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September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 1
The Great Australian Byte
The Newsletter of the Australian Geoscience Information Association (Inc.)
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 ISSN 1325–3700
When: 7.30am Friday 26 September 2014
Where: BHP Billiton, 125 St Georges Tce. Perth
RSVP is essential for building entry and teleconference participation.
RSVP to Rae Davie on secretary@agia.org.au by Wednesday 24 September
CONTENTS AGIA News Highlights .................................................................................. 2 AESC 2014, Newcastle 6-11 July 2014 ........................................................... 3 2014 Brisbane & Perth Data Management Symposiums .................................... 5 CSIRO’s Data Access Portal .......................................................................... 7 Articles of interest ..................................................................................... 11 Upcoming Events ...................................................................................... 11 Websites & Mailing Lists of Interest ............................................................. 11 AGIA National Committee 2013-14 .............................................................. 12
AGIA is a member of the Australian Geoscience Council
Join us at the
AGIA AGM
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 2
AGIA NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
AGIA GROUP DISCUSSIONS ON
Rise and Demise of North West Shelf Public Databases (from PNR online)
GA makes Tim O'Driscoll lineament maps available (item from GA Mineral Alerts)
Links to free ANDS & AuScope events
Links to software developers data & metadata innovations
WA DMP's Core Library featured on Today Tonight
Sharepoint & Dublin Core - all about metadata
Elsevier journal metrics
PPDM Symposium discounts for AGIA members
AGIA events updates
Reminder: Members of AGIA’s LinkedIn group are encouraged to share items of interest on
the Discussions tab and are welcome to post positions vacant on the Jobs tab. You can join
the AGIA LinkedIn group here.
FROM THE NEWSLETTER EDITOR
This edition of the GAB focusses on AGIA’s engagement with allied associations and
organisations which have an interest in geoscience data and information:
AGIA President Angela Riganti reports back on her attendance at the Australian Earth
Science Convention (AESC), the biennal meeting of the Geological Society of Australia
Jess Kozman provides a wrap-up of the Professional Petroleum Data Management
(PPDM) Association’s 2014 Perth Data Management Symposium, which this year was
sponsored by AGIA
Notes on Sue Cook’s tour of the CSIRO’s Data Access Portal – front and back end – at
the AGIA Winter Warmer
This will be the last GAB under the supervision of the 2013-2014 AGIA National Committee.
Remember - if you have attended an interesting event, found a new application or
interesting website please contact the Newsletter Editor at webmaster@agia.org.au so your
knowledge can be shared.
Vanessa Johnson
Newsletter Editor
®
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 3
Prof. Iain Stewart delivering the first plenary
session in the 1927 Newcastle City Hall.
Photo by Angela Riganti
Morning tea in the exhibition hall.
Photo by Angela Riganti
AESC 2014, NEWCASTLE 6-11 JULY 2014
More than 600 delegates flocked to Newcastle (NSW) for the Australian Earth Science
Convention (AESC), the biennial meeting of the Geological Society of Australia. For the first
time the convention was held in a regional rather than a capital city, with Newcastle selected
not just for its geological merits, but to engage a historically ‘coal community’ in a
sustainable energy discussion.
The proceedings opened with a very
inspiring talk by Prof Iain Stewart of
BBC fame on science
communication and the importance
of storytelling in earth sciences.
Other plenary talks addressed
Australia’s big challenges – the role
of geosciences (Dr Chris Pigram,
Geoscience Australia), Groundwater
and the geosciences – miles to go
before we sleep (Prof Craig
Simmons, Flinders University), and Developing
understanding about Australia’s past, present and
future from research into the World Heritage fossil
deposit at Riversleigh (Prof Mike Archer, University of New South Wales).
The conference was structured around the major themes of Energy, Environment, Resources,
Dynamic Planet, Infrastructure Service & Community, Living Earth Planet, with 6 concurrent
sessions focussing on more specific topics. Two symposia addressed advances in the study of
the Sydney Basin and the geology of circum-Pacific orogens. Daily poster sessions,
workshops and field excursions completed the conference. – the full program and abstracts
proceedings can be viewed at http://www.aesc2014.gsa.org.au/.
The conference also engaged the public through a series of lunchtime lectures held at the
nearby Newcastle Museum. Amongst
other topics, the lectures focused on
Newcastle coastal tales, how coal is
made, and the contribution the local
mining industry made to WWI
tunnelers of the Western Front. In
order to give people the opportunity to
hear the science rather than the ‘policy
debates’, a public forum with a Q&A
format allowed the public to put
forwards question to a panel of
experts. The Mawson lecture was
delivered by Dr Gavin Young on Early
vertebrate evolution – some
contributions from the rocks of East
Gondwana (Australia–Antarctica).
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 4
Representatives from South Australia, Western Australia and the ACT enjoying a drink at a late afternoon poster session. Photo by Angela Riganti
My contributions to the conference were varied.
They included a talk titled Towards automatic
geological map legends: GSWA’s Explanatory
Notes reporting System, presented in the
session on ‘Geological Mapping: its power and
its future’. A talk on The glass-negative
photographic collection of the Geological Survey
of Western Australia was delivered in the
session on ‘Geotourism – Enhancing Public
Appreciation of Geoheritage and Earth Sciences
History’. Both talks were well received. I also
took part in the Business meetings of the
Stratigraphy Commission (as the only WA
representative) and the Earth Sciences History
Group (to hand over the committee to
Queensland after its 6 years of residence in
WA). A planned face-to-face meeting of the
members of the Australian Geoscience Council
did not eventuate, as not enough societies were represented at the conference.
Attending the conference was beneficial in that it allowed me to get up-to-date with the
latest developments in the work of other geological surveys in the area of data processing
and delivery, as well as to touch base with recent developments from service providers,
particularly in the rapidly moving field of geological phone applications. I also engaged in the
discussion on several aspects of geotourism. Many talks highlighted the importance of the
China tourist market to WA, and particularly topical in the current climate was the debate
about employment opportunities for geoscientists in the field of geotourism. I attended the
workshop on ‘Establishing and defining stratigraphic units’, so as to keep abreast of the
latest discussions on stratigraphic matters and developments in the Australian Stratigraphic
Units Database, in order to keep the WA stratigraphic repository (the Explanatory Notes
System I work on) perfectly aligned with the national database – an important task in an age
of data proliferation and information overload!
In closing, I’d like to express my
sincere thanks to AGIA and its
committee for their generous
sponsorship, which covered the costs
of flight and transfers. The next
AESC convention will be held in
Adelaide, South Australia, in 2016.
Angela Riganti
On the way to the airport: a pile of coal waiting to be loaded in the harbour. Photo by Angela Riganti
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 5
AGIA Vice President Jenny Mikucki spreads the news about AGIA. Photo by Camille Peters
Chocolate sponsored
by AGIA. Photo by
Vanessa Johnson
2014 BRISBANE & PERTH DATA MANAGEMENT SYMPOSIUMS
AGIA’s sponsorship of the Professional Petroleum Data Management (PPDM) Association’s 2014 Perth Data Management Symposium was a great opportunity to raise awareness of AGIA, provide value to the
AGIA membership through discounted attendance, and keep participants happy by providing a plentiful supply of quality chocolate!
There were many thought-provoking presentations, particularly those by Guy Holmes, Mike Wiltshire, and Justin Strharsky & Zane Prickett. The following article was kindly provided by Jess Kozman, who kept proceedings at the Symposium rolling along at an entertaining pace.
Details of presentations can be found at the conclusion of the article.
They came, they talked Big Data and professional certification, they covered history from the
mastery of fire to the latest ‘Hackathon’, and they referenced everything from clay tablets to
petaflop computing.
During a two-week period in August, over 100 professional data managers from the Asia-
Pacific petroleum and resource industry met for a day of workshops and two days of
symposia in Brisbane and Perth, Australia.
Organized by the Professional Petroleum Data Management Association
(PPDM), the meetings brought together industry experts and
practitioners to address technical standards and how data, information
and knowledge add value to high-tech and capital intensive oil and
gas projects.
The Brisbane workshop featured a presentation on visualization
and analytics of business data from a Senior Business Intelligence
Architect at Santos, discussions on the fragility of storage
media, and an update on the status of digital well data in
Australia.
Interactive workshop sessions covered topical themes in
petroleum data management, including the mix of personality,
training, education and experience needed for successful data
management, the most important tools that data managers need, and the
future of the profession in two, five, and 10 years.
In Perth, the theme was ‘Making Today's Vision Tomorrow's Reality’ and
highlighted collective action and community building. The agenda included
technical presentations from operators, vendors, government regulators,
consultants and academia, along with a 20/20 (20 minutes of presentation and 20 minutes of
audience conversation) session on conservation of data quality, a workshop on data types
and metadata, and three sessions around professional certification, job descriptions and
testing.
Participants had the opportunity to work in groups discussing the business impact of poor
quality metadata and the relevance of continuing education credits in a new Professional
Data Management certification regime. In Perth, presentations were rated in real time on a
scale of how much “out of the box” thinking was generated, with some of the second day
sessions hitting a spot index of 2.4 x 109 GAGAs, or 2.4 GigaGAGAs (the GAGA scale was
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 6
Off the GAGA scale. Photo by Jess Kozman
developed spontaneously at the bar at the PPDM
conference; it is logarithmic, self-referential,
entirely subjective and assigns an arbitrary value
of 1.024 x 106 GAGAs to the amount of out of the
box thinking required to come up with a meat
dress. There is no upper limit but a lower bound
close to the Planck limit can be assumed for some
political discourse).
Audience feedback suggested the highlight of the
Perth conference was a presentation from
Resources Innovation through Information
Technology (RIIT) about their Open Data
Innovation Event (otherwise known as a
“Hackathon”), at which developers and coders had
54 hours to prototype solutions to industry problems
using open data from the industry and well-defined problem sets. PPDM is actively pursuing
a similar event for the petroleum industry.
Jess B. Kozman
Lead Consultant / Data Management Practitioner
Westheimer Energy Consultants Limited
Presentations can be found on the PPDM website:
Understanding and Adressing Systemic Uncertainties in Geoscientific Data Interpretation- Eun-Jung Holden, UWA's Centre for Exploration Targeting
The DNA of Data Quality - John Owens, John Owens International
Incorporating Drilling Data to PPDM at Santos - Martin Henderson, Santos
20/20: Conversations about Conservation of Data Value - Martin Storey, Well Data QA
Big Data in Oil & Gas - Jess Kozman, Mubadala Petroleum
A System for Detecting and Analysing Planar Structures in Downhole Image Logs - Daniel Wedge, UWA's Centre for Exploration Targeting
PPDM Implementation in Indonesian PSC Controlling - Adji Arinda Setyarman, SKK Migas (Indonesia)
Petroleum Industry Data Management Issues within the Australian Environment - Michael Wiltshire, Occam Technology
A Collective Approach to Effective Data Management Practices - Jess Kozman, Mubadala Petroleum
Data Management as a Profession - Ingrid Kristel, PPDM Association
The Importance of Quality Data for Accountable Resources Estimation - Scott Tideman & Mike Silva, Petrosys
Tools and Techniques for Real-time Optimisation, Scheduling and Logistics - Lyndon While, UWA
Integration and Effective Management of Heterogeneous Petroleum Digital Ecosystems Using Big Data Paradigm - Amit Rudra, Curtin University's School of Information Systems
Unearthed 2014: Lessons from Mining's First Open Data Innovation Event - Justin Strharsky & Zane Prickett, Resources Innovation through Information Technology
Search & Rescue - The Data Lost and Found Initiative - Guy Holmes, Spectrum Data
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 7
Sue Cook presents. Photo by Camille Peters
CSIRO’S DATA ACCESS PORTAL
Following the ANDS Roundtable earlier this year,
AGIA invited Information Specialist Sue Cook to give
a geoscience-oriented tour of the CSIRO’s Data
Access Portal (DAP). Below are excerpts from the
presentation – you can read the full account and view
the presentation slides via AGIA’s Dropbox.
The need for an enterprise-wide solution to handle
the full breadth of data generated by the wide range
of scientific disciplines within CSIRO was important in
the design of the DAP. The DAP project began with a
reference group of early adopters and the first version
was released in 2012. Since then there has been a
program of continuing improvements e.g. search by location, a web search interface,
machine to machine transmission of data, the ability to include supporting documents in the
metadata, and support for software publication.
As an organisation CSIRO sits between the corporate and university environments – CSIRO’s
scientists don’t have undergraduate students, but their performance is similarly measured by
their scholarly output through published papers and citations. One of the early drivers of the
DAP was the need for a secure repository for external publication of scientific outputs, and it
has become an important tool for scientists who don’t publish papers – researchers can cite
the publication of data and software deposited in the DAP as a scientific output.
The DAP is a self-serve repository. There is a team of four supporting the DAP nationally –
writing documentation, conducting training, providing support. Their role is to encourage
researchers to use the DAP and help them create metadata, and they also work closely with
the scientific IT group to provide technical support. Loading data to the DAP is not mandated
by enterprise policy since scientists working with private companies need to be able to
restrict access to their data. The geosciences are traditionally locked down and scientists
working in this field are not good targets for uploading to the DAP. Disciplines that are
accustomed to sharing data (e.g. genomics & astronomy) have been early adopters.
Q: What has worked in getting researchers enthusiastic about the DAP?
Cross-linking of data, software & publications
Discovery
Sharing with collaborators
Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for preservation of access to data after deposit. DOIs
are a URL which is a unique identifier for a publication and a permalink. DOIs are
commonly associated with journal articles, and DOIs for data collections are issued via
the ANDS service via Datacite.
Timing – DAP uploads increase when researchers are about to publish a paper and this
can be linked to pressure from funders and journal publishers to make data accessible.
IM&T would prefer to engage scientists at the start of the data cycle, and they are
working on changing the culture.
Q: Is old data findable? Much is not. There are undescribed data scattered in various
locations across CSIRO including USB drives in desk drawers. This is the issue the DAP is
trying to solve.
Q: Why keep the old data if it is not accessible? Old data is not well managed and this
includes decisions around retention and disposal. (Comment from the floor – a well-known
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 8
WA geologist has data on floppy disks in his garage. GSWA has made a strategic decision to
keep hardware which can read old physical media.)
Q: Is there a register of past projects? Maybe. The publications repository has 80 years’
worth of publications made up of hundreds of thousands of records.
At the outset of the DAP project the huge amount of legacy data that is held across CSIRO
was considered, but determined to be out of scope. People are allocated to projects in CSIRO
and if you are looking to upload data from a project which is not current scientists don’t have
the time, energy or money to consider it. There are also issues with IP and old formats, all of
which would have made the inclusion of legacy data very time consuming and difficult. As
there is no enterprise policy for mandatory deposit of data in the DAP it means that scientists
only want to upload old data to the repository if there is some motivation or need (e.g. for
use in a current project).
In the past scientists didn’t have a tool like the DAP to make their data easily accessible.
IM&T are trying to educate researchers that the safest place for their data is in the DAP – not
on a shared drive or other isolated location.
Q: Does metadata include information about data formats? It might – as a self-serve
facility what metadata is put in is entirely up to the researcher. Searchers can see the file
extension when they view the dataset on the data tab. Scientists are advised to tailor their
formats to their audience (the collaborators in their field) and this usually works.
Q: Is there concern about unusable formats?
There is a push to consider longevity. The DAP is relatively new, and now that scientists are
being encouraged to upload data, questions about longevity of data formats arise – will the
format still be usable in 20/30 years’ time? Getting the data into the DAP and people
motivated was the first priority, and now more & more people are depositing without
prompting. When this happens there is often a close correlation with journal article
publication.
Q: Is there peer review of data before it is published via the DAP? To makes
collections public there is a mandated approval workflow – this works as peer review.
Q: Is there any mandatory metadata? Yes
Title
Description
Keywords
Organisational information
Field of research
ABS Field Research Codes – researchers are familiar with these codes as they are used
for grants & funding submissions
Attribution statement – everything must be attributed – minimum license is
attribution, license CC-BY – citation is a currency
Permission setting - there are three settings for metadata & data – public, CSIRO only,
and restricted group. Some project groups are using the DAP for joint projects with
external parties and the permissions settings for these groups is locked down
Licence choice
Optional metadata
Location (not pertinent to all datasets)
Attachments – scientists are able to include READMEs which can be updated
independently of the dataset (when changes are made to files included within the
dataset a new DOI is generated)
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 9
Core Scientific Metadata (CSMD ) contributes the base metadata schema
There are a number of additional optional metadata schemas available to choose from,
appropriate to particular fields of research e.g. ANZLIC (geospatial) Darwin core
(biological taxonomy), VO resource (Astronomy), Sensor Networks, Software
Other features:
Version control – if data is updated it is published as a new version with a new DOI
The server location for data storage can be selected – originally it was only loaded to
the Canberra servers, but now other locations are available e.g. Perth. When hooking
up to data centres it makes sense to have data on servers closer to the High Power
Computing Centres
Upload <10MB via browser, >10MB via sftp
Datacentres are backed-up. (Discussion around the room about back-up locations
currently in use – other Australian cities, Norway, Asia. Some university repositories
have problems with capacity for storing data)
DAP has an Oracle back-end. The code is available to the public – with a lot of
dependencies. You could take the software & create your own DAP if you were
prepared to wade through the dependencies
Google Analytics is used to track use of the DAP – there are hundreds of thousands of
hits per month. China is a big user of datasets – this is seen as a success story as
CSIRO has Chinese collaborators
Q: Do you remediate dodgy metadata? Only if it’s outrageous! The team is not resourced
to fix things and it is also difficult to do from the back-end. When people are self-motivated
to lodge their data (their product, their ownership) the metadata quality is quite high. If they
are nominated, there is usually just the bare minimum metadata. Scientists don’t want to fill
out metadata forms – they want a magic code that will do it automatically for them – some
of this exists. Some data within the DAP is automatically uploaded from instruments (e.g.
microscopes showing Hendra Virus). There is data coming through from Geraldton for the
Square Kilometre Array (SKA) prototype now - ASKAP. The processed data from the
telescopes is being stored (the raw data is too big) – there is a project currently working on
automatic ingestion of metadata.
Q: Are there ever conflicts between collaborators about granting access to
datasets? No – as part of the deposit process researchers can give credit to other
institutions and/or acknowledge
ownership by other institutions.
Requirements for sharing data
need to be established at the
beginning of the data
management process. Scientists
need to be aware if they have the
license/permission to deposit in
the DAP.
Q: How do you get researchers
on board early enough in the
data cycle? Basic librarianship –
getting out & talking to people, sending emails, accepting invitations to presentations and
conferences. There has recently been a restructure at CSIRO - the business units are new, as
is their leadership, so now is an opportunity to promote the DAP.
Photo by Camille Peters
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 10
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 11
ARTICLES OF INTEREST
The rise and demise of North West Shelf public databases
“Sadly the halcyon days of free access to comprehensive and extensive structured well databases being
supplied by the government to promote exploration efforts and create efficiency are just a fading memory
amongst the now grey haired petroleum geologists plying their trade on the North West Shelf (NWS)”
[www.pnronline.com.au, 8 September 2014]
Society for petroleum data managers to be created – “A Memorandum of Intent (MOI) to establish
a global professional society for Petroleum Data Managers has been agreed by representatives from
Common Data Access (CDA), the Expert Community for Information Management (ECIM) and the
Professional Petroleum Data Management Association (PPDM)” [www.ppdm.org, 29 July 2014]
Australia's big challenges - the role of geoscience – “This Insights article is an
overview of the keynote presentation by Geoscience Australia's Chief Executive Officer Dr Pigram at the 2014 Australian Earth Sciences Convention” [www.ga.gov.au, 8 July 2014]
2014 Open Access Survey: examining the changing views of Taylor & Francis authors
UPCOMING EVENTS
11th Annual iPRES Conference on Digital Preservation, 6-10 October 2014, State
Library of Victoria, Melbourne
International Conference on Data Sharing and Integration for Global
Sustainability (SciDataCon), 2-5 November 2014, New Delhi India
Big Data & Data Privacy: Beyond the Hype – 1-2 December 2014 Melbourne, 4-5
December 2014 Sydney
BIG Data, Inspiring Information and Strategic Knowledge, 23-24 March 2015,
Perth WA. Presented by AIG and Geoscientists Symposia. An international
symposium that aims to examine data management and effective data conversion
to knowledge that delivers growth in the exploration and mining sectors.
WEBSITES & MAILING LISTS OF INTEREST
Exploration Connect http://www.explorationconnect.com.au/ Includes a geoscience
resources section with publication reviews, latest journal articles, upcoming
conferences and a compilation of links & information about open-file geoscience
databases, associations & societies
Australian National Data Service (ANDS) http://ands.org.au/ newsletter
AUGEN www.geoscience-education.edu.au
GeoEdLink subscribe, archives
WAIN mailing list subscribe
NTGS Update subscribe
WA DMP eNews subscribe
PNRonline www.pnronline.com.au PNRonline is produced by Australian
independent resource industry publisher, Resolutions Publishing & Media
September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 12
AGIA NATIONAL COMMITTEE 2013-14
PRESIDENT
ANGELA RIGANTI Content Manager GSWA, Department of Mines and Petroleum PH: (08) 9222 3063
FAX: (08) 9222 3633 Email: angela.riganti@dmp.wa.gov.au
LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/angela-riganti/50/90/744
VICE-PRESIDENT
JENNY MIKUCKI Manager, Upstream Technical Computing Chevron Australia Pty Ltd PH: (08) 9485 5176
FAX: (08) 9216 4353 Email: jenny.mikucki@chevron.com
LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/jenny-mikucki/4b/31b/191
SECRETARY
RAE DAVIE
Manager Information Management Iluka Resources Email: Rae.Davie@iluka.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/rae-davie/44/33/a02
TREASURER
SANDY HAYWARD
Geological Consultant PH: 0417 095227 Email: Sandra_hayward@optusnet.com.au LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/sandy-hayward/4b/240/b75
MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY
KERRY SMITH Email: membership@agia.org.au LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/kerry-
smith/52/730/425
NEWSLETTER EDITOR & SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR
VANESSA JOHNSON IM Analyst, Technical Library Shell Development (Australia) Pty Ltd
PH: (08) 9338 6000 Email: vanessaj85@gmail.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/vanessa-johnson/17/930/7b5
COMMITTEE MEMBER
LIZ AMANN BHP Billiton Nickel West PH: (08) 6274 1339 FAX: (08) 6274 1339
Email: elizabeth.amann@bhpbilliton.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/amann-elizabeth/28/895/602
COMMITTEE MEMBER
CAMILLE PETERS Information Resources Specialist Apache Energy Ltd PH: (08) 6218 7253
FAX: (08) 6218 7200 Email: camille.peters@apachecorp.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/camille-peters/1b/b13/993
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