A fundamental goal of the Hurricane Mitch clearinghouse nodes is to provide access to digital spatial data through metadata. These nodes are connected to the FGDC Clearinghouse which functions as a detailed catalog service with support for links to spatial data and browse graphics. The USGS Hurricane Mitch Program has nodes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the United States.
The map at right shows the locations of the clearinghouse nodes. The clearinghouse nodes house metadata (metadata or "data about data" describe the content, quality, condition, and other characteristics of data) and data for the Hurricane Mitch project:
The Central American countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua) have clearinghouse nodes which house data and the accompanying metadata produced only by that country`s agencies in cooperation with the USGS Hurricane Mitch Program. The node at EROS Data Center houses all USGS data and metadata.
The data is found by going directly to one of the Hurricane Mitch clearinghouse nodes or through the metadata which is accessed by searching the FGDC Clearinghouse. The FGDC Clearinghouse search results will show metadata that matched the search request for Hurricane Mitch. There will be links to the data locations in the metadata.
The Clearinghouse Activity, sponsored by the FGDC, is a decentralized system of servers located on the Internet which contain field-level descriptions of available digital spatial data. This descriptive information, known as metadata, are collected in a standard format to facilitate query and consistent presentation across multiple participating sites.
A fundamental goal of the Clearinghouse is to provide access to digital spatial data through metadata. The Clearinghouse functions as a detailed catalog service with support for links to spatial data and browse graphics. Clearinghouse allows individual agencies, consortia, or geographically-defined communities to band together and promote their available digital spatial data.
Digital spatial data and metadata are stored in many forms and systems which make their discovery on the Internet difficult. Indexing of text-based catalogs of available information only on CD-ROM provides a limited and time-dependent view of the status of predominantly network-based resources. Use of current web indexing technology offers literal text search and matching for metadata which happen to be stored in HTML, but do not generally provide the indexing required for search of coordinates, dates and times, and other numeric values. In addition, an increasing amount of information is being stored within dynamic databases behind Web servers, further frustrating and making questionable the value of, external indexes. Clearinghouse provides standard methods for spatial data discovery that do not invalidate existing systems yet provide a federated search capability among distributed sites.
CD-ROM and network-based search capabilities provide complementary services to that user community interested in finding and accessing digital spatial data. Synopses of existing metadata entries from the distributed Clearinghouse can periodically be captured to CD-ROM for off-line browsing and review. The on-line resources they reference, however, will become accessible only in an on-line setting, restricting the utility of a standalone CD product. The general trend toward connectivity of spatial data producers, vendors, and users on the Internet coupled with the development of the Open Geodata Interoperability Specification indicate a long-term public commitment to not only on-line data discovery but direct data access by client processes across internal and public networks. Clearinghouse provides one testbed solution to catalog interoperability on the Internet today.
A Mitch-reconstruction meeting in 1998, convened by Sistema de la Integracion Centroamericana (SICA) in San Salvador emphasized the need for regional cooperation in environmental management, as well as the importance of, and access to, geospatial data. The post-Mitch reconstruction and planning activities in Central America by the USGS and others will generate large volumes of data. The ability of various government and aid agencies to locate, access, and distribute these data sets is critical for planning for natural disaster response, mitigation, and reconstruction. To facilitate management and access to relevant Mitch data, this project is implementing the IGDN Clearinghouse across Central America. A Clearinghouse is a decentralized system of computer servers connected to the Internet that contain descriptions of digital spatial data (metadata). The clearinghouse project has implemented data servers (nodes) in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Additional nodes will be added elsewhere in Central America and potentially in the Dominican Republic. This Internet Clearinghouse will be a primary mechanism for users to gain access to geospatial data relevant to Mitch reconstruction and planning activities.
Train colleagues from each Mitch-affected country in Clearinghouse and metadata production.
Establish Clearinghouse nodes in each Mitch-impacted country, and two additional regional nodes.
Stage all key USGS geographic products on the Clearinghouse, with information on access to these products.
Prepare a plan for continued national and regional cooperation to promote access and use of geographic data for disaster assessments and mitigation.
Develop a clearinghouse “mirror” site to continue clearinghouse functions in the event of a disaster related catastrophic failure of Central American sites.
Approach
The USGS, with support from USAID/LAC and the IDB, has been implementing the "PAIGH Atlas of the Americas" project. This project has begun conducting IGDN Clearinghouse workshops and coordinating and assisting in the development of Clearinghouse nodes to ensure access, availability, and distribution of geospatial data to users in El Salvador and Costa Rica. The USGS will extend this project to develop Clearinghouse nodes in Mitch-affected countries.
The implementation of this system is focusing on four countries but will facilitate capacity building throughout Central America. The USGS has provided training for key information technologists from each country in data description and distribution techniques, is installing several Clearinghouse node per country, and establishing one Clearinghouse gateway in Honduras to facilitate data searching for Central America. This gateway will complement those in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, Columbia, and the United States.
The USGS is coordinating with Comision Centroamericana de Ambiente y Desarrollo (CCAD) and other regional or in-country organizations to ensure relevance, minimize duplication of effort, and facilitate capacity building in the targeted countries. This has been accomplished through a workshop of country participants at the USGS EROS Data Center, followed by in-country workshops to facilitate training, metadata creation, and data staging. We expect the training to result in active Websites for each counties nodes, rapid metadata creation, bilingual search capabilities, a mirror site at USGS, extended efforts at data discovery, continued GIS training and data development, data organization and archiving, training in image interpretation, and the close integration of all USGS projects.
Data from Mitch-related USGS projects is being staged at country nodes in a systematic manner. Each country will retain control over its node but will participate with standard metadata and access though the Internet. The USGS expects at least one site to develop strong Internet map serving capabilities, thereby allowing a wide variety of users to access the system from their browsers, create data queries, and produce online map projects. In addition, this group of training GIS information technologists are expected to design and implement a major website on a node in Central America to monitor and describe the various reconstruction efforts under way in Central America.
In the longer term it is expected that the capacity built during the project by training and through the purchase and installation of hardware and software, will result in a permanent clearinghouse network for collecting, archiving, and distributing environmental and natural disaster related data and information in the four countries and eventually across the region.
The map at right shows the locations of the clearinghouse nodes. The clearinghouse nodes house metadata (metadata or "data about data" describe the content, quality, condition, and other characteristics of data) and data for the Hurricane Mitch project: