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Uncertainty and the OGC: an Aston University take. Dan Cornford Computer Science, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom. Some background. I am a bit of everything and nothing: statistician, mathematician, meteorologist, computer scientist, even geographer
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Uncertainty and the OGC:an Aston University take Dan Cornford Computer Science, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Some background • I am a bit of everything and nothing: • statistician, mathematician, meteorologist, computer scientist, even geographer • and I even know a bit about GIS • Team includes Lucy Bastin (GIS / ecology), Matt Williams, Richard Jones (computer science) • Our main interest is in geospatial models and associated data, and in particular uncertainty • my main research is in managing uncertainty in complex models, typically of spatially distributed environmental systems
Route into the OGC • We started working on ‘interoperability’ in an EU funded project called INTAMAP • developing an ‘interoperable’ interpolation system • during this we created UncertML to represent uncertainties on inputs and outputs • the service was implemented as a WPS and used GML and SWE standards • This led on to UncertWeb, which I coordinate
The UncertWeb concept • The “model web” ... • When chaining services of limited or unknown quality, uncertainty must be accounted for if rational decisions are to be made “UncertWeb develops mechanisms, standards, tools and test-beds for accountable uncertainty propagation in web service chains.”
UncertWeb and UncertML • We need a model for uncertainty within UncertWeb • UncertML provides a complete probabilistic model for uncertainty • provide an API for using UncertML • UncertML ideally standardised (OGC?, W3C?, IETF?) • UncertML 2.0 is a major revision to the intial proposal: • a very simple conceptual model (distributions, statistics, samples) • controlled vocabulary (still trying to realise how to deploy this) • encoding (XML and JSON, no use of other OGC standards!) • Emphasis on usability and cross domain aspects – keep it simple • e.g. jStat library for visualising UncertML • hard typed to allow easy interoperability
Uncertainty Enabled Services • Current OWS do not explicitly support uncertainty • some recognition in metadata: quality • UncertWeb will develop profiles of WPS, SOS, CSW and WCS and produce implementations of these that can work with uncertain inputs and outputs • will restrict what can be communicated to make it easier to interoperate within uncertainty enabled services • We think uncertainty is an incredibly important issue in terms of true ‘information interoperability’, particularly in workflows
And what about the OGC? • Lots of good things • contacts, open standards • very well considered conceptual models (O&M, GML) • useful service interfaces (WMS, WFS, SOS, WCS) • … but … • too little attention to real deployment (e.g. O&M, GML) – where are the profiles / application schema? • focus on services, not clients, so support often limited • what to do about cross domain concerns? • bit slow with SOAP/WSDL and RESTful web service world, JSON? ...
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° [248488 and 265178]. The future • Focus remains on uncertainty • further UncertML developments, API, tools, real usage • developing full SOAP/WSDL support for ‘uWPS’ • trying to find the right home for UncertML … • integration of UncertML with GEOSS in GeoViQua, in context of data quality