COBWEB Project

Citizens Observatories Side Event,GEO-X Plenary, Geneva, Switzerland.

15th Jan, 2014

Chris HigginsProject Coordinator

chris.higgins@ed.ac.uk

http://cobwebproject.eu/

Citizen Observatory Web

• 4 year research project

• Crowdsourced environmental data to aid decision making

• Introduce quality measures and reduce uncertainty

• Combine crowdsourced data with existing sources of data

Project Partners

Essential context – WNBR

• UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programmes World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR)– Sites of excellence to foster harmonious integration

of people and nature for sustainable development through participation, knowledge sharing, poverty reduction and human well-being improvements, cultural values and society's ability to cope with change, thus contributing to the Millennium Development Goals

• 610 reserves in 117 countries

COBWEB Biosphere Reserves

• Germany: Wadden See and Hallig Islands• Greece: Mount Olympus & Gorge of Samaria• Left open possibility of expansion to further BRs

later in project

UK (Wales): Biosffer Dyfi– Development work

concentrated here

What are we going to build?

A number of demonstrator mobile phone applications

– Exactly what, deliberately left open and subject to discussion with stakeholders

3 pilot case study areas:1. Validating earth

observation products

2. Biological monitoring

3. Flooding

Requirements driving architecture

Emerging Architecture

Making data available through GEOSS

• Data will be available via OGC Web Services, eg, WFS, WMS, SOS

• Discoverable via CSW• Will continue working within the context of the

Architecture Implementation Pilots (AIP)– AIP-6: COBWEB contribution concentrated on

authentication and Single Sign On– Some possibilities for future AIP collaboration:

• Address additional access control questions identified by GEO community

• Perhaps work within context of specific SBA’s

Technology that can be used by other observatories

• “Data collected should be made available through the GEOSS without any restrictions”

• But, we must address “questions of privacy…”

• In AIP-6 we piloted the use of access management federations

WP5: Privacy assurance, access management

• COBWEB about environmental, not personal data

• Some kinds of protected data that may be encountered during the project:– Personal information, eg, name, email address– Location protected species– Reference data from European National Mapping

and Cadastral Agencies– Conflated data

Why put effort into federated access management?

• Frequently, SDI content and service providers need to know who is accessing their valuable resource

• The ability for a group of organisations with common objectives, ie, a federation, to securely exchange high value information is a powerful SDI enabler

• Identified as a priority in GEOSS – Architecture Implementation Pilot 5– GEO Infrastructure Implementation Board

Service Provider (SP) Identity Provider (IdP)Discovery Service (DS)

“GEOSS user” Single-Sign-On

Trust Gateway (TG) to OpenID

Google OpenIdGoogle OpenId

COBWEB/GEOSS AIP-6 Federation

NASA AmesNASA Ames

Secure DimensionsSecure Dimensions

CUAHSI*CUAHSI*CatapultCatapult

University of EdinburghUniversity of EdinburghKst. GDI.DEKst. GDI.DE

*: Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science

EarthServer (FP7) projectEarthServer (FP7) project

MEEOMEEO

Where we are in the project…

• Month 15 of 48

• November 2013: Milestone 2:– End of design and initial stakeholder

engagement phase. Start implementing platform

• November 2014: Milestone 3:– First Welsh demonstrator completed and

ready for testing in the field

chris.higgins@ed.ac.uk

From the European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European eGovernment Services(http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Docb0db.pdf?id=31597)

Dimensions of Interoperability