Can I Have One NSDI with Some Confusion on the Side Please?

In this age of publish first, then filter, and instant gratification, it is easy to loose some of the real questions out of sight. The merging of Data.gov and Geodata.gov (yes, that is the plan) raises some questions that have gotten lost in the excitement from the last week.

Here are a couple observations on the subject that could be made by anyone who has been following the two sites over the past year(s):

  1. Geodata.gov harvests most of its content from over 300 other catalogs (visit the Geodata.gov Statistics tab and view the information on Partner Collections). Data.gov does not have this capability. These catalogs represent federal, state, and local government, academia, NGO, and commercial providers of geospatial resources (visit the same tab on Geodata.gov and view the information on Publisher Affiliations). Data.gov on the other hand focuses on content from the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Where would the remaining content of Geodata.gov go? http://www.otherdata.gov?
  2. Geodata.gov focuses on FGDC+ISO metadata with the industry looking at migrating to the new North American Profile of ISO 191xx metadata. Data.gov has developed its own metadata specification and vocabulary that is quite different from this. Just look at a details page on Data.gov to confirm this. What is the position on this subject of FGDC and other federal agencies who have created standards-based metadata for many years?
  3. Geodata.gov has focused on the GIS analysts and first responders (check the original Statement of Work, I’m sure it’s online somewhere). Data.gov seems to focus on a different audience (although honestly it’s not entirely clear to me if that audience consists of developers or the general public. It’s a bit of both).
  4. Geodata.gov has supported a number of user communities in two ways:
    • by allowing them to create community pages with resources beyond structured metadata that are of interest to those communities. The content in these pages is managed by the communities themselves. How should Data.gov support these communities of interest?
    • by supporting community-oriented collections that group metadata from multiple source catalogs. Examples are RAMONA (the states’ GIS inventory), the Oceans and Coast Working Group (interested in all content in the US coastal zone), and Data.gov (actually, this is also configured as a collection in geodata.gov). These collections are exposed on the Geodata.gov Search tab and in the CS-W and REST interfaces to the catalog.Where would these collections end up after a merger of Geodata.gov and Data.gov?
    • Geodata.gov has created a Marketplace where those who are looking for data and those who have plans to acquire data can discovery each other and collaborate. A dating service of a different kind. While not specifically targeted at the masses, isn’t one of the key principles of NSDI to collaborate to reduce redundant investments?
  5. Geodata.gov has created a search widget that has been implemented by several agencies such as the State of Delaware that enables searching geodata.gov directly from the website and thus getting access to state and other geospatial resources covering the area of the state. This widget can mean significant cost savings for agencies as they don’t have to create their own clearinghouses. Will Data.gov provide such a role as well?
  6. Through FGDC CAP grants several tools were built that work against the Geodata.gov REST or CSW interfaces. I mentioned some of these capabilities and the links to these tools in my recent blog post. Merging Geodata.gov and data.gov would ideally not break these investments.

It would be nice to see the passion that was expressed over the last week be repeated, but now discussing some of these and other questions that affect the geospatial community at large.

Accessing the Data.gov catalog through an open interface

In its first year, Data.gov has grown from 47 datasets to over 270,000 datasets. These datasets aren’t actually hosted at Data.gov. The government agencies making these datasets available, host the files (or web services), and share them with the community through data.gov. But how did these datasets become discoverable at Data.gov?

Actually, the datasets are registered with Geodata.gov, a national catalog of geospatial resources that has been around for some 7 years and that “serves as a public gateway for improving access to geospatial information and data under the Geospatial One-Stop E-Government initiative”.

Geodata.gov provides access to almost 400,000 geospatial resources from over 300 partner collections from federal, state, and local government, as well as academia and commercial providers. Rather than having to sift through as many web sites, users can go to Geodata.gov and perform searches there. Creators of the geospatial resources can register this content with Geodata.gov if they choose to do so.

Global Warming Map – Review pt II


continued from Part I last week…

Layer Control: The plugin version has no layer control available to control the individual impact layers (you can turn them on and off as a group) so you can’t get around the multiple areas problem I outline above. You can control impact layers in the GEarth file but it’s confusing:
there are 6 levels of folders and way too many elements in this folder view. It could be a lot simpler which would improve usability.
Non-Spatial Data and Closing Balloons: In the above screenshot you can see a folder titled ‘background information’ is provided. It’s non-spatial data so it shouldn’t be in GEarth at all – better to link to a set of web pages elsewhere showing the same information and avoid cluttering up the GEarth layers panel.
While I’m talking about ‘Background info’ its sub-folders (even though they don’t have a folder icon, that’s what they are) have pop up balloons with a black background so you can’t see where to click the cross to close the balloon.
Poor Balloon Design: There are a number of issues with the pop up balloons;
Information Density: IMHO balloons are there to hold extra information (including images or videos) that cannot be presented easily as a traditional map symbol/key system. If you read the actual text in the forest fire example below the information you are actually getting is: ‘high forest fire danger projected to affect every populated continent’. Unnecessarily it then tells you where the areas are that are affected – this is a map, that’s what the polygons are communicating, no need to say it again in text. So there’s little new information in the balloon, it’s interesting to compare with the amount of data you get in placemark balloons in the Dafur project
Large Fonts: The top design is from the Impacts section in the GEarth plugin, the font is way too large decreasing the total amount of text that can be put in the balloon. Its less of an issue in the GEarth file with the text more reasonably proportioned, I suspected someone re-used the KML in the main file in the plugin without customising it to this different presentation. Kirsty confirms that this was so and says that she asked for the large font size to ‘give more prominence to the headline messages we were communicating with this map’. My answer is that with smaller fonts you can add extra detail towards the bottom of a balloon without forcing the user to click a link, users will close a balloon happily when they’ve read enough information. Again, the Dafur project is a good example.
Lack of Design Coherence: The two balloons from two different sections also don’t marry visually, as can be seen above. This isn’t good graphical design, you should have a consistent look across a project (e.g. across all pages of bbc.co.uk). Kirsty explains that this is because the data comes from two different organisations (the Foreign Office and the Met Office) who do very different things (act on science, research science respectively). Kirsty says this difference needs to be ‘absolutely clear[in the mind of the user]’. I can understand that need but if the difference is so important, why isn’t it explained anywhere and why do the different data sets share a map in the first place?

Placemarks in Placemarks: In Google Earth opening ‘FCO Climate Change’ folder and then clicking the Spanish placemark you get an Inception-esque Google map within a GEarth map as captured in the screenshot below. Bizarrely you can open placemarks within a placemark leading to visual confusion.
Temperature Map Key: The temperature map overlay just about works in the original map as there is a key showing what the colors mean. However, in the GEarth file the key has become too small to read (its not available in the plugin). Most users will guess the heat colours corresponding to hot and cool temperatures but a readable key adds value.
Temperature Map Contours: The temperature map has heat contours on it out in the sea. These aren’t labelled and I would predict that most users won’t know what they are so it ends up just cluttering up the view.
Down-under Problem: I mentioned the fact you can’t compare Australia and the UK at the same time in a virtual globe in the skim review.
Talking Heads: The project links to video clips of experts talking about their specialisms within the topic area, they’re presented as talking head with no visual aids. Compare the style with a trailer from Wonders of the Solar system (one of the most successful science series the BBC has had)

Unless you are an exceptionally talented speaker (I’m certainly not) it’s very difficult to maintain a user’s attention as a talking head. Notice in the second clip that you never see Brian Cox against a static studio screen, the BBC are always trying to help the viewer visualise the point he’s making by putting him on location or providing a visualisation.

You don’t need a large travel and/or CGI budget to achieve this sort visual interest as I hope I showed in my latest climate change talk using GEarth as my main visualisation tool.
Kirsty comments that “they just wanted scientists to appear as the ordinary people they are”, that’s an understandable aim but I don’t think it relates to the ‘visual aids’ point I’ve made.

Conclusion:

This is not a failure as a project, I think its main positive is that the ‘what happens with 4 deg warming’ approach is a great choice to communicate climate science to the public. However, if the design had been thought through more it could have been a lot better.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the original map version of this project (e.g it had the same area problem) but it was OK. The vast majority of the issues I raise here have been introduced by moving the content to GEarth without thinking through what the pros and cons are of GEarth client/plugin as a presentation tool.
In relation to the above paragraph, Kirsty asks “This is the key point. The question is really, can GEarth be used to successfully display this map? … …the challenge we had was to present an existing map, already well-known, in the GEarth format”. My answer is that no, GEarth is not the best choice of medium if the data (as in this case) relates to inter-continental scales because of the downunder problem. I may elaborate in the future on what IMHO GEarth is best at.