Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

 
 
Session Overview
Session
15.3 Geodata management – »From bookshelves to full digital accessibility«
Time:
Tuesday, 21/Sept/2021:
4:15pm - 5:45pm

Session Chair: Tanja Wodtke, BGR - Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe
Session Chair: Jørgen Tulstrup, GEUS - Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland

Session Abstract

Easy access and fast exchange of geoscientific data in compliance with legal requirements and societal needs are of great importance to solve the geoscientific challenges of the 21st century, including e.g. the exploration of raw materials for the energy transition and the search and selection of radioactive waste repositories.Since about 15 years EU legislation aims to open and harmonize digital data existing at national authorities e.g. by the INSPIRE directive or the so-called PSI directive on the re-use of public sector information. Public authorities are thus competent and experienced in the sustainable storage, digital publication and visualization of geoscientific data since decades. In 2020, the Geological Data Act (Geologiedaten-Gesetz) became effective in Germany and notably revised the handling of information resulting from geological investigations in order to ensure a broad public accessibility of geological data, resulting in new challenges to harmonize and integrate the constantly growing amount of data.This session invites contributions on geodata management solutions or approaches in government agencies, academics, and private companies.


Presentations
4:15pm - 4:30pm

Implementation of the Geological Data Act (Geologiedatengesetz): A digital approach of the Geological Survey of Lower Saxony

Robert Schöner, Jan Sbresny, Jörg Elbracht, Nicole Engel, Hans-Jürgen Brauner

State Authority for Mining, Energy and Geology (LBEG), Hannover, Germany

Public access to geological data, especially to data from commercial subsurface geological investigations, was claimed for a long time in the German geoscience community. Since June 30th 2020, the Geological Data Act (Geologiedatengesetz, GeolDG) regulates the public availability of this data and replaces the Mineral Act (Lagerstättengesetz) from 1934. The GeolDG implicates both duties for persons who carry out or commission geological investigations and for the competent authorities, which are Geological Surveys. The “Landesamt für Bergbau, Energie und Geologie” (LBEG), as the Geological Survey of Lower Saxony, currently designs a digital application to organize the entire notification, data management and administration procedure, including the processes of registering geological investigations, of transmitting geological data, of generating administrative decisions, and of releasing data to the public according to the given regulations and deadlines. The current online application for registering boreholes, the “Norddeutsche Bohranzeige Online”, will be adapted and implemented into the new system. Following the legal guidelines, further categories will be other site-specific geological investigations such as outcrop studies or examinations of mining sites, investigations of areas or transects such as field mapping or geophysical surveys, and re-investigations of existing geological data such as geological models or reports developed from publically available data. One objective of the new application is to enable users to correctly notify the LBEG about any kinds of geological investigations, to retrace their own notifications, and finally to upload the geological data in the requested data format.



4:30pm - 4:45pm

Geodata management in a European perspective – The European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI)

Dana Čápová2, Jasna Šinigoj3, Marc Urvois4, Matt Harrison4, Patrick Bell5, Margarita Sanabria6, José Román Hernández Manchado6, Mikael Pedersen1, Jørgen Tulstrup1

1GEUS - Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Denmark; 2CGS - Czech Geological Survey; 3GeoZS - Geological Survey of Slovenia; 4BRGM - French Geological Survey; 5BGS - British Geological Survey; 6CN IGME - Spanish Geological Survey

In 2014, an analysis showed that EU had funded geoscientific data harmonisation projects with several hundred thousand Euros but that only a small fraction of the results were sustained a few years after the projects ended. EuroGeoSurveys therefore decided to establish the EGDI which was first launched in 2016. This version consisted of a web GIS, dedicated GIS viewers for specific geoscientific topics, numerous distributed web services, a metadata catalogue, a database for pan-European harvested data, and it gave access to over 600 layers from 13 projects.

EGDI provides a pipeline of data and knowledge through which the geological surveys connect strategically and technically with the wider European Research and Digital landscape.

In 2018, the Horizon 2020 ERA-NET GeoERA was launched with 14 projects, all of which generate large amounts of pan-European and cross-border data sets. EGDI is the platform to safeguard, harmonise and disseminate all this information. Through a dedicated project (The GIP-P), EGDI is being substantially extended with a document repository, a search system, a 3D database, vocabularies, a user support system and eLearning platform, etc. When GeoERA ends in October 2021, EGDI will give access to results from a total of 37 projects covering on- and offshore geology, raw materials, geoenergy, groundwater, geohazards, geochemistry, and geophysics.

Future plans focus on further developing EGDI under a Horizon Europe Coordination and Support Action where EGDI will move towards becoming a knowledge infrastructure.

The presentation will explain about the system, the challenges and lessons learned from the last 5 years.



4:45pm - 5:00pm

LGRBwissen – the new geoscientific portal for Baden-Württemberg

Isabel Rupf, Frank Baumann

Landesamt für Geologie, Rohstoffe und Bergbau Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Since 2019, the LGRBwissen internet portal provides freely accessible and reviewed geoscientific information for the state of Baden-Württemberg. With LGRBwissen, the State Office for Geology, Natural Resources and Mining (LGRB) is expanding its product portfolio with supplemental descriptions of digital geoscientific data (GeoLa). Although LGRBwissen is primarily designed for professional customers of the LGRB, easily understandable information for the interested public is offered in several sections.

The core of the portal is a tripartite search tool. Besides using a free text search, it is possible to filter thematically by subject and to search spatially. The spatial search is possible by digitizing a polygon in a map application or by entering a location name directly. The latter opens a list with pre-configured administrative units, such as municipalities or districts.

In the central part of each page, there is an interactive map with an overview of the specific geoscientific topic described. The map navigation follows established internet standards. The level of generalisation is automatically depending on the map scale. In addition to the geoscientific descriptions, LGRBwissen contains a geoscientific glossary, picture galleries, links to the detailed information about the mapping units and further publications of the LGRB downloadable as PDF files.

As a modern and attractive tool, LGRBwissen has significantly improved the knowledge transfer from the LGRB to its customers. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary linkage of contents creates numerous synergy effects for administration, science, education, and business.

LGRBwissen can be reached at https://lgrbwissen.lgrb-bw.de.



5:00pm - 5:15pm

From portals to hubs, dashboards and storymaps - new technologies for easy access and use of geoscientific data

Lars Behrens

Esri Deutschland GmbH, Germany

Due to constantly changing requirements and needs for easy access and use of geoscientific data, the technology and methods to provide and present this type of data have recently evolved remarkably and will undergo more changes in the time to come. The aim is to address broader user groups in addition to the original group of experts ranging from non-experts to even the public to support decision making and participation in projects and initiatives.

What used to be classical data portals providing purely access and download of data or consumption of data services will be supplemented with more ways to explore and analyze data in focused apps right away without switching to expert tools. New and tailored visualizations allow users with specific backgrounds to make better decisions and draw the right conclusions within the context needed.

More and more, new data hubs and federated portals and platforms in the cloud or on premise allow collaboration between different domains. Direct connections and interfaces between these domains nurture integrated and interdisciplinary value chains. Focused apps such as dashboards and storymaps support new experiences of data.

The lecture gives an overview and shows existing examples of these new offerings including the geological domain



5:15pm - 5:30pm

Basic implementation for a 3D-viewer with web technology

Michael Wolf, Rüdiger Reimann, Silvia Dieler, Jennifer Ziesch

State Authority for Mining, Energy and Geology- Lower Saxony, Germany

The presentation of 3D-data is gaining a crucial role for the government agencies in Germany. With the introduction of new federal laws on data storage and release, it became important to present 3D-data in an accessible way to everyone. Since the general public can handle web browser applications easily, unlike desktop applications, web-based technologies should be implemented for data presentation. A good user experience and a valuable access to the data requires that a number of components within a web technology need to work together in both back end and front end.

A 3D-viewer with web technology requires minimum configuration to run. Any web application has standard technologies like programming languages PHP, .Net 5 or JavaScript, a descriptive language HTML and a hosting server with a particular software environment (LAMP). In addition, to visualize the 3D-data, it is necessary to integrate a 3D-engine, e.g. WebKit, and optimize data transfer between a database and a client. However, there are limitations of 3D-data presentation with web applications. For example, a 3D-engine retards performance and interaction with users.

We have implemented full stack components of a 3D-viewer with developed web technologies for our own NIBIS3D-viewer at the State Authority for Mining, Energy and Geology of Lower Saxony. In our work, we show that these 3D-viewer components comprise a good running system for the visualization of 3D-data and represent a complete infrastructure from server over back end to front end interfaces for users.



5:30pm - 5:45pm

GisInfoService – A Web Application of German Aggregates Associations for their Members

Dagmar Kesten

Industrieverband Steine und Erden (ISTE), Germany

More than 15 years ago the geographical information system GisInfoService was implemented as part of the project ‚GeoRohstoff‘ of the former Commission for Spatial Information Economics (GIW-Kommission). Sponsored by the German Aggregates Associations the purpose of this web application has ever since been to provide the companies of the quarrying industry with relevant spatial information, such as aerial photography, geological and hydrological data or information about land use or conservation areas. Fast access to these facts is fundamental not only for planning processes but also for everyday tasks and the quick generation of maps for presentations.

GisInfoService makes use of the infrastructure for spatial information that has been built up in the last one and a half decades. It integrates official data by means of web map services published by public authorities (e.g. land surveying offices or geological surveys). If required, there is the option to expand the mere web viewer of GisInfoService by combining it with a data warehouse that contains operational data such as quarry development plans or information on land property, lease, contractual terms or quarry permits.

Presenting the geoportal GisInfoService should give an example how geoscientific data and other public sector information is used by German quarrying companies and their associations for their purposes.