North American Data Model Steering Committee

Notes of meeting October 30, 2002, Denver, Colorado

Attending:

Guests:

  1. Presentation of GEOINFO system from Mexico's Consejo de Recursos Minerales -- discussion ensued on how to engage the Consejo in NADM activities. Dave will continue to contact the USGS International group and the Consejo on this matter.

  2. Science Language Technical Team - the work of the science language subgroups continues, albeit slowly. It is expected that substantially more progress will soon be made by these subgroups, and their reports will be presented at the Spring meeting. Boyan remarked on "pent-up need" for SLTT results, for example expressed at the IAMG meeting in Berlin. Jon inquired when the work of Davenport and Struick might be integrated with the SLTT subgroup's classifications. Problem with lack of response from Surficial subgroup was noted; Jon and Dave will try to get something going there.

  3. Data Model Design Team - this team has met numerous times mostly in the past year to review the design of the various data model variants, and to define a new conceptual data model, "NORTON." Most of the documentation of variants is complete, and resides on the DMDT web site. It is anticipated that a draft version of NORTON will be ready by the Spring meeting, and will be presented at DMT03. The current version of NORTON will be sent to SC members.

  4. Data Interchange Technical Team -- this Team (DITT) is composed of the following members: Bruce Johnson (USGS), chairman, Peter Schweitzer (USGS), Éric Boisvert (GSC), and Martin Anctil, (GSC). Additional members who have experience with XML and conceptual modeling are welcome. Contact Bruce Johnson for information. The purpose of the DITT is to use the conceptual model developed by the Design Technical Team to develop a digital geologic map interchange standard based on XML. Once the interchange standard in approved by the various stages of technical review and ultimately by the Steering Committee, it will become the NADM standard for exchange of digital geologic map databases. As soon as the Data Model Design Team is finished with version 1.0 of the conceptual model NORTON, the DITT will begin work on the interchange standard. That work will consist of three broad tasks:

    1. Define the elements and attributes to be used in the XML documents;

    2. Define an XML Schema to describe the use of the XML elements and attributes as well as the relationships between them; and

    3. Define a request/response language to be used for query and analysis using the interchange standard.

    If the Design Team finishes their work within their defined time frame, the DITT expects to have some preliminary work done on the interchange standard by the DMT'03 meeting in May, 2003.

  5. GEON - a brief discussion of the objectives of the NSF Geoinformatics initiative "GEON." A clear connection was noted between GEON and NADM; we have and will continue to discuss with GEON principals their interest in adopting or adapting the NADM data model and science language.

  6. ESRI Geology Data Model - ESRI plans to develop a Geodatabase data model for each of their business sectors. In early 2002 Boyan and Dave attended ESRI's intial meeting on the Geology Data Model. In mid-2002, Boyan was asked by Steve Grise (ESRI) to help draft for Geodatabase implementation an adaptation of an early version of NORTON. This effort will continue; if interested, contact Boyan.

  7. Next meeting - will be held after the DMT meeting, in Lancaster, PA, early June.