Geology is free (well, will be)
From the Guardian of March 9, Geological knowledge to go online:
British scientists are leading an international effort to bring together all the known geological information about every country in the world. By making the data freely available and allowing researchers to track geological features across national boundaries, the project will make it easier to plan international projects, predict earthquakes and locate natural resources such as oil and gas.
Once the project, called OneGeology, is up and running the data will be searchable via the internet. “Geology has no respect for national frontiers,” said Ian Jackson, who is coordinating the project for the British Geological Survey (BGS). “The data exists, but accessibility is the key.”
We’ll be interested to see how it copes with saying precisely where these geological features are in the UK without reference to Ordnance Survey data; or perhaps it’s going to license it. In which case who’s going to fund it?
I’m reliably told too that the Free Our Data campaign was mentioned at the launch – and that while Ireland is going to make all of its data at all scales completely free, the same won’t be true for the UK, where you’ll have to pay for data below a certain scale.
That noise in the background is me, grinding my teeth.
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Welcome to the Free Our Data campaign blog (13 March 2006; score: 0%)
- About the Free Our Data blog (13 March 2006; score: 0%)
- Terrible design? Yes, sorry (15 March 2006; score: 0%)
- Ordnance Survey replies to "Give us back our crown jewels" (15 March 2006; score: 0%)
- Today in The Guardian: readers respond to the start of the campaign (16 March 2006; score: 0%)
March 9th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Hi!
re ‘Ireland is going to make all of its data at all scales completely free’ — is there more info on this? the Grauniad article doesn’t mention it.
March 9th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
[...] Yesterday the British Geological Survey (BGS) announced their intention to map the geology of the planet – OneGeology. They believe the political will and technology are now in place to enable such an ambitious task. The technical details are sketchy, but it’s been planned as a distributed model – a dynamic set of geological map data served mostly on a national basis by individual Geological Surveys and other bodies (e.g. the polar and marine surveys and research bodies). The data will be accessed via a web portal and as such will be frequently updated and improved by them and reflect the most up to date data they possess. The project will make use of GeoSciML, an XML flavour tailored for use in Geoscience. The service should make a great resource for the recent wave of ‘Earth Explorers’. This is quite a grand scheme, and deliverables are no doubt someway down the line, but if the BGS can make it work, hopefully it can spur the UK government to work with the Ordnance Survey and ‘free our geodata‘ – then one day maybe the OS can lead national mapping agencies throughout the world in a similar scheme. The OS has a great start with a comprehensive GML dataset, and the INSPIRE directive can provide encouragement; all we need now is support of the UK Government. Likely? [...]
March 9th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Re Ireland – I was told this by James Randerson, who wrote the Gdn piece (a lot was chopped out to fit in print; gah). But I’ll try to confirm it. Unless someone from the BGS is passing by…
March 10th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Wearing my geologists hat…
The success of this project rests on the uptake of GeosciML. At the moment it looks like a typical open-source project, horribly beaurocratic creating a format for describing and distributing the data that is excessively bloated.
I whole hearttedly support the free availability of Earthscience data, but I think there are huge obstacles, perhaps the largest being the sheer volume of data, that need to be overcome. Creating an entirely new language seems very unnecessary when more efficient database file formats exist for the distribution of data.
As for UK data…
It would be really nice if this was made freely available for use without restriction. But since the BGS use Ordance Survey mapping as the base for whch geological mapping, then i fear UK geologicsts will be dissappointed. They will instead will probably only get small-scale mapping, having to pay through the nose to get the useful large scale mapping.
March 11th, 2007 at 8:20 am
A great effort ! Anxiously awaiting to see OneGeology map of the world. All national mapping organizations of different countries should come to a common platform and initiate plans for delivering their data to OneGeolgy.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:48 pm
The British Geological Survey uses Ordnance Survey data under license as baseline data for the construction of geological maps and models.
However, digital geological data is distributed independent from the supporting topographic information, only on paper publications require the use of Ordnance Survey data for their publication.
Users add this data to their own topographic baseline data to put the geological information into context. This can be Ordnance Survey data or Google Earth as a free alternative for non-commercial use.
The BGS has just made its national geological map available for freehttp://www.bgs.ac.uk/products/digitalmaps/data_625k.html
The BGS has just made its national geological map available for freehttp://www.bgs.ac.uk/products/digitalmaps/data_625k.html
July 20th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Holger Kessler wrote:
“However, digital geological data is distributed independent from the supporting topographic information, only on paper publications require the use of Ordnance Survey data for their publication.”
This is not correct.
See: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/business/licences/sufpl_suc/user-derived_data.html
Even if the BGS geological data fulfills the requirements of not including any more more than 5% polygons that coincide with OS polygons or less than 5 million data points in total etc, it still can only be distributed under license at the pain of paying royalties to the OS. Therefore it cannot be distributed freely even if it contains next to no OS data.
BTW at the time i wrote my comment above, the OS license terms and conditions were somewhat different (more non-specific).