Saarikko jarmo-nefis-helsinki-2005

METSÄNTUTKIMUSLAITOS
SKOGSFORSKNINGINSTITUT
FINNISH FOREST RESEARCH NSTITUTE
www.metla.fi
Network for a European Forest Information Service
NEFIS
Jarmo Saarikko, Metla, FI
Alex Fedorec, Greenwich University, UK
Risto Päivinen, Andreas Schuck & Tim Green, European Forest Institute, FI
Frontiers in Forest Information, The Impact of Changing Technologies, Oxford, Dec 07, 2005 (Fedorec)
Environmental Specimen Banking and Information Management, Helsinki, Dec 15, 2005 (Saarikko)

Environmental Specimen Banking and Information Management, Helsinki --- Metla, U. Greenwich, EFI / NEFIS - Jarmo
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Contents
What is NEFIS?
About data and information
Specific tasks for the project
Some results of NEFIS
Scope and challenges
UML modelling
Use cases
Changing technology
Demonstration package – resource discovery and
visualization
Specific issues of a pan-European FIS

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What is NEFIS?
Network for a European Forest Information Service
Accompanying Measure in the EU 5th Framework Programme 2002-2005
(Contract No. QLK5-CT-2002-30638)
General objectives were to build on and continue activities initiated in the
‘European Forest Information System (EFIS)’ project and to maximise the
value of existing data and databases by:
coordinating ongoing efforts to create forest information systems and
services
supporting development of harmonised standards and procedures for
data provision by data providers at regional, country and international
levels
increasing the usability of available data and databases by the
European citizens.

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My ”message of the day”
Interoperability
information exchange with other systems
open access – excluding endangered sp.
standardized methods of information exchange
(XML, search engines)
other systems
datasets of analysis results of the specimens
Forest Information Systems
Biodiversity Information Systems
Research Information Systems and publications
Other sample collections, etc.

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NEFIS Partnership
European Commission, DG JRC, Institute for
Environment and Sustainability – Land Management
Unit
International Union of Forest Research Organisations
Dresden University of Technology – Forest Biometrics
and Computer Sciences
Frauenhoffer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der
angewandten Forschung e.V.
Finnish Forest Research Institute
Inventaire Forestier National
Danish Forest and Landscape Research Institute –
Dept. of Forestry
Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet – Dept. of Forest
Resource Management and Geomatics
University of Greenwich – School of Computing and
Mathematical Sciences
Regione Dell’Umbria – Servizio Programmazione
Forestale
Accademia Italiana di Scienze Forestali
Centre Tecnologic Forestal de Catalunya – Forest
Policy and Rural Development Dept
Hungarian State Forest Service (SFS)
Federal Research Centre for Forestry and Forest
Products, BFH

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About Data and Information
Is more data needed or
have we reached information overload?
Is some important data/information
missing or of too low accuracy?
Are current resources/information
fully utilised and used efficiently?
Lack of data/information is not necessarily the problem but
their use and application
Do we know where to find what information/data?
Users incl. decision makers are often
not aware of existing information or do not use it
How accessible is existing information really?
In which way should information and data be made available?

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Specific Tasks of
NEFIS project
1. Review the state of the art in the technical development of
information services
2. Develop metadata standards and controlled vocabularies
3. Suggest unified and operable methods for communication
between different Internet-based
forest information service activities
4. Publish a follow-up version of the currently available EFIS
prototype
5. Test the EFIS using regional, national and international data
sets
6. Evaluate the service from the users’ and data providers’
perspectives
7. Develop strategies for development of the service

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NEFIS Work Packages
& Specific Tasks
WP1. Project management
WP2. Develop metadata standards and controlled vocabularies
WP3: UML Description of an extended European Forest Information Service
Review the state of the art in the technical development of I.S.
Suggest unified and operable methods for communication between
different Internet-based forest information service activities
Establishment of a NEFIS KnowledgeBase
WP4: Data preparation and data provision
• Publish a follow-up version of the currently available EFIS prototype
• Test the EFIS using regional, national and international data sets
WP5: Evaluate service from users’ and data providers’ perspectives
WP6: Links with Commission services and follow-up activities

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Some Results of NEFIS
Metadata schema (based on Dublin Core)
Suggestion for a Forest Markup Language (FML)
Controlled vocabularies 12 themes, 4 developed further
Prepared sample datasets and metadata available through the
EFIS system
Technical review and UML description of an extended EFIS
Demonstration package: Resource Discovery and Visualization
Toolkits
KnowledgeBase http://nkb.efi.fi/
Utilisation by the European Commission: EFICP, INFORS

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Scope and Challenges
Databases
XLS
Files
Docs
HTML
X
International/national
Gov. agencies, NGOs
Land use planners,
Mgrs, Sylviculturalists
Consultants, Modellers,
Researchers, Education
Commercial, financial,
Forest/timber industry
News media,
Public sector

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Side Notes
Published result of one task becomes input dataset for another.
“One person’s output is another person’s input”
National Inventory → JQ report → Eurostat DB → FRA → MCPFE Report
(Similarly one person’s data is another's metadata)
Much information held in weakly structured documents.
Lack metastructure to fully exploit explicit (codified)
knowledge or extract tactic (unarticulated) knowledge.
Crucial issue:
Why would someone want to use this system?
Resource user?
Information provider?

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Technical Review
UML Modelling
UML – The Unified Modelling Language (ISO/IEC 19501)
Objectives
“Produce a consultative UML review of EFIS model and
extend it to incorporate new information types, relationships
and processes,
Build on outputs of other projects such as EFIS, GFIS and
results from other work packages of the AM.
Develop understanding of O-O paradigm applicability to
European forest information
Identify system and user requirements
Scope technical possibilities and infrastructure”

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Why UML? - UML in the
Ontology Spectrum
Strong semantics
Minimal hierarchic knowledge to
rich consistent and meaningful
knowledgeIs subclassification of
Is disjoint subclass of
with transitivity
property
Has narrower meaning than
Is subclass of
Taxonomy
Thesaurus
Conceptual Model
Local Domain Theory
Relational
Model
Schema
ER
Extended ER
XTM
RDF/S
UML – The Unified Modelling Language
Weak semantics
DAML+OIL, OWL
First Order Logic
Modal Logic
Daconta, M.C., et.al., 2003
OCL – The UML
Object Constraint Language

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UML Modelling Cont’d
Approach
Identify and partition key user groups and application domains
Elicit sample use cases and story lines from example
applications, e.g.
UN-ECE/FAO Global Forest Resource Assessment & TBFRA 2000
(Regional FRA)
MCPFE Criteria & Indicators for Sustainable Forest Mgt
Forest Products Production and Trade Flows
Land Use & Land Cover Change for UNFCCC
Commonalities factored to identify generic use cases, desired
features, kernel classes, packages etc.

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Example Use Case 1

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NEFIS Generic Use Case
NEFIS System
Check guidelines
Resource,
Document&
Content
Management
«uses»
Get agregate
dataset
locate and
retrieve dataset
Transform dataset
«extends»
«extends»
Top Package::client
Top Package::Provider
Validate Dataset
«uses»
publish source
information
«uses»
Subscriber
workflow,
task & role
management
«uses»
Subscriber
Regististration Task & Role
Management
«uses»
«extends»
Application
Tool
Repository
Analyse, visualise ,
transform aggregate
MetaData Registry
and Repository
Mgt System
«uses»«uses»
«uses»
«uses»
Metadata Mgt
Top Package::NEFIS admin
«extends»
«extends»
Portal Management
Support Kernel
Browse Forest
Information
«extends» «uses»
Validation is done off -line
System simply provides
contact and comms support

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Identification of Key Elements
Metadata management: Not just resource discovery -
Normalisation and control of ontology database required to
ensure semantic interoperability at all levels
Content management central to dynamic control and delivery
Task and role choreography and support, facilitate and
enhance usability (success predicated on high quality publish
& subscribe tools)
Maintenance of tool and standard component repository
Note technical review revealed each of these elements is enabled
by web services and service-oriented-architecture

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Technical Review - Changing Technology
Within the short life of the NEFIS project we have seen the rapid
growth of:
new pattern and model driven techniques for analysis and
architecting complex or large scale information systems
open-system standards, exploitation of metadata and
middleware protocols to support resource location and
interoperability in highly distributed heterogeneous systems
component-oriented and web-service tools and technologies
to implement these systems
RAD tools for sophisticated GUI development
We are also seeing emerging
grid and autonomic infrastructures to optimise execution
agile methods to manage the development process

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Central Services
Metadata DB /
Domain Ontology
Central Resource
& Document DB
Tool Repository &
Forest Model
Archive
NEFIS Service-Oriented Deployment
Resource Browser
Visualisation,
Analysis &
Reporting Toolkits
CLIENT
Resource Locator &
Vortal Services
NEFIS SERVER PROVIDER SERVER
Harmonisation
Tools
Publication Tools
Published Services
Raw Databases
and Information
Provider Systems
« WWW »
Task & Role
Management.Access&AuthorisationMgt
Content
Management
Metadata
Management
UDDI
API/Registry
*
«internet»
*
«internet»
*
«intranet»
Archiving and
Hosting Services

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NEFIS Metadata Based
on DCMI Element Set.
Suggested FML provides an XML schema reflecting this
NEFIS extensions and modifications ( )

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Controlled Vocabularies:
Themes and Terms
Facilitate cataloguing and accessing of NEFIS metadata
records and underlying datasets
Developed from data sets provided by the NEFIS partners
Based on a generic standard and existing recognized
vocabularies: CABI thesaurus, AgroVoc, NAL Keyword
lists developed for 12 themes:
Forest inventory (incl. growth & yield) Forest fires
Forest products and trade flows Forest health
Silviculture (incl. forest nurseries) Rural development
Vegetation (or forest or land) types Forestry institutions
Non-wood goods and benefits Forest operations
Maps and geo-referenced data Field experiments
Lists further developed further for the themes in bold
(e.g. to include definitions, equivalents in other languages etc)

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Data Preparation and
Data Provision
Objectives
• to identify the datasets (sub-national, national &
international) for input to the EFIS
• to prepare metadata records using the proposed
metadata schema
• to provide and prepare sample datasets available
through the EFIS system

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Demonstration Package
Consists of:
Resource Discovery (RD)
in which the proposed NEFIS metadata schema is implemented
New Visualisation Toolkit (VTK) functionalities,
support of spatial time series data;
tools for dynamic aggregation of grid (raster) data;
some new visualisation techniques
Data retrieval:
Implementation of simple system for retrieval of data from data
tables from distributed and remote sites, collation of the data,
and processing into a format that can be used by the VTK

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Demonstrator Package
Search
Metadata
DataUtilise

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Example VTK Visualisations

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Evaluation
Undertaken using standardised questionnaires and expert
statements
Addressed:
• Metadata and metadata guidelines
• Operability and applicability for describing datasets
• Keyword list and thesaurus
• Data rights and data rights management
• User needs and user expectations
• Potential capabilities of a NEFIS (VTK)
• Extent to which NEFIS can serve as a harmonised system for
periodical data reporting/delivery

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NEFIS KnowledgeBase
http://nkb.efi.fi/
Structured repository for deposit, storage and access of information and metadata
relevant to forest information systems, with emphasis on NEFIS recording:
outputs from NEFIS WPs
other forest IS/services development initiatives (e.g. GFIS, EFIS) and
other relevant projects
relevant software resources and documentation

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Summary & Conclusion
pan-European FISs have vast and expanding volumes of distributed information,
are heterogeneous, highly changeable, have huge range of potential user types
and applications.
The changing technology discussed in NEFIS potentiates
Wrapping and support of legacy systems
Interoperability and transparency of information
Provision of futureproofed scalable architectures
More importantly it enables
Location and retrieval of (just) the right data and information
Provision of the information in the right form for the task
Challenges are
Provision of quality publish/subscribe tools
Ontology not only for resource discovery but semantic interoperability

www.metla.fi
Thank You!
further information:
www.www.efiefi..fifi//projectsprojects//nefisnefis

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Specific Issues of
Pan-European FIS
Language
Impacts on U.I., reports…
Terms: search & navigate facilities…
User needs
Regional needs and interests
Ownership and rights management
Legal/convention reporting requirements
Information
Availability and Access
Heterogeneous
Data harmonisation
Model standards
Validation
Technology
Non-standardised, highly distributed
Diverse I.T. capability & infrastructure

Saarikko jarmo-nefis-helsinki-2005

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