Modernizing SDI: Enabling Data Interoperability for Regional Assessments and Cumulative Effects Concept Development Study: Request for Information (RFI)

This Concept Development Study seeks to answer the primary question “How can an ocean of environmental, foundational/framework, biological, socio economic and other data, from multiple different sources, collected over time, and with varying levels of standardization, be readily consumed and integrated by scientists and citizens alike?”

The overall objective of this study is to inform federal, provincial, territorial and First Nations/Indigenous stakeholders, concerned with cumulative effects and regional assessments, how best to establish consensus and implement common, open standards-based, approaches that leverage emerging technological capabilities, leading to new levels of digital geospatial data interoperability.

The scope of the CDS includes:

Canada’s spatial data infrastructure (SDI), referred to as the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) is the relevant base collection of standards, policies, applications, and governance that facilitate the access, use, integration, and preservation of spatial data.

GeoConnections is a national program with the mandate and responsibility to lead the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) through a baseline of consensus-based, internationally accepted standards-based technologies and operational policies for data sharing and integration.

The Federal Geospatial Platform (FGP) is an initiative of the Government of Canada’s Federal Committee on Geomatics and Earth Observations (FCGEO), a committee of senior executives from 21 federal departments and agencies that are producers, consumers or stakeholders in activities, requirements and infrastructure related to geomatics. In 2017, the FCGEO community acted on an opportunity for federal departments and agencies to manage geospatial information assets in a more efficient and coordinated way by using a common “platform” of technical infrastructure, policies, standards and governance. The FGP fully leverages the standards, standards-based technologies and operational policies endorsed by the CGDI.

The FGP’s primary mission is to “Geo-enable the Canadian Federal Government”. The FGP intranet site (https://gcgeo.gc.ca) provides a collaborative online environment where federal government employees can easily share, find, view and analyze the Government of Canada’s authoritative geospatial data holdings to support informed and insightful decisions and policy-making, and ultimately provide better service for Canadians. Overall, the Federal Geospatial Platform provides an enabling infrastructure to the public service and to Canadians, for access, visualization and analysis of trusted geospatial data, services and applications.

Under the basic premise, “build it once, use it many times,” the FGP leverages coordination efforts and utilizes best practices, new technologies, and open standards to provide more accessible data and services while realizing efficiencies through shared, cloud-enabled infrastructure and economies of scale. This approach allows FGP to supply its data and services to other government initiatives. The FGP makes all federal open geospatial metadata and web services available to Canada’s Open Government Portal - Open Maps. The FGP will also underpin the Open Science and Data Platform for Cumulative Effects.

Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada are currently co-developing the Open Science and Data Platform for Cumulative Effects (OSDP), with the first release planned for spring 2020. The FGP is a primary delivery partner for the current OSDP initiative, with responsibility for making geospatial technologies, federal, provincial and territorial geospatial data and web services needed for cumulative effects analysis available to the OSDP.

The OSDP initiative aims to give to all Canadians a single point of access to data and scientific information to improve their understanding of cumulative effects and support impact impacts and cumulative effects assessments. The scope of data and information planned for release through the OSDP highlights a critical need to collaborate with all partners towards greater data interoperability.

How the OSDP integrates into the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure is shown in Figure 1.

Data interoperability is generally defined as the ability for data held in one system to be compatible with other data products or systems and thus able to be integrated with other datasets across a number of different systems or analytical products. Data interoperability can be achieved by optimizing both the usability and reusability of data through the use of open standards.

This CDS will focus research and discussion on the use case of geospatial data typically required for environmental regional assessments and / or cumulative effects analyses (RA/CE).

NRCan’s current commitment to providing essential geospatial data via the Federal Geospatial Platform, to support initiatives such as the Open Science and Data Platform for Cumulative Effects, is driving this context.

Additionally, the broad scope of geospatial data requirements for RA/CE, as well as climate change studies and science, make this use case particularly and widely applicable to many stakeholders.

The scope of data needed for regional assessments or cumulative effects analysis confirms a critical need to collaborate with all partners towards greater data interoperability. An example of the wide variety and quantity of data required for a Regional Assessments and Cumulative Effects analysis is demonstrated by the recently completed “Regional Assessment of Offshore Oil and Gas Exploratory Drilling East of Newfoundland and Labrador”. This assessment included the following data categories:

A more comprehensive list is shown in Figure 2.

The CDS phase will:

Pending successful completion of the CDS, the Interoperability Pilot phase will follow the project plan developed as part of the CDS as a collaborative Canada-based OGC Innovation Program initiative with active participation by multiple OGC member organizations. The goal of the Phase 2 Interoperability Pilot will be to test concepts and solutions resulting from the Concept Development Study in a real-world scenario where data from multiple jurisdictions in Canada are sourced and used as input into regional assessments that range over one or more jurisdictional boundaries.

Areas of cumulative effects analysis or regional assessments often include more than one administrative area (i.e. a watershed that crosses one or more borders) and involve data inputs from multiple jurisdictions with varying data policies and standards. Examining and increasing levels of standards-based interoperability across jurisdictions should result in efficiencies for not only accessing but also utilizing data from different governments. The Pilot will source data from multiple Canadian jurisdictions for use in a cumulative effects regional assessment that itself ranges over one or more jurisdictional boundaries.

Other Pilot goals include:

The Pilot will result in publication of an engineering report detailing the results of the project, as well as webinars (to be presented in both Official Languages) that present and promote the results and recommendations.

The region to be explored by the pilot will be determined in the planning stage, in consultation with stakeholders and proposed pilot participants.

Responses to this RFI are due by May 29, 2020 as listed in the Master Schedule (see Section 8). Responses will be distributed to members of the organizations listed in section 5. Submissions will remain in the control of this group and will be used for the purposes identified in this RFI. A summary of the RFI Responses may be made public. If you wish to submit proprietary information, contact (techdesk@opengeospatial.org) in advance of sending the response.

Send your response in electronic version to the OGC Technology Desk (techdesk@opengeospatial.org) by the submission deadline. Microsoft® Word format is preferred, however, Rich Text Format, or Adobe Portable Document Format® (PDF) are acceptable.

A response to this RFI shall respond to as many applicable aspects defined in section 4 as possible. No particular format is required, but any response should be structured in a way that allows understanding of the respondents’ position on key aspects as listed in Section 6: stakeholders, architecture, data, scenarios & use cases, requirements & constraints, operation & organization, and applications & technologies. Respondents are free to add any additional topic as they think appropriate. Please limit the total response to 15 pages.

Questions and requests for clarification should be sent to techdesk@opengeospatial.org.

Questions received as well as clarifications from the RFI developers will be posted publicly at the Modernizing SDI CDS web site:

https://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/modernizingsdi

The organizations issuing this RFI will not reimburse submitters for any costs incurred in connection with preparing responses to this RFI. Cost share opportunities should arise from the Request for Quotation described in the abstract of this document, during the follow-on Pilot activity.