JISC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES

PROGRESS REPORT

JISC Progress Report

Overview of Project
Grant Statement
I confirm the project is being conducted under the terms agreed with JISC in the letter of grant and the
JISC Terms and Conditions attached to it.

The project has been extended until the end of April 2007. The extension was granted by the JISC
Digital Repositories Programme Manager via email on 21 st November 2005. Project consortium
partners have acknowledged this extension in writing via email (see Appendix B).

2. Aims and Objectives

There are no changes to the original aims/objectives outlined in the project plan.

The targets set for this reporting period are:

Target Status Comment

Project web site set up Met http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade
Consortium agreement signed Met Submitted to programme manager
Submission detailed project plan Met Submitted to programme manager
WP3 compendium of use cases Met Awaiting approval from OS on publication of
describing derived data report
WP1 analysis of suitability of Partly Met Literature review complete. Final report to be
existing software written after more investigation. More detail is
provided in Section 15.
WP4 audit of geospatial data Work Survey commenced 9th January 2006.
within institutional repositories underway
WP2 informal repository use Not Investigations to be run in parallel with feedback
cases commenced on formal demonstrator. More detail is provided
in Section 15.
WP2 classification of existing Not Dependent upon informal repository use cases
informal repositories commenced being complete.

3. Overall Approach
Generally there are no changes to the overall approach outlined in the project plan.

However, as described in the project plan, the initial concept for demonstrator development was to
rely upon the pool of already-authorised academic geospatial data users to provide feedback and
direction on user requirements for a repository capable of managing geospatial data assets.
Specifically in the project proposal we listed UKBORDERS and Digimap users as providing that
controlled environment. Already issues relating to the manner in which different data sets are
licensed are causing challenges. For example, because UKBORDERS users are explicitly licensed to
have access to particular datasets (not the entire service), it is proving too complex to set up a
demonstrator that could correctly manage authenticated access to derived UKBORDERS products.
Therefore the first project demonstrator will be available to Digimap registered users only.

4. Project Outputs
Progress during the reporting period has been slower than anticipated. This can be directly linked to
the length of time taken to recruit a full time project officer. Due to a lack of suitably qualified
applicants two rounds of advertising, short-listing and interviewing took place between August and
November 2005. A full time project officer finally joined the team on 5 th January 2006.

General project management deliverables (as outlined in section 2. Aims and Objectives) have all
been achieved.

Completion of individual work package deliverables (as outlined in section 2. Aims and Objectives and
detailed in section 15. Work Packages) has been variable.

5. Project Outcomes
Project Objectives
The broad aim of GRADE is to assist in developing policy and best-practice strategies for geospatial
data sharing and reuse by providing demonstrable evidence of how, why and under what
circumstances geospatial data are (and may) be managed via repositories.

The main findings to date are as follows:

1. Informal discussions suggest that a culture of data sharing and reuse within geospatial
academics does not readily exist other than on a very ad hoc basis. So far the evidence
suggests that academic departments who deal with geospatial data have very poor data
management practices and are struggling with simple concepts such as securing sufficient
disk space for data storage. In discussing the concept of a repository, many academics view
a repository initially as a solution to their data store problems and are not at all familiar with
the idea of a repository being a dynamic collection of digital assets that could enable the
sharing and reuse of geospatial data. More evidence on data management practices will be
gathered during the next reporting period.

2. From carrying out an international literature review, it is clear there are a very limited number
of projects/research studies working in the area of repository technology for managing
geospatial data.

3. From carrying out an initial review of existing open source software it is clear that no product
currently exists that could provide the functionality required to properly manage geospatial
data. Fundamental to that management is the ability to store coordinate geometry as part of
the geospatial metadata thus enabling a variety of location-based searching.

Interim Conclusions
The issue of uncertainty over IPR is frequently raised when the concept of sharing research data is
discussed with researchers. Through informal discussions, researchers have confirmed they are
unclear of what can and cannot be done with their research data even when there is awareness, for
example, that their funding council mandates depositing of that data. This uncertainty leads to a very
real reluctance in making research data available for reuse. It is apparent that the complexity and
variety of licences for geospatial data, and their associated inheritance models, are inhibiting the
reuse and sharing of geospatial data.

Due to the concept of a dynamic repository for data sharing and reuse being fairly immature as
described above, the role of the project demonstrators will become more fundamental in providing a
vision of what could exist. This may mean that demonstrators will need to be more provocative,
demonstrating what could be done, as opposed to responding to users requirements. The life cycle
of demonstrators may need to be shorter and more iterative and be used to draw out some of the
feedback we had hoped would be forthcoming earlier in the project. This ongoing learning throughout
the life of the project applies also to confirming our views of the suitability of existing software for
building geospatial repositories. It was originally anticipated conclusions could be made early in the
project related to suitability of software, but any conclusions will not be reached until the end of the
project after several iterations of demonstrator repositories (this impacts upon deliverables in work
package 1).

The obvious lesson learned has been to not underestimate the time involved to recruit staff. Related
to the recruitment issues, when working in a technically-immature area, such as digital repositories, it
can be limiting to seek applicants with demonstrable experience in that area.

6. Stakeholder Analysis
The level of engagement with stakeholders to date has been high.

Engagement with immediate project partners commenced with a project kick off meeting in
September 2005. Details of the kick off meeting including a full list of attendees and copies of
presentations can be found on the GRADE project web site at
http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/meetings.html. Of note, oversees attendees including Steve Morris,
North Carolina State University Libraries and Greg Janee, Alexandria Digital Library Project,
University of California, Santa Barbara. Both Steve and Greg are managing National Digital
Information Infrastructure and Preservation Programme projects related to geospatial data.

Other project partner events include a consortium partner-only meeting held in December 2005 and
the setting up of two JISCMAIL lists the first for full project partners, the second for consortium
partners only.

Other notable events include:

o On 9th January 2006, Anne Robertson presented to the JISC Geospatial Working Group on
the GRADE project
o On 9th November 2005 Anne Robertson co-presented with Steve Morris, North Carolina State
University Libraries to the Open Geospatial Consortium Technical Committee Architecture
Working Group on issues for working with geospatial data and repositories.
o On 4th November 2005 EDINA ran a GeoForum event attended by geospatial academics from
across the UK. Anne Robertson co-ran a workshop on data management, metadata and
repositories and discussed the GRADE project.

On a more general level, Anne Robertson and David Medyckyj-Scott attended the Data Repository
Cluster meeting organised by JISC as part of the Digital Repositories Programme meeting in Glasgow
in October 2005. Also, GRADE project staff meet informally with other University of Edinburgh
Information Services staff (including StORe project staff) who are involved in repository work.

7. Risk Analysis
As described in Section 4, considerable delay was experienced in recruiting an appropriately qualified
full time project officer. This in turn has impacted upon general project progress to date. To this end,
a no-cost project extension (until the end of April 2007) has been negotiated with the Programme
Manager to ensure sufficient time for project work completion. Plans are underway to extend staff
contracts to cover this extension.

8. Standards
At this time, there are no changes to the standards listed in the project plan.
9. Technical Development
At this time, there are no changes in the development approach or technologies to be used.

10. Intellectual Property Rights

The project-level IPR statement made in the submitted project plan remains valid.

Project Resources
11. Project Partners
One additional associate partner has been added to the GRADE associate partner list. The Kingston
Centre for GIS at Kingston University London, is represented by Dr Mike Smith. Due to Mikes
interest in geospatial data licensing and broad knowledge of the GI academic community and his role
as chief editor of the Journal of Maps (www.journalofmaps.com), the project will benefit from his
addition.

Due to the delay in recruiting a GRADE project officer, two pieces of work (WP1 literature review and
WP3 derived data use case compendium) were commissioned from external bodies for completion.
This has assisted with timely production of deliverables.

The recent presentation given to the JISC Geospatial Working Group has opened the way for
discussion with, and the possible involvement of, the Archaeology Data Service at the Department of
Archaeology, University of York and academics at the Department of Geometric Engineering,
University College London.

EDINA has close ties with the Digital Curation Centre. Repository-related staff in both organisations
meet to informally share experiences and consider appropriate directions for the effective preservation
of geospatial data.

EDINA also has good ties with the Institute of Geography at Edinburgh University. One of the current
GIS MSc students is considering the use of Fedora for web-enabling a particular project collection of
geospatial data. GRADE staff are involved informally with this work.

12. Project Management

During the reporting period, the following staff have been recruited:
Anne Robertson Project Manager
Rebecca Seymour Project Officer
Jonathan Gu Legal Officer

Having been involved in writing the original project proposal, and having kept abreast of project
developments since, James Reid, EDINA is taking on the role of Project Advisor. This continual
involvement in the project to date is invaluable as James will take over Project Manager
responsibilities while Anne Robertson is on maternity leave from March until November 2006. Anne
will assume Project Manager role on her return in November 2006.

The GRADE project requires a degree of software engineering effort for demonstrator development.
It is appropriate to highlight in this report that during the next reporting period, internal EDINA software
engineering resources will come under competing pressure from work required to enhance the
Digimap service with Ordnance Survey MasterMap and British Geological Survey data. The
reassigning and timetabling of software engineering effort may impact upon GRADE-related
development work. Every effort will be taken to ensure this impact is kept to a minimum.

13. Programme Support

GRADE has good contact with the Repositories Programme manager. The programme manager is
kept informed of project developments via the GRADE project JISC mail list. Through discussions
with the programme manager, GRADE has made contact with the Australian Partnership for
Sustainable Repositories. This group has found that a significant number of new research projects
centre around some kind of data fusion with geospatial data. They are looking to develop tools to
assist small to medium size research projects (of nonGIS experts) to incorporate geospatial aspects
to their storage and presentation in repositories. Both projects are committed to sharing experiences
and are willing to consider the possibility of more formal ways to do so.

The programme provides a good level of support. Informing programme participants of international
developments/trends in similar areas is of great benefit and should continue.

As project manager, I feel programme participants would benefit from greater visibility of the progress
of other repository programme projects. Perhaps each project manager could commit to emailing a
dot point list at the end of each month to the JISC-DRP mail list giving a brief overview of monthly
activities?

14. Budget
For details see Appendix A.

In summary to date:
o There is significant underspend in staff expenditure due to the unforeseen delay in
recruitment. This will be counterbalanced towards the end of the project as a no-cost 3 month
project extension is now in place.
o There is also a reasonable underspend in travel-related expenditure. This would appear to be
explained by project partners being able to take advantage of cheap airline deals.
o A small overspend of 2000 is forecast for fees to external academics since Kingston GIS
Centre (described in Section 11. Project Partners) has joined the GRADE project. This
overspend will be counterbalanced by the savings made in the travel-related budget.

Objectives for the next reporting period 01 February 2006 31 July 2006 are:
o Gather feedback on the first demonstrator repository and feed it into the decision-making
process for subsequent formal demonstrators
o Develop next formal demonstrator
o Compile use cases of how informal repositories are being used
o Produce a classification of existing informal repositories
o Commence set up of informal demonstrator
o Progress work in creating a framework for approved data sharing respecting digital rights
o Compile the results of audit of geospatial asset management within existing institutional
repositories
o Carry out a SWOT analysis on institutional v. discipline-centric repositories
o Continue the technology watch into how discipline-centric repositories can interoperate with
external repositories, information environments and eScience infrastructures
o Hold 2 consortium partner meetings
o Preparations for full project partner meeting
Due to the lengthy delay in staff recruitment and subsequent project extension, it is appropriate to
submit a revised detailed work package table (similar to that submitted with the original detailed
project plan). The revised work package table can be found at Appendix C.