Notes from the HUMBOLDT Project

Dear Reader,

The INSPIRE conference in Krakow, Poland is approaching and HUMBOLDT as well as numerous partne projects will be represented in this conference.

Therefore, in this HUMBOLDT Newsletter I would like to draw your attention to the HUMBOLDT Workshop and presentations at the upcoming INSPIRE conference. Furthermore, you will find some information about the current Open Source releases of the HUMBOLDT Framework, our participation at recent conferences, the ongoing development of HUMBOLDT Scenario Demonstrators as well as on further ongoing activities and upcoming events.

Please also note that the HUMBOLDT Project Website. has been thoroughly updated and revised in order to provide a clear and straightforward introduction to the HUMBOLDT Project, Partners and results. Enjoy reading and please do not hesitate to give us your feedback. Any kind of suggestions and contributions are highly welcome.

Dr. Eva Klien, Co-ordinator of the HUMBOLDT Project
Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research, Darmstadt, Germany

Upcoming HUMBOLDT Events

HUMBOLDT at the INSPIRE Conference 2010

This year’s INSPIRE Conference will take place from 22nd to 25th June 2010 in Krakow, Poland. The theme is "INSPIRE as a Framework for Cooperation".

HUMBOLDT will be represented in the workshop “Data Harmonisation in the HUMBOLDT Scenarios and the HUMBOLDT Training Framework” which is scheduled for Tuesday 22nd of June 2010, at 4:00 p.m. The goal of this workshop is to present the HUMBOLDT potentiality in different application contexts (“Scenarios”), as a training session offered to the user communities of the HUMBOLDT data harmonisation tools, as well as for the communities of GMES and INSPIRE. The workshop will also present the HUMBOLDT Training Framework, addressed to the practical use of the project’s outcomes, paying special attention to training dealing with data harmonisation experiences in different domains and in real world conditions.

In relation to this HUMBOLDT workshop a questionnaire for HUMBOLDT Scenario Evaluation (login required) has been prepared. Your feedback is important for us in order to reveal different point of views about the HUMBOLDT Framework and its associated scenarios by the INSPIRE, GMES and related communities who are not directly involved in the HUMBOLDT project. To this end, the aim of the questionnaire is to inventory benefits and relevance of HUMBOLDT scenario applications to specific communities and similar projects/initiatives.

On Thursday 24th of June 2010, at 4:00 p.m. in the session on “New and evolving tools and technologies” the paper “Integrating spatial data integration: An Architecture for Complex Transformation Services” by Thorsten Reitz, Daniel Fitzner (both Fraunhofer IGD, Germany), Marian de Vries (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands) and Ana Belen Antón Gironés (ETRA Research and Development, Spain) will be presented.

Furthermore, the paper “Data Harmonisation Put into Practice by the HUMBOLDT Project,” by Astrid Fichtinger, Ulrich Schäffler (both Technische Universität München, Germany), Joachim Rix, Simone Scherer (both Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany) and Moses Gone (Fraunhofer IGD, Germany) will be presented on Friday 25th of June 2010, 12:00 a.m. in the session “Trans-national SDI projects”.

Our partner projects eSDI-NET+, NATURESDIPlus, plan4all, GS Soil, VESTA-GIS will also be represented on the INSPIRE conference, either by workshops or paper presentations. For further information on this subject, please visit the INSPIRE Conferece website where you can find the INSPIRE Workshop programme and the INSPIRE Conference programme.

6th GIScience

Zurich, Switzerland will be the host city of the 6th GIScience conference from September 14th-17th, 2010. Thorsten Reitz (Fraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, Germany) will present his paper “A Mismatch Description Language for Conceptual Schema Mapping and its Cartographic Representation.”

HUMBOLDT Final Event

In September 2010 the HUMBOLDT project will finalise in a two-day workshop event. The first day will be used for public training workshops on HUMBOLDT Tools and Services as well as Scenario Applications. More detailed information on this event will follow soon on the HUMBOLDT Website and in a separate communication.

Project News

HUMBOLDT Framework for Data Harmonisation

In April 2010 a new version of the HUMBOLDT Workflow Editor has been released and can be downloaded from the Community Website. A high-level overview of the Workflow Design and Construction Service can be found at the respective Wiki page.

In this release, the Workflow Editor allows registering OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) and OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) and composing them into workflows. The workflows can be exported to the HUMBOLDT Workflow Repository Service. Therefore, working with the Workflow Editor currently requires internet connection. Any running WFS or WPS can be registered to the editor via its registration interface, simply by providing the URL.

Please find more information on this (and the other functionalities) in the user manual. The Workflow Repository Service will be accessed by the HUMBOLDT Mediator Service which is the component responsible for the execution of the data harmonisation process. The implementation of this execution-functionality is ongoing and will be available by July 2010.

Furthermore, in May 2010 a new release of the HUMBOLDT Alignment Editor (HALE) has been released. It provides several new features as well as bug fixes. Novelties are, for instance, the Graphical Mapping Representation, the Wizard for Concatenation of Attributes and the possibility to load instance data from a WFS. For more information on this release please visit the HALE News at the Community Website.

Any feedback, error documentation or anything else related to the Workflow Editor, Workflow Repository Service or any other component of the HUMBOLDT framework is highly appreciated. All components as well as full specifications are available for free download on the Community Website, which also provides a forum, wiki and issue tracker.

HUMBOLDT at AGILE 2010

The 13th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science: "Geospatial Thinking" took place from 10th-14th May 2010 in Guimarães, Portugal.

The HUMBOLDT project was represented by the paper presentation of Eva Klien, Thorsten Reitz, Daniel Fitzner (all Fraunhofer IGD, Germany) and Ulrich Schäffler (Technische Universität München, Germany) on the subject of “Efficient Conceptual Schema Translation for Geographic Vector Data Sets.”

HUMBOLDT at the Digital Earth Summit

The Digital Earth Summit Conference took place from 12th-14th Juni in Nessebar, Bulgaria.

HUMBOLDT was featured in the Plenary Session 4 - Digital Earth in Sustainable Development at Local and Regional Levels. Daniel Kristof (Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing, Hungary) presented the paper “The HUMBOLDT Project: Developing an Open Source Framework and Tools for Geodata Harmonization” which is a joint effort from Daniel Kristof, Christine Giger (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland), Eva Klien, Thorsten Reitz (both Fraunhofer IGD, Germany) and Santiago Caceres (ETRA Research and Development, Spain).

HUMBOLDT Meetings

HUMBOLDT Scenario and Training Workshop in Genoa, Italy

From the 20th to 21st of May the HUMBOLDT Scenario and Training Workshop took place in Genoa, Italy. The meeting was hosted by the Geographical Information Systems International Group (GISIG).

The focus of this HUMBOLDT meeting was set on the scenario work in relation to the development of demonstrators, establishment of according training material as well as on the testing and evaluation of the framework components and scenario applications. Currently, nine HUMBOLDT Application Scenarios are under development and the major focus is set on the establishment of use cases for demonstration purposes. The final results for those test scenarios with evaluation of the framework and its components will be available on the HUMBOLDT Website in the third quarter of 2010. In addition, training material is in preparation and will be provided on the HUMBOLDT Training Platform.

HUMBOLDT Consortium Meeting in Valencia, Spain

The next HUMBOLDT consortium meeting will take place from the 6th to 9th July in Valencia, Spain. The host for this meeting is ETRA Research and Development.

The HUMBOLDT project has entered its final phase and the meeting in Valencia will focus on the wrap-up and consolidation of the projects results. In addition, it is planned to present the current status of the HUMBOLDT Framework components, the Training Framework as well as Scenario applications and demonstrators to the Review and Advisory Board to receive feedback and input for their finalization. The activities in Valencia will also include the necessary preparations for the upcoming final HUMBOLDT Event.

The HUMBOLDT Project in brief

The four-year EU project HUMBOLDT contributes to the implementation of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI) that integrates the diversity of spatial data available for a multitude of European organisations. It is the aim of this project to manage and advance important parts of the implementation process of this ESDI.

The main goal of the HUMBOLDT project is to enable organisations to document, publish and harmonise their spatial information. The software tools and processes created will demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe as planned by the INSPIRE initiative, meeting the goals of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES).

Learn more about HUMBOLDT by visiting our Web site.

Imprint

Responsible editor: Eva Klien

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