Meetings

International Cartographic Association

Working Group on

Incremental Updating and Versioning

2nd Joint ICA & ISPRS Workshop on

Incremental Updating and Versioning of Spatial Data Bases

VIP Room, Beijing Continental Grand Hotel, Beijing, China

Saturday 4 to Sunday 5 August 2001

Attendees:

Ammatzia Peled (Israel, co-chair), Antony Cooper (South Africa, co-chair), Maria Pla (Spain), Alan Swift (Australia), Sue Sleath (United Kingdom), Miguel Garriga (USA), Haim Serebro (Israel), Jan Beyen (Belgium), FO Akinyemi (Nigeria), Tapani Sarjakoski (Finland), Josep Luis Colomar (Spain), Henri Aalders (the Netherlands), Hakime Kadri Dahmani (France), Hari Shankar Gupta (India).

Saturday 4 August 2001

Dr Peled welcomed everyone and all attendees introduced themselves and gave a brief background on why they were attending the workshop. Dr Peled gave a brief history of the International Cartographic Association’s (ICA) Working Group on Incremental Updating and Versioning and explained the Working Group’s (WG) terms of reference. The WG was established by the ICA Executive during the 19^th International Cartographic Conference (ICC) in August 1999, where it first met to clarify its role and terms of reference. During July 2000, at the XIX^th Congress of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), the WG held its first joint workshop with the ISPRS. This was a one-day event at which a number of papers were presented to help understand the problems being addressed and to describe practical experiences. This, the 2^nd joint workshop, follows a similar format with a number of presentations, but the extra day allows for more time for discussions to try to identify the specific concepts of incremental updating and versioning, and the issues to be addressed.

The WG is planning to publish a book over the next year, which will draw on the presentations at the two workshops, invited papers and papers developed out of the discussions during the workshops.

The WG has a Web site at http://geo.haifa.ac.il/~icaupdt, but some attendees have had difficulty with the swung dash, so it will be aliased to http://geo.haifa.ac.il/icaupdt as well. One of Dr Peled’s students has begun compiling a bibliography on incremental updating and versioning, which is available on the Web site.

After a brief discussion of some of the issues, the following presentations were made. Either the full presentation or its abstract is available on the WG’s Web site, so they are not discussed here.

Antony Cooper: Incremental Updating and Versioning - the keynote address, this attempted to sketch the overall picture of the issues being addressed.

Ammatzia Peled: Updating urban GIS data set - this presentation described a project for updating an urban GIS, where log files were used to track all updates (additions, deletions and changes).
Sue Sleath: Why the Ordnance Survey is interested in versioning ¼ - this presentation described the development of Ordnance Survey’s (OS) new Digital National Framework (DNF), the main driver for which is the British Government’s joined up geography programme. More details are available from OS’s Web site: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk.
Ammatzia Peled: Real-time quality control: first step towards automatic incremental updating - this presentation described automated quality control procedures implemented to fix errors in a data base.
Jan Beyen: Questionnaire on incremental updating - this was not a prepared presentation, but summarised the responses to a questionnaire Mr Beyen had circulated recently.

After the presentations, an open discussion was held, during which a number of issues and concepts were identified. After the close of proceedings for the day, Dr Peled, Mr Cooper and Prof Aalders took the list and grouped them into eight broad categories.

Sunday 5 August 2001

Proceedings on the second day began with two presentations:

Lluís Colomer: Updating topographic databases: the example of the Topographic Database of Catalonia at 1:5000 - this presentation described their experience with updating their large-scale topographic database for the whole of Catalonia, introducing an underlying topological model to make the data suitable for GIS applications. The data capture is done entirely by photogrammetry.
Ammatzia Peled: Multi-source incremental updating of a national spatial data base - this presentation described some practical experience with updating their national spatial data base, with updates being made asynchronously from two different projects in parallel.

Thereafter, the issues and concepts identified on the Saturday were discussed, and more were added. Finally, a number of tasks were identified that need to be completed before the next workshop of the WG, which is scheduled to take place in Europe during the northern summer in 2002:

Refine some of the issues (Everyone).
Re-arrange the lists of issues (Ammatzia, Antony, Henri).
Draw up a matrix of the issues (Ammatzia, Antony, Henri).
Set up a mailing list/list server/mail reflector (Ammatzia).
Organise the Summer 2002 meeting (end of June?).
Write the chapters for the WG's book.
Complete the bibliography on incremental updating and versioning.
Identify other potential participants (people and organisations).

The workshop closed with lunch.

Working Group report back session

Room 3058, Beijing International Convention Center, Beijing, China

Thursday, 9 August 2001

Attendees:

Ammatzia Peled (Israel, co-chair), Antony Cooper (South Africa, co-chair), Tapani Sarjakoski (Finland), Bert Kolk (the Netherlands), Bengt Rystedt (ICA Executive liaison), Dan Lee (USA), Hari Shankar (India), Joachim Bobrich (Germany), FO Akinyemi (Nigeria), Maria Pla (Spain), Josep lluis Colomer (Spain), Blanca Baella (Spain).

During an ICC, it is normal for the ICA’s Commissions and WGs to hold report-back sessions, to keep other delegates at ICCs informed of their activities.

Dr Peled welcomed everyone and all attendees introduced themselves. Dr Peled then gave a brief history of the WG and explained the WG’s terms of reference. Mr Cooper then gave an abbreviated version of his keynote address from the workshop, and presented quickly the issues and concepts identified during the workshop.

During the discussions, the following were raised:

EuroGeographics has a Working Group IX for Updating Data Bases, currently chaired by Slovakia, and the ICA WG should make contact with EuroGeographics’ WG IX. EuroGeographics also has a research and development forum.
The ICA WG should arrange a meeting for NMAs with EuroGeographics WG IX.
There will be an OEEPE/ISPRS Workshop: From 2D to 3D – establishment and maintenance of national core geospatial databases, co-chaired by Dr Peled, in Hanover, Germany, 8-10 October 2001.
The ICA WG is addressing the updating and versioning of both data bases and maps. The essence of what we are doing is on protecting the integrity and spatial referencing of value-added data and topology.
The ICA WG should consider liaising with the Open GIS Consortium (OGC), as some of their standards, such as GML, might help with incremental updating and versioning.

The following outline for the WG’s proposed book was submitted to the ICA’s Publishing WG during the ICC:

Incremental Updating and Versioning of Geospatial Data Bases

Editors: Ammatzia Peled and Antony Cooper

Proposed chapters for the publication:

Editorial: Incremental Updating and Versioning of Geospatial Data Bases, Antony Cooper (South Africa) and Ammatzia Peled (Israel).
The International Cartographic Association's Working Group on Incremental Updating and Versioning, Antony Cooper (South Africa) and Ammatzia Peled (Israel).
Incremental updating and versioning, Antony Cooper (South Africa) and Ammatzia Peled (Israel).

Practical experiences of mapping agencies:

Israel National GIS, Ammatzia Peled and Uri Raizman (Israel).
Why the Ordnance Survey is interested in versioning, Sue Sleath (UK).
Updating topographic data bases: the example of the Topographic Database of Catalonia at 1:5000, Maria Pla, Santi Sànchez and J Llois Colomer (Spain).
The Belgian topographic data base, Jan Beyen (Belgium).
Revision of maps registering only true changes, Peter Højholt and Dorthe Hølme (Denmark)
BD Carto and BD Topo, Hakime Kadri Dahmani (France).

Multi-source updating

Quality control: first steps towards incremental updating, Ammatzia Peled (Israel).
Multi-source incremental updating of a national spatial data base, Ammatzia Peled (Israel).
Fusion and incremental updating of cartographic generalized data, Joachim Bobrich (Germany).
A generic model for the propagation of geometry updates in version-managed environments, Stefan Kampshoff and Jochen Hettwer (Germany).

Standards, software and transfer procedures

A Dutch experience, Henri Aalders (The Netherlands).
Urban GIS incremental updating, Ammatzia Peled (Israel).
Incremental Updating using the Gothic Versioned Object Database with the Hydrographic S57 ENC and SOTF Spatial Object Transfer Formats, Paul Hardy (UK).
Incremental updating using the gothic versioned object database with the hydrographic G57 ENC and soft spatial object transfer formats, Paul Hardy and Peter Woodsford (UK).

Developing the theory

On categorising the components of incremental updating and versioning processes, Antony Cooper (South Africa) and Ammatzia Peled (Israel).
Different strategies for assigning unique identifiers to geospatial objects, Antony Cooper, Ammatzia Peled, Henri Aalders, Sue Sleath, Jan Beyen, Lluis Colomer.