search for Web Services (Based on ISO19119 Metadata) Yes Yes
Search for all Datasets which support WMS Services No Yes
Geospatial Searches
Search for Datasets or Services by Geographic Area Yes Yes
Search for other objects by Geographic Area No Yes
Temporal Searches
Search for Datasets or Services in a specific time range Yes Yes
Search for Datasets or Services in multiple time ranges No Yes
Data Versioning
Can Hold multiple Versions of a Dataset or Service No Yes
Formalised Release Procedure/Workflow for versions No Yes
Version Status of Each item. No Yes
Other Artefact Support
WMC/OWC Documents No Yes
Portrayal Descriptions (e.g. SLDs) No Yes
Relationships No Yes
Relating Datasets to Dataset Groups Yes Yes
Categorising Data
Assigning Keyword to an artefact Yes Yes
Assigning a Categorisation in a taxonomy to an artefact No Yes

Despite the differences, it is still possible to implement some of the capabilities of a CSW-ebRIM
registry in a CSW-ISO catalogue. Versioning is possible by simply writing a service or dataset in
with the version number in the name, but in most cases such techniques have proved not to scale
very well. The sheer modelling power of a CSW-ebRIM implementation wins as requirements
become more extensive, and data sources become more diverse.

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3.5 Implementation of the Geo Registry
In this work, we have implemented a wholesome Geo Registry, providing the key technology
components required for an advanced SDI solution-based on a standards-fully-compliant geo
registry. This Geo Registry supports both the CSW-ISO and CSW-ebRIM interface standards
supported against a single instance of the data. This means clients which only support the more
limited CSW-ISO interface can still access a subset of the contents of the registry supported by
the standard while more advanced clients can access the full range of capability. Support for
further interfaces including OpenSearch and SPARQL are planned again using the same data
source, ensuring the maximum level of interoperability.

The Geo Registry, developed at Envitia Ltd., supports a range of standard database technologies
to persist the contents including Oracle and SQL Server with PostGRES/PostGIS planned in the
near future. The Geo Registry includes the OGC Basic, CIM and EO extension packages which
are optionally deployed on installation.

An extensive set of browser-based tools are provided to manage the registry and explore the
registry content. The Geo Registry can also be used with Envitia’s Geo Portal which allows users
to develop effective portal applications exploiting not only the registry but also web services it
references.

Lastly, the Geo Registry, presented in Figure 4, includes the Geo Harvester which is a web
service-based component capable of harvesting content from other CSW-ISO and CSW-ebRIM
compliant catalogues as well as from a range of OGC Compliant endpoint types such as WMS,
WMTS and WFS to build and update the registry artefacts. The harvester includes the capability
to transform metadata harvested to provide a harmonised view in the registry. This is often
necessary as metadata structures diverge in different implementations and are sometimes
completely non-standard.

Figure 4 Envitia Geo Registry Components

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Each of the components in the Envitia Geo Registry can be used independently, as they use
standard interfaces. The registry also integrates into a range of security models and load balancing,
replication and redundancy models to support the scalability necessary to deliver to a large user
base and ensure the quality of service (performance, robustness etc.) needed in industrial and
maritime applications.

The technology underpinning the Geo Registry has already been deployed in a number of mission-
critical applications and been accredited for use in such environments, as well as having been
subject to and passed penetration testing confirming its resilience to attacks.

3.6 Example Registry Use Cases

The following are typical usage examples of a Geo Registry. These are taken from a real-life
concept demonstration, interoperability experiment and practical deployment examples.

3.6.1 Cross-organisation federation of services

A key registry use is to deliver a federated view of disparate web service providers, with a mixture
of catalogue services, service endpoints and metadata standards. The registry needs to deliver a
single point of presence which may be accessed by a portal or by another system, either used
directly or further federating (Figure 5).

Figure 5 Federating Registry Solution

The registry typically operates in one of two modes; either metadata from each catalogue or web
service endpoint is harvested on a cyclic basis and a ‘cache’ is established in the registry
(harvesting) or when a query hits the registry it generates multiple concurrent requests to federated
catalogues or registries.

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The Envitia Geo Registry can support both of these modes of operation, and in both cases can
execute transformations on both the request and results, to deal with the semantic differences
between different catalogues content. The harmonisation rules can be stored in the registry. The
Envitia Geo Portal allows the user to issue requests to discover the harvested or federated content
and then to access the services referenced to view a combination of sources together.

3.6.2 Access to Authoritative Information

There are a number of capability cases based around the need for clear authority. A requirement
might be to discover an information source which is valid to use for air navigation. The registry
can be searched with the specific ‘authority’ requirement in the query. Once relevant data (for
example a standard flight plan) is discovered the client can then verify the plan is in a valid time
window, and the necessary authority is present by accessing linked information in the registry to
an approval document. Because of the versioning and audit trail information, the registry provides
the necessary workflows to support this which are missing from a catalogue. This capability case
is also directly relevant to many military situations where authority to use information is also
critical.

3.6.3 Registry Support for Reference Information

Registries provide the capability to supply a plethora of supporting information for services in a
SDI. For simple services based on raster datasets this is less critical, but for advanced data sources
it become much more important. A use case prototyped in the Open Geospatial Consortium OWS
7 Testbed was the use of a registry to store relevant portrayal rules for aviation clients. The aviation
data was portrayed using a feature portrayal service, but different customers in different domains
needed different portrayal. The model developed showed how the registry could hold portrayal
rules and symbology such that an administrator could use a style editor to create and upload
symbols and rules for different domains (Figure 6).

Figure 6 Feature Portrayal

These sets of rules could then be associated with aviation data present in the web services using
the registry ‘association’ construct. Further the association could be qualified by the user domain.
This meant whenever an end user (with an associated domain) accessed the service, the right
portrayal would be presented to that user. The example used shows how this was used in the FAA
Special Activity Airspace Pilot which demonstrated airspace use planning coordination between
military and civil planners.

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3.6.4 Delivery of User/Role-Focussed Information
It is often the case that users do not want, or are not best placed to search and assemble a domain-
specific view from numerous layers themselves. For example, when bringing a series of
responders together in an emergency situation it is helpful to deliver pre-configured groups of
services in a ‘view’. The OGC have recently released a standard which supports capturing such a
view, the OWS Context document. Since a context document is simply an XML document it is
easily stored in the registry as a repository item and catalogued and classified in the same was as
other information in the registry.

Clients then search for context documents instead of individual layers and share views of critical
situations quickly and easily (for example between desktop and mobile users). The registry
capability to categorise such a view as relevant to a specific community is also extremely valuable
in the maritime domain. Figure 7 presents an image of a Situational Awareness picture constructed
and visualised with the Envitia Geo Registry Portal. Datasets of relevance are discovered by
searching for key fields supported by the Registry Information Model, the datasets are then
assessed by examining the full metadata held by the Geo Registry and accessed using Web
Services described by metadata held in the Geo Registry.

Figure 7 Envitia Geo Registry Portal

3.6.5 Delivery of associated Uncertainty Elements

Figure 8 shows another implementation of the Envitia Geo portal, but in this case, to portray
uncertainty in discovered spatial information. Provided uncertainty elements are complete and
maintained in the metadata using adopted exchange standards, it is possible to portray uncertainty
information about the data discovered prior to it being requested or downloaded. This means that

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users can decide which data is best suited for their purpose before executing an expensive
download only to find it not fit-for-purpose. The visualisations portrayed in the figure show stars
being used in the table of available data to depict a 5-point scale of the resulting data uncertainty.
This is a simple method illustrating that more stars mean more certainty. Figure 9 on the other
hand, shows an example of the same portal but instead showing values of individual uncertainty
elements for different data services.

Figure 8 Envitia Geo Registry showing resulting Data Uncertainty Level

Figure 9 Envitia Geo Registry showing each Uncertainty Element’s Level

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4. Conclusions
This paper has presented work on developing a model capturing different aspects of uncertainty
such as its dimensions and types. An investigation then was carried out to find the relationships
between elements of the uncertainty model. These elements were mapped to relevant ISO
standards in order to identify links and gaps between the developed uncertainty model and
standards meant to capture aspects of uncertainty. The results were then mapped to elements from
domain standards used across different organisations. This aimed to understand the extent of
capturing uncertainty aspects within organisations and domains and to help setting the standard
elements that must be maintained and completed in order to effectively capture most uncertainty
aspects. Limitations in capturing uncertainty in the investigated standards are recognised, as their
quality can only be as good as the metadata being generated for the provided elements. Hence,
further work needs to be considered in order to adequately infer/calculate quantitative and
qualitative measures of the uncertainty at hand.

This paper has also described a capability developed in-house at Envitia Ltd. that uses current
international data exchange standards to enable data discovery in a SOA environment. The work
outlined the requirements, capabilities, standards and capability cases for geospatial registry
technology. In many domains nowadays, the case for the use of geospatial registry technology in
supporting a range of complex but common use cases is significant. The overriding need to
increase interoperability and minimise manual intervention improving machine-to-machine
discovery and negotiation to deal with the evolving issue of becoming buried in a sea of portals is
critical. In addition, as requirements to achieve more and more cross-community interoperability
increase, technologies which help to support and automate cross-community interoperability as
well as intra-community interoperability are going to become significant enablers. Geo Registries
are one of those key enablers, even more importantly to communicate the qualitative elements of
information uncertainty. Furthermore, as the number of more complex data sources which do not
follow the simple dataset pattern become available the need to support advanced search techniques
will become more and more important. As users demand more focussed views of information
around their role and goals without the need to go through a laborious search, the registry’s
capability to support association of information will become a key enabler. Nevertheless, if
complete and appropriate information is populated in metadata fields, only then will SDIs be
effectively discoverable using a service discovery tool. The key to achieving an effective SDI is
to appropriately characterize data, facilitate discovery, and use standards to ensure interoperability.

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6. Biography
Dr Adel Bolbol is a Geospatial Intelligence Consultant at Envitia Ltd. Adel completed his PhD in
GeoInformatics at University College London (UCL), Civil, Environmental and Geomatic
Engineering Department in 2013. He completed his MSc in GIS from City University, London in
2007. Adel also has worked for several years in different industries in the Geospatial domain. His
research interests span between Spatial Analysis, WebGIS, SDIs, Movement Data Analysis,
Transportation, Spatio-Temporal Behaviour and Data Mining.
Roger Brackin, Chief Technology Officer at Envitia Ltd., has over 25 years’ experience in the
development of data handling and visualization systems in complex real-time spatial applications,
in both the military and civil arenas. He has a long history of involvement in Geospatial and
Navigational Systems, Marine Radar Simulators, and tactical systems. Mr Brackin leads Envitia’s
contribution to open standards experimentation at the OGC. As part of this activity he has
authored or co-authored many Publically released Engineering Reports and Standardisation
documents used to improve interoperability in military applications and regularly presents on the
subject in the UK, US and in Europe.
Dr Stefano Cavazzi is a Geospatial Intelligence Consultant at Envitia Ltd. where he provides
expertise to customers with respect to SDI, Web Services and specialist GIS technologies. Prior
to that Stefano was a researcher at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) where
he developed a model to assess offshore wind power resources in the North Sea. He completed a
PhD in Spatial Statistics at Cranfield University and spent few years in consultancy working for
large infrastructure companies.

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