[SDI-Europe] PTB Phase 3 - Call for Participation: Authenticated Access to European Spatial Data Sets

[Johannes Brauner]

AGILE/EuroSDR/OGC Persistent SDI Testbed for Research and Teaching in
Europe (PTB)

*Phase 3 - Call for Participation: Authenticated Access to European
Spatial Data Sets*

Closing date: July 1st, 2012
Phase 3 runtime: Mid-2012 to mid-2013
The pdf Version of this call can be found at:
http://sdi-testbed.eu/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=61&Itemid=8


*Background & Motivation*

Administrative Bodies holding geospatial data (e.g. National Mapping and
Cadastre Authorities) usually hesitate to provide unrestricted access to
their data sets. Nevertheless, access to these data sets is often
essential for the research community, e.g. especially (but not limited
to) in an INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe)
directive context. Agreed technologies and particular license models are
still lacking.

From a technological point of view, technologies like SAML (Security
Assertion Markup Language) provide means to control data set access in a
very easy way (see for instance results from the ESDIN project  and two
OGC Interoperability Experiments (IE) ).

As the interest from the PTB community was high (several members
participated in the above activities), and various administrative bodies
holding geospatial data and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the
European Commission expressed their interest as well, it was decided to
continue these activities on an European level, supported and steered by
the PTB as the next PTB Phase 3. Additionally, Phase 3 directly
addresses the recommendations from the AGILE 'Data Access Initiative'
final report.

*Goals*

In particular, PTB Phase 3 addresses the following goals:

- Set up a small prototypical SAML-based access federation for the
access to a few NMCA data sets for the European GI science community to
show a general feasibility of the concept,
- Propose a refined concept taken into account the experienced problems
and pitfalls,
- Raise the awareness and encourage the use of a common access
management federation technology (e.g. SAML) to allow cross
administrative domain interoperability where protected services are
involved.

In a long term perspective, Phase 3 supports the vision of a funding to
provide the technical infrastructure to establish a European access
federation for geospatial data sets hold by administrative bodies
(including client support and knowledge transfer).

*Call for Participation / Proposals*

To guarantee real live cases and thus sustainability, applications to
Phase 3 should follow these guidelines:

- Interested participants are asked to always team up (at least one
administrative body holding geospatial data and one research institution),
- Focus technology and license models,
- Follow a bottom-up approach: First have solutions within the
(national) teams and then try to scale them up on the European level.

The above list should be treated as non-exclusive, any proposals which
further the PTB will receive due consideration. Those interested in
responding to this call should provide a one page summary with any
ancillary information provided as appendices (including a nominated
point of contact with the PTB).

Your proposal should align with the PTB objectives as outlined on:
http://sdi-testbed.eu

Generally, an expertise in developing Spatial Data Infrastructures and
knowing their concepts/problems and best practices is strongly advised.
If the data sets of the applicants come from INSPIRE Annex themes,
specific expertise is needed in terms of data schema development and
usage, INSPIRE principles and detailed knowledge of INSPIRE Annex data
sets.

No payment can be made to contributors for provision of hardware,
software, data or services nor will any expenses be reimbursed for this
phase of development. Nevertheless, AGILE and EuroSDR committed
resources to support workshops and possibly final publications.

Please send your response to this Call for Proposals and any further
questions to Johannes Brauner (contact details below).

The closing date for submissions is 1st July 2012.

*Next Steps*

A panel made up of representatives from AGILE, EuroSDR and OGC will
review and evaluate the responses to this Call for Participation. The
outcome will be communicated to participants directly and via the
mailing list/newsletter.

*Mailing List*

Please consider to subscribe to the PTB mailing list at:
https://mailman.zih.tudresden.de/groups/listinfo/gis-ptb or contact
Johannes Brauner for a subscription.

*Contact*

Please mail your response and further questions to the PTB facilitator:

Johannes Brauner
Technische Universität Dresden
Geoinformation Systems
Mail: johannes.brauner at tu-dresden.de
Phone: +49 351 463 39696

Yours sincerely

Chris Higgins (OGC)
Lars Bernard (EuroSDR)
Mike Jackson (AGILE)
Johannes Brauner (PTB facilitator)


-- 
Johannes Brauner
Technische Universität Dresden
Geoinformation Systems
Helmholtzstr. 10
D 01062 Dresden
Germany

Phone: +49 (0)351 463 39696
Mail: johannes.brauner at tu-dresden.de
www: http://tu-dresden.de/fgh/geo/gis
www: http://tinyurl.com/profile-brauner

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