CEOS NEWSLETTER NO.6

page 6

CONTENTS
Report from the 9th CEPS Plenary in Canada
Australian Research Agency Chairs CEOS
CEOS Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS)
CEOS and Ocean Color
What is the international Group of Funding Agencies for Global Change Research (IGFA)
The Centre for Earth Observation (CEO) Technical Activities in the CEOS---This page
Framework
Framework/CEOS Holds First Open ForumsNews Highlights/ Meeting Calendar
Summary of User Requirement Workshop
1993 CEOS Meeting Calender

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The Centre for Earth Observation(CEO) Technical Activities in the CEOS Framework

Peter Churchill CEO Project Manager,
Gunter Schreier CEO Concept Coordinator,
European Commission-Joint Research Centre Ispra, Italy

Within the framework of the harmonization of Earth observation activities in Europe and to take to increase the utilization of Earth observation data and information, the European Commission was asked to initiate a programme, called the Centre for Earth Observation(CEO).

After the initial feasibility phase, CEO has finished its Pathfinder Phase in 1995 which resulted in a CEO Concept.this Concept features four major components;
･Application Support
･User Support
･Enabling Services
･Monitoring and Coordination Services
The information technology related part of the CEO concept is its Enabling Services. The Enabling services will initiate actions and measures and will provide software tools and systems to increase the exchange and understanding of meta-data, information and knowledge about Earth observation. The systems planned for these shall:
･be based on existing standards
･establish contacts to international a data and information systems
･establish and promote distributed systems
CEO has initiated within its Pathfinder phase a series of "Proof-of Concept" activities.Some of these activities are concerned with communication technologies in its widest sense. The aim of these "Proof-of-Concept"activities is to test potential technological concepts for the CEO "Enabling Services";i.e.the distributed CEO information system.
The basic outline of the Enabling Services is depicted in the figure below:


The Enabling Services will consist of:
Catalogue interoperability

･Gateway Services
This element will translate catalogue protocols and "languages" between different catalogue services. This element shall also establish compatibility with other international Earth observation data and information systems, if necessary.
･Common Catalogue Interoperability Protocol(CIP)
This element will establish a common protocol, where data and information catalogues and inventories of different Earth observation data providers could be made interoperable with each other;i.e. users can search for data, independently of the inventory in which the data resides.
Search Services
This element will enable users to search the data, information and services they need, by means of help, navigation and browse facilities. The Search Services are tar tools to connect to data and information repositories. They do not contain information themselves.
Advertising and Announcement Services
This element consists of information repositories of meta-data, service information and user reactions. They contain, meta-information about where to find data, what the data is about, general information and about Earth observation and fora for interaction and communication between users. The Advertising and Announcement Services can be searched via the Search Services.
Dictionary Services
This element contains a repository of terms, models, parameters and thesauri, which will be used in the dynamic configuration of the common protocol, for the understanding of search parameters and their possible translation between languages.

To prove the concept of these services, the following contracts have placed within the CEO Pathfinder Phase with European institutions and industry:
1. Preparation of services for the EWSE

CEO is operating a prototype WWW server which mimics many of the potential concepts and promotes the ideas of advertising. The server is called European Wide Service Exchange and is the tested for further developments of the Enabling Services. See http://ewse.ceo.org/ and register!
2. Population of the CEOS International Directory Network (IDN) with descriptions of European datasets
A study was released which will collect more data information (DIF's) for the CEOS International Directory Network (IDN) and investigates of the suitability of the IDN approach for the future CEO Advertising Services. This approach for the future CEO Advertising Services. This study also results in a DIF-entry tool (DIFENT). Further on, any of the current and planned CEO application contracts is supposed to describe all information and data they generate into CEOS DIF's.
3.Implementation and feasibility test of an "Information Subscription Service"
The feasibility of automatic information subscription is tested here. One basis for this is the CEOS CINTEX network of interoperable catalogues.
to be continued page 7

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