The purpose of this page is to describe the motivations and requirements for ANZGeoDCAT and this page is being written before ANZGeoDCAT is created to ensure it best caters for a wide range of agreed to requirements.

Note
 If viewing this within the ANZGeoDCAT code repository, see its rendered form at https://kurrawong.github.io/anzgeodcat. If viewing the rendered form, the code repository containing this and all other profile resources is at https://github.com/Kurrawong/anzgeodcat

Abstract

ANZGeoDCAT will be a profile of Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) and also of GeoDCAT which is, itself a profile of DCAT.

The Profile’s formal definition is at:

1. Motivations

There are several main motivations for the creation of this Profile:

  1. to provide a Knowledge Graph / Semantic Web metadata standard for several new, Australian & New Zealand, geospatial agencies' spatial data catalogues

    1. several agencies are implementing new CKAN instances and CKAN can already export some DCAT metadata. Let’s improve that…​

  2. to ensure geospatial metadata works well with currently emerging non-spatial KG metadata standards

    1. in particular the already formulated Indigenous Data Network Catalogue Profile

    2. perhaps the DCAT-like Office of the National Data Commissioner (ONDC) Core Metadata Attributes

  3. to ensure Semantic Web geospatial metadata is as interoperable as possible with established non-Semantic Web geospatial metadata standards

    1. in particular the GA profile of ISO19115-1

  4. to show Best Practice metadata profile creation

    1. the Australian geospatial community has a long history with metadata standards and brings considerable experience to profile creation, so we think this represents Best Practice profile creation in Australia & New Zealand

    2. the W3C’s Profiles Vocabulary is the standard’s body’s best effort to provide a standardised profile description model, so ANZGeoDCAT will use that for its definition

  5. to present Australian & New Zealand geospatial metadata profile requirements for international profile efforts

    1. the Open Geospatial Consortium is starting a standardisation initiative around Knowledge Graph geospatial metadata with their formalisation of GeoDCAT and we want to be part of that with our requirements already formulated

2. Requirements

Requirements for ANZGeoDCAT as a whole - not the individual requirements for metadata elements as will eventually be specified by the profile - are being gathered in this repository as Issues and progress is tracked via and Project Issue Tracker. Initial Issues, as of December 2022, are also listed in the table below.

ID Name Description Rational Proponent

R1

Formal Profile

ANZGeoDCAT will be presented as a formally defined Semantic Web profile of DCAT and other standards, formulated according to the W3C’s [Profiles Vocabulary](https://www.w3.org/TR/dx-prof/).

ANZGeoDCAT will both utilise the though behind formal profile definition and showcase it for other potential profiles.

ICSM, GA

R2

Two-way mapping to the ICSM ISO 19115-1 Metadata Profile

ANZGeoDCAT data will need to be able to converted to ICSM ISO 19115-1 Metadata Profile data, which is non-Semantic Web XML data, and vice-versa

ANZGeoDCAT is aiming to be a Semantic Web equivalent to ICSM ISO 19115-1 Metadata, so a demonstrable (executable) both-ways mapping must be maintained.

ICSM, GA, GSSA

R3

Interoperability with the Indigenous Data Network’s Catlogue Profile

ANZGeoDCAT must be able to work with the IDN CP so that indigenous spatial data can be made conformant to both

Indigeneity and spatiality are different, specialised but potentially overlapping aspects of data and there are dataset known to have both dimensions

Indigenous Data Network

R4

Conformance with OGC GeoDCAT

Eventual alignment with the results of the OGC's current GeoDCAT-AP standardisation effort

ANZGeoDCAT must be conformance with similar international standards, when they are established

ICSM, GA

R5

Mapping to schema.org

Mapping of metadata elements to the general-purpose Knolwedge Graph model schema.org

Search Engine optimisation

KurrawongAI

R6

Mapping to FAIR scores

Calculation of FAIR Scores from ANZGeoDCAT metadata must be possible

To allow for the use of the widely-known FAIR score as a metric for ANZGeoDCAT datasets

Indigenous Data Network, GSSA, GSWA

R7

Linking to Semantic Web spatial data

ANZGeoDCAT metadata, if created for a Dataset that has content in Semantic Web form, must be able to indicate this data and describe it in summary

Australia already has published spatial datasets using DCAT that have their content published in Semantic Web form, e.g. the FSDF’s Linked Data form of the ASGS, and they should be handled well by this profile

GA

3. Expected Final Form

The Profile will be a formal (model-defined) profile of DCAT using profile modelling semantics taken from the W3C’s Profiles Vocabulary.

The Profile will likely define constraints on the use of DCAT, mappings from DCAT to other models, suggestions/requirements for the use of models related to DCAT, like PROV for provenance, and interfaces with other profiles, such as the Indigenous Data Network’s Catalogue Profile.

The Profile will be presented in normative, human-readable form (a specification), machine-readable model form (a model/schema) as well as mappings, supporting vocabularies and so on. Tooling for data validation against the Profile and for metric calculation from Profile data (e.g. FAIR scores) will also be provided.

4. Get Involved

Anyone can get involved with the development of ANZGeoDCAT and we encourage anyone with an interest in this space to participate. Please just contact those listed below to let us know.

Who is already involved

Organisation Org Description Role Contact

Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying & Mapping

Peak Australian & New Zealand spatial data inter-agency organisation

Owner of the Profile & lead coordinating body

Irina Bastrakova

Geoscience Australia

Peak Australian spatial agency

Lead authority and Profile expert

Margie Smith

Geological Survey of South Australia

South Australia’s geological agency

CKAN catalogue implementer - Profile user

Christie Gerrard

Geological Survey of Queensland

Queensland’s geological agency

CKAN catalogue implementer - Profile user

Mark Gordon

Indigenous Data Network

Australian multi-agency collaboration

Alignment with the IDN Catalogue Profile

Sandra Silcot

KurrawongAI

Contract data science / IT company

Coordination and technical establishment

Nicholas Car

Governance

This Profile is being established for the organisations already involved with coordination and technical work resourced by them.

Eventual governance and ownership of this Profile will be determined by the participating organisation but will likely be allocated to perhaps one of the following:

  • an Australia & New Zealand spatial consortium - e.g. ANZLIC / ICSM

  • a lead agency - e.g. Geoscience Australia

  • an informal group of agencies - those participating

Task tracking for this project is done through the gitHub issue tracker associated with this repository. See the "Project" layour of tasks:

Licencing & Rights

Licensing for all of this Profile’s content will be CC-BY 4.0, as per Australian government open data standard licensing.

Rights for all of this Profile’s content will be:

© Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying & Mapping (ICSM), 2022

Timeline

A first version of ANZGeoDCAT is hoped to be presented in December, 2022. An interoperability experiment using it and conversions to and from it to other standards it expected to be conducted Jan '22 - Apr '23. Apr '23+ will see continued operations and development.