[Data-Mongers] Noon Monday, 3/7 Informatics Talk - D. Shorthouse - The Geospatial Axis: Tools, Techniques, and Hands-on Experience

[Holly Miller]

The next Informal Lunch Talk will be:

When: Noon, Monday, March 7, 2011
Where: 104/105 Candle House on the MBL Campus (map)
Who: David Shorthouse, Center for Library and Informatics, MBL
Title: "The Geospatial Axis: Tools, Techniques, and Hands-on Experience"

Summary:

There are two major axes upon which the bulk of biological information about taxa may be strung together: taxonomic names and geospatial associations. Programs within the Center for Library and Informatics at the MBL have been developing indices, tools, and services that compile, organize, and reconcile taxonomic names with the expectation that these will help unify the Big New Biology. However, these products are largely idiosyncratic because there are not yet web service standards that would otherwise accelerate or federate this process. In contrast, geospatial services and products are well established in large part because of efforts by participants in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). As a consequence, organizations have mobilized their geospatial data in spectacular fashion.  

I will provide an overview of OGC standards by illustrating where and how they are used. I will also draw awareness of important efforts in the biological sciences that produce and query species observation or distribution data by capitalizing on OGC efforts. Finally, I will provide a step-by-step recipe to build a proof-of-concept, geospatially aware database, populate it with raw observations data, and wrap it with an intuitive web-based tool that allows visitors to freely draw lines and shapes on maps to both expose and insert new data.

Speaker Bio:
David P. Shorthouse is an applied spider ecologist by training and web application developer in practice. In his past life, he explored reasons for species-specific responses to forest fire and harvest in the wilds of Northern Alberta at the University of Alberta and to mine tailing rehabilitation in Northern Ontario at Laurentian University. He develops tools and services for the Global Names Architecture and Data Conservancy, two major projects in the Center for Library and Informatics. He is also the visionary and lead developer of LifeDesks, an open platform for people to self-organize and to create new species-centric content with automated flow to the Encyclopedia of Life.

The Monday Lunch talks are held every other Monday. We have created a wiki page for these and other Informatics events in Woods Hole. Please consider giving a talk, we have lot's of openings in 2011! Let us know if you about any informatics related event and we will add it to this page. Those of you who haven't subscribed to the Informatics discussion list, you might want to. Information on how to subscribe is on the wiki page above.

See you Monday!

Holly Miller 
hmiller at mbl.edu

Anne Thessen 
athessen at eol.org

Andrew Maffei 
amaffei at whoi.edu


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