Andy Turner's AHRC funded GIS e-Science Workshop Belfast 2006-07-03 to 2006-07-04 Page @ School of Geography, University of Leeds

Introduction
- I attended this meeting as representative of the NIEeS Grid GIS Working Group, the University of Leeds and NCeSS
- Chris Higgins and James Reed from EDINA organised my invitation with the workshop coordinator Paul Ell
- Travel and accomodation expenses are being funded by AHRC via a grant controlled by Paul
- The first draft of this page contains the notes I made during the meeting
- Subsequently this page will link to further information about collaborations that arise partly as a consequence of this
Notes
- 2006-07-03
  - Welcome and Introductions
    - Workshop information is not online and we did not get sent a list of attendees by the organiser as promissed:(
    - Network not available :(
    - This is one in this series of AHRC workshops :)
      - Each workshop has addressed a different aspect of Arts and Humanities
      - This one is focussing on historical GIS type applications and the development of data infrastructure
      - Geared for an AHRC e-Science Call for Proposals in the Autumn
    - Notes are being made in each session and will be disseminated
    - People
      - David Bodenhamer (Indiana, ECAI Profile Page)
      - Ricky (Information Services, Queens University Belfast)
      - Roy Bradshore (University of Nottingham)
      - Bob Abrahart (University of Nottingham)
      - John McDonough (Digital Archivist, UCD)
      - Norma (Librarian, Queens University Belfast)
      - Deardry (Librarian, Queens University Belfast)
      - Andy Turner
      - Andreas (Meinz)
      - Matthew Woollard (AHDS)
      - Humphrey Southall (University of Portsmouth)
      - Gavin Mitchell (Information Services, Queens University Belfast)
      - Ian Johnson (University of Sydney)
      - Paul Cullen (Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham)
      - Michael Buckland (SIMS Berkeley)
      - Ian Gregory
      - Stuart Dunn
      - Paul Ell (Queens University Belfast)
      - Elles Willemse (DANS)
    - I introduced myself as a:
      - computational geography researcher of the University of Leeds since 1997
      - working on the Modelling and Simulation for e-Social Science (MoSeS) node of NCeSS
      - representative with Bob Abrahart of the NIEeS Grid GIS Working Group to who we are to report back
  - eScience Methods in Archeology
    - Stuart Dunn
    - http://www.methodsnetwork.ac.uk/links/case.html
    - Silchester Hampshire Virtual Research Environment
      - This seems like a similar thing that the Archaeologists in the Leeds meeting were hoping to get in the vale of Pickering
  - Discussion
    - I tried to make the following points:
      - Important to develop on and with NeSC and NCeSS
      - Recap on some common problems:
        
        Security
        
        The amount of data that is being generated far outstrips our ability to handle it. We have to get smarter
        
        Collaboration, openness and adoption of standards are key but how do we promote this?
        
        This community is experiencing a similar problem (to what became the e-Social Science community) with the term e-Science
        
        Think of eScience as eResearch
    - Access Grid allows new forms of working
      - Potentially more can be done in AG style meetings than can be done face to face
        
        (Face to face does not scale well!)
    - Errors and abstraction
    - Road map needs to consider sustainability
      - This is an interesting point - what is this group trying to be?
        
        Presumably there is a core or hub and evolution will be similar to NCeSS
        
        Are the Arts and umanities really only just getting switched on to eScience and Grid?
        
        It seems like they are trying to develop a proposal for a set of pilot demonstrators and a coordinating hub...
    - Humphrey made a good point:
      - Compute Grid and Data Grid are related by meta-data in that
      - Until the Arts and Humanities generate sufficient metadata, the computational grid might not really takes off...
      - (No mention of Portal technology yet, but it will be key!)
    - Important and good discussion
  - Defining GIS e-Science (GIS e-Science: developing a roadmap)
    - Paul Ell
    - Definition of grid computing delivered skeptically
    - The Data Grid in Arts and Humanities is as much about opening up data resources, producing standard metadata and using standard data formats as it is about handling large data volumes
    - The view was expressed that eScience and Grid are just words to put in funding applications to secure resources!
    - Interesting that GIS is being proposed as an integrating paradigm
    - Aims of the workshop:
      - To establish current activity in GIS e-Science
      - To examine barriers to development
      - To review the potential
      - To develop a roadmap and implementation programme
  - Perhaps the aims of the workshop are too grand? The OGC are handling much of the technical specifications work...
  - Similarities with the NCESS GIS and Grid Computing Agenda Setting Workshop
  - Key to eScience are virtual organisations and collaboration
  - Arts and Humanities requires Vernacular Fuzzy GIS
  - Discussion
    - Preservation of data is key to AHDS
      - Sherpa DP
        
        (Document preservation)... What is this?
  - Tea Break
    - Talked to Paul from Nottingham
  - TimeMap: Examples of GIS
    - Ian Johnson
    - CDDA
    - MacAtlas Online
    - Australia
    - Dictionary of Sydney
    - PARADISEC
    - David Rumsey Map Collection
    - Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI)
    - Open Archive Initiative (OAI)
      - Based on Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
      - For resource discovery
      - This seems pretty useful
    - Historical Atlas of South Asia
    - Syndney humanities and social sciences eResearch institute (SHSSERI)
  - Vision of Britain: Data Models
    - Humphrey Southall
    - Historical GIS very different to Archaeology
    - The need was to create a data base with individual records each of which may or may not have had details of when and where
    - Each record has a set of explicit relationships to other data
    - Data Documentation System
      - Based on the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)
    - Nice one Humphrey :)
  - Data Access and Integration is key
  - Geography to be used as an integrating theme for Arts and Humanities eScience (AHES)?
  - Discussion
    - I challenged the view that GIS was just software
      - Geographic Information Systems are comprised of
        
        People
        
        Data
        
        Software/Hardware
    - Geological Placenames are an example of time periods in places
    - Made a comment that at the OGC they are developing the next generation standards spe
    - This group needs to look at the Web Catalog Service (WCS) specification from OGC
    - Is AHRC looking to develop something like NCeSS but for Arts and Humanities rather than Social Science?
    - If so lessons can be learned from the development of NCeSS
    - I encouraged a look at the NCeSS website and general collaboration with various projects
    - If an Arts and Humanities eResearch Organisation (AHERO) is to evolve it needs to
      - Foster collaboration and develop a collaborative of arts and humanities researchers and computer science researchers
      - Who will be the first group to proudly state "we are Arts and Humanities eResearchers"?
    - Is the focus on placenames?
    - What do the fine artists/musicians think?
    - Who is not here?
    - Representatives from some communities but not a very diverse set to cover the broad range of subjects covered in Arts and Humanities.
    - What we are trying to create is a ?
    - Perhaps the aims of the workshop are not clear...
  - Reception
    - Sponsored by ISS Queen's University Belfast :) Thank you!
    - Talked to Paul Cullen about developing a geographic placenames database
      - Thought about mapping clustering of places that don't sound like how they are written
        
        This would be a great use of GAM/K or variants
        
        What would the pattern look like?
        
        We thought of plenty of other ways to extend this phonetic research...
        
        How about training neural networks how to pronounce a placename from a phonetic map...
        
        Comparison between this predictor and the actual would be interesting too
        
        There is a standard for phonetics and it's not as complicated as music!
        
        There is a database of UK placenames with lists of phonetic descriptions
    - Elles Willemse (Data Archiving and Networked Services)
      - Unfortunately Elles flight was delayed and we missed her presentation
      - Strong suggestion that eContent Plus want to fund a historical GIS type project and something that links with INSPIRE
      - How about an Open Spatial Data Infrastructure for placenames in Europe based on the latest OGC WCS specification?
      - I mentioned that Mark Baker and Chris Higgins and others are interested... Perhaps there will be two proposals...
- 2006-07-03
  - Discussion
    - Key Questions from yesterday tabled
    - What are the problems in generating GIS eScience?
    - A system for resource discovery and data integration in the Arts and Humanities would be very useful
    - GeoRSS
    - Places in Space and Time
    - Geographical Information is Spatial Temporal and Attribute Information
    - At the most abstract level all things can be considered as objects located at georeferenced points with spatial and temporal markers a latitude and longitude and a date
    - The spatial and temporal detail can be relative and complex
    - How could we track the journeys of artist paining landscapes?
    - What about the interactions between the artists
    - What about GeoRSS and the non-standard tagging...
    - Registers and registries are required
      - These should allow data holders to deposit information about their data
      - The should also spider to augment and improve searchabity and retrievability
      - Use WSDL
    - Geo-Crosswalk and other things at EDINA being georeferenced with Z3950... Check these out...
    - I pushed the REDReSS Website as a useful resource for those in the Arts and Humanities who know nothing about eScience, but want to learn
    - Details of the provenence are key
      - AHDS keep a full provenence of what they do, but often the materials coming in
    - Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)
      - Does this include EPNS fieldnames etc?
    - AHDS holdings quite often have associated placenames
    - There is a clash of terminology
      - A catalog is more of a abstract form of metadata to an archivist
      - It is something more like a gazateer for me as a geographer
  - Geo-temporal Indexing: Events, lives and geographical features
    - Michael Buckland
    - http://www.ecai.org/
    - Historical Event Markup Language (HEML)
    - Alexandria Digital Library
    - Automatic Tagging up Wikipedia
    - Digital DNB (Biographies)
    - Lois lancaster studying religions in tibet
    - http://www.hm.tyg.jp/%7Eacmuller/ebti/
  - GML or HEML What are the commonalities?
  - Ontology of Feature Types is required to map across domains
  - Is it straightforward to mutiply inherit from different XML derivatives?
  - Does it make sense to have XML in which different items are based on different XML derivatives?
    - e.g. Can the geographical part be done with GML and the Historical Event part done with HEML?
  - English Placenames
    - Paul
    - http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/ins
    - Missing any XY type geographical data
    - Fantastic Work Paul :)
    - Lots of gazateers being linked together and geotagged
    - The study of placenames is the study of everything
  - GeoCrossWalk and Go-Geo! EDINA projects
    - Mathew
    - Go-Geo!
      - About Go-Geo!
    - GeoCrossWalk
  - Discussion
    - Is GIS software appropriate for Arts and Humanities eScience?
      - I think it is if GIS is all about enabling data access, integration and analysis
      - The key is metadata including appropriate georeference
  - Lunch
  - Road Map
    - David
    - Outlined
      - Vision
      - Remit of the project
      - user requirements
      - System requirements
  - Discussion based on going through David's Road Map slides
    - Vision
    - Remit of the project
      - "analysis" should be "visualisation"?
    - User requirements
      - This is like Google...
      - Need for scholarly screening...
    - System requirements
      - Metadata needs to incorporate the source data
        
        Adoption of Open Standards (including OGC)
        
        Geographic Map Based Visualisation
        
        GeoCrosswalk/Go-Geo! does much of what is outlined
        
        Does not do the non-geo bit very well...
        
        Does not do the temporal searching bit...
        
        Is it required to accept expert-user comment
  - I gave David my OGC OWS3 bumf
  - Goodbyes and reflection
    - This has been a good workshop :)
    - Thanks everyone :)
  - The HUMBUL Humanities Hub aims to be UK higher and further education's first choice for accessing online humanities resources
  - GBHGIS documentation
  - Focus on placenames has a nice international extension as other natural languages
    - Google et al are interested in the contemporary
    - In looking at history and archaeology etc we are embracing the more academic
    - Another major exension involves linking in other arts and media using geographical reference
  - Actions
    - Andy
      - Email Paul Ell et al URL to my notes once online and ask for missing documents
      - Update NIEeS Grid GIS Working Group Wiki URL to my notes
      - Others actions
        
        Humphrey to email me a copy of the 2004 GISRUK Paper which outlines the Vision of Britain Portal Architecture
        
        Information will be put online
    - Post meeting developments
      - I will mark these up in my blog with tags
      - Links
        
        Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online
        
        Location Types Registry
        
        Gazetteer of Australia 2005 Release
        
        Gazetteer for Scotland
      - Web Content development to be linked here

Andy Turner's AHRC funded GIS e-Science Workshop Belfast 2006-07-03 to 2006-07-04 Page

Introduction

Notes