1. technology and computing
2. software
3. databases

COVER SHEET FOR PROPOSAL TO THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT/SOLICITATION NO./CLOSING DATE/if not in response to a program announcement/solicitation enter NSF 03-2
NSF 03-521
FOR NSF USE ONLY
NSF PROPOSAL NUMBER
04/09/03
FOR CONSIDERATION BY NSF ORGANIZATION UNIT(S)
(Indicate the most specific unit known, i.e. program, division, etc.)
OIA - PARTNRSHIPS FOR INNOVATION-PFI
DATE RECEIVED NUMBER OF COPIES DIVISION ASSIGNED FUND CODE DUNS# (Data Universal Numbering System)
FILE LOCATION
053599908
EMPLOYER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (EIN) OR
TAXPAYER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (TIN)
IS THIS PROPOSAL BEING SUBMITTED TO ANOTHER FEDERAL
AGENCY?
YES
NO
IF YES, LIST ACRONYM(S)
SHOW PREVIOUS AWARD NO. IF THIS IS
A RENEWAL
AN ACCOMPLISHMENT-BASED RENEWAL
936001786
NAME OF ORGANIZATION TO WHICH AWARD SHOULD BE MADE
ADDRESS OF AWARDEE ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING 9 DIGIT ZIP CODE
Oregon State University
312 Kerr Administration
Corvallis, OR. 973312140
Oregon State University
AWARDEE ORGANIZATION CODE (IF KNOWN)
0032102000
NAME OF PERFORMING ORGANIZATION, IF DIFFERENT FROM ABOVE
ADDRESS OF PERFORMING ORGANIZATION, IF DIFFERENT, INCLUDING 9 DIGIT ZIP CODE
PERFORMING ORGANIZATION CODE (IF KNOWN)
IS AWARDEE ORGANIZATION (Check All That Apply)
(See GPG II.C For Definitions)
TITLE OF PROPOSED PROJECT
MINORITY BUSINESS
IF THIS IS A PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL
WOMAN-OWNED BUSINESS THEN CHECK HERE
Virtual Oregon: A Center of Innovation for Data Cataloging, Access,
and Geospatial Awareness
REQUESTED AMOUNT
REQUESTED STARTING DATE
PROPOSED DURATION (1-60 MONTHS)
599,165
$
SMALL BUSINESS
FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATION
36
SHOW RELATED PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL NO.
IF APPLICABLE
09/01/03
months
CHECK APPROPRIATE BOX(ES) IF THIS PROPOSAL INCLUDES ANY OF THE ITEMS LISTED BELOW
BEGINNING INVESTIGATOR (GPG I.A)
HUMAN SUBJECTS (GPG II.C.11)
DISCLOSURE OF LOBBYING ACTIVITIES (GPG II.C)
Exemption Subsection
PROPRIETARY & PRIVILEGED INFORMATION (GPG I.B, II.C.6)
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIVE ACTIVITIES: COUNTRY/COUNTRIES INVOLVED
or IRB App. Date
HISTORIC PLACES (GPG II.C.9)
(GPG II.C.9)
SMALL GRANT FOR EXPLOR. RESEARCH (SGER) (GPG II.C.11)
VERTEBRATE ANIMALS (GPG II.C.11) IACUC App. Date
PI/PD DEPARTMENT
PI/PD POSTAL ADDRESS
104 Wilkinson Hall
Department of Geosciences
PI/PD FAX NUMBER
Corvallis, OR 973315506
United States
541-737-1200
NAMES (TYPED)
HIGH RESOLUTION GRAPHICS/OTHER GRAPHICS WHERE EXACT COLOR
REPRESENTATION IS REQUIRED FOR PROPER INTERPRETATION (GPG I.E.1)
High Degree
Yr of Degree
Telephone Number
Electronic Mail Address
PhD
1994
541-737-1229
dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu
MS
1965
541-737-7300
Karyle.Butcher@orst.edu
Ph.D.
1986
541-737-2109
pancake@cs.orst.edu
MPA
1986
503-754-0123
curt.pederson@orst.edu
PhD
1979
503-754-0123
Hal.Salwasser@orst.edu
PI/PD NAME
Dawn J Wright
CO-PI/PD
Karyle S Butcher
CO-PI/PD
Cherri M Pancake
CO-PI/PD
Curt Pederson
CO-PI/PD
Hal Salwasser
Page 1 of 2
CERTIFICATION PAGE
Certification for Authorized Organizational Representative or Individual Applicant:
By signing and submitting this proposal, the individual applicant or the authorized official of the applicant institution is: (1) certifying that
statements made herein are true and complete to the best of his/her knowledge; and (2) agreeing to accept the obligation to comply with NSF
award terms and conditions if an award is made as a result of this application. Further, the applicant is hereby providing certifications
regarding debarment and suspension, drug-free workplace, and lobbying activities (see below), as set forth in Grant
Proposal Guide (GPG), NSF 03-2. Willful provision of false information in this application and its supporting documents or in reports required
under an ensuing award is a criminal offense (U. S. Code, Title 18, Section 1001).
In addition, if the applicant institution employs more than fifty persons, the authorized official of the applicant institution is certifying that the institution has
implemented a written and enforced conflict of interest policy that is consistent with the provisions of Grant Policy Manual Section 510; that to the best
of his/her knowledge, all financial disclosures required by that conflict of interest policy have been made; and that all identified conflicts of interest will have
been satisfactorily managed, reduced or eliminated prior to the institution’s expenditure of any funds under the award, in accordance with the
institution’s conflict of interest policy. Conflicts which cannot be satisfactorily managed, reduced or eliminated must be disclosed to NSF.
Drug Free Work Place Certification
By electronically signing the NSF Proposal Cover Sheet, the Authorized Organizational Representative or Individual Applicant is providing the Drug Free Work Place Certification
contained in Appendix A of the Grant Proposal Guide.
Debarment and Suspension Certification
(If answer "yes", please provide explanation.)
Is the organization or its principals presently debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment, declared ineligible, or voluntarily excluded
from covered transactions by any Federal department or agency?
Yes
No
By electronically signing the NSF Proposal Cover Sheet, the Authorized Organizational Representative or Individual Applicant is providing the Debarment and Suspension Certification
contained in Appendix B of the Grant Proposal Guide.
Certification Regarding Lobbying
This certification is required for an award of a Federal contract, grant, or cooperative agreement exceeding $100,000 and for an award of a Federal loan or
a commitment providing for the United States to insure or guarantee a loan exceeding $150,000.
Certification for Contracts, Grants, Loans and Cooperative Agreements
The undersigned certifies, to the best of his or her knowledge and belief, that:
(1) No federal appropriated funds have been paid or will be paid, by or on behalf of the undersigned, to any person for influencing or attempting to influence
an officer or employee of any agency, a Member of Congress, an officer or employee of Congress, or an employee of a Member of Congress in connection
with the awarding of any federal contract, the making of any Federal grant, the making of any Federal loan, the entering into of any cooperative agreement,
and the extension, continuation, renewal, amendment, or modification of any Federal contract, grant, loan, or cooperative agreement.
(2) If any funds other than Federal appropriated funds have been paid or will be paid to any person for influencing or attempting to influence an officer or
employee of any agency, a Member of Congress, an officer or employee of Congress, or an employee of a Member of Congress in connection with this
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Activities,’’ in accordance with its instructions.
(3) The undersigned shall require that the language of this certification be included in the award documents for all subawards at all tiers including
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required certification shall be subject to a civil penalty of not less than $10,000 and not more than $100,000 for each such failure.
AUTHORIZED ORGANIZATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE
SIGNATURE
DATE
NAME
Peggy S Lowry
TELEPHONE NUMBER
541-737-3437
03/12/03
ELECTRONIC MAIL ADDRESS
FAX NUMBER
Sponsored.Programs@orst.edu
541-737-3093
*SUBMISSION OF SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS IS VOLUNTARY AND WILL NOT AFFECT THE ORGANIZATION’S ELIGIBILITY FOR AN AWARD. HOWEVER, THEY ARE AN
INTEGRAL PART OF THE INFORMATION SYSTEM AND ASSIST IN PROCESSING THE PROPOSAL. SSN SOLICITED UNDER NSF ACT OF 1950, AS AMENDED.
Page 2 of 2
Virtual Oregon:
A Center of Innovation for Data Cataloging, Access, and Geospatial Awareness
Lead PI and Institution – Dawn Wright, Oregon State University (OrSt)
Partner Organizations - Academic: U of Oregon, Oregon Natural Heritage Program, San Diego Supercomputer
Center. Govt: City of Corvallis GIS, State of Oregon Dept. of Administrative Services, Oregon Watershed
Enhancement Board, Willamette Council of Governments. Industry: Alsea Geospatial, ESRI, Global Mapping
Technologies, Titan. NGO: Ecotrust. Federal: USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Lab.
Proposed is the development of innovations in the cataloging and distribution of place-based (geospatial)
environmental data of Oregon, along with education and outreach throughout the state on how best to incorporate
various data sets, images, and geospatial tools into classroom teaching and environmental activism. Our new catalogue
will have innovative features such as authentication, platform services, access control, and the ability to manage
different web services for data flow, backup, load balancing, etc. Planned innovation outcomes include a main
metadata and data catalogue incorporating statewide, federal, and library metadata standards; a backend framework to
link the catalog to actual data sets or web links that lead to external data sets; a web portal of data (with accompanying
tools, and services); training workshops for faculty, agencies and non-governmental organizations; training sessions and
educational modules for K-12 teachers and the general public (GIS Day); and a lecture series featuring distinguished
specialists in digital catalogues and databases, and libraries (including Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a strong
supporter of digital geospatial technology).
Intellectual merit of the project
Digital data sets are growing exponentially nationwide and our society has changed from being data-poor to datarich. At the same time, our ability to derive knowledge and management decisions from all of these data in an analytical
context remains poor. Any problems that remain in finding data are now compounded by the additional challenge of
effectively filtering through large volumes of it in order to find meaningful knowledge. From an organizational
perspective, although geospatial data sets are legion, there has been a general inability and often unwillingness to
exchange data across boundaries, exacerbated by low levels of coordination. Government agencies, businesses,
academic institution, and even non-profit organization all have a tremendous stake in the development and management
of geospatial data resources. Developing and maintaining a unified community database requires an organizational
structure that can build and link databases distributed throughout the worldwide web is sorely needed. Why geospatial
data? It is: (1) critical for managing our natural resources, all public infrastructure, land use planning, and health
services; (2) management is more difficult for most types of geospatial data sets because of their large volumes do not
lend themselves to existing database management approaches, particularly over the web; and (3) maps and imagery
(especially of local features) are unusually compelling tools for teaching and public awareness. We note that the NSF
PFI program has not yet funded an Oregon partnership, nor one that focuses on geospatial data in the manner that we
are proposing.
Broader impacts of the project
• Wide data dissemination to enhance scientific and technological understanding – Data will be broadly and
easily accessible to the state of Oregon’s natural resource community and to libraries, high schools, and
outreach sites. Linkages will be made to parallel research in geographic information science, digital library
development, and computer science.
• Advancing discovery and understanding; promoting teaching, training and learning – Our partnerships with
government, private sector, and non-governmental organizations will allow us to incorporate natural resource
data sets into faculty resource materials. Moreover, the project advances research in each of the component
disciplines by building on other recent work, an approach that will yield a number of student research topics at
both undergraduate and graduate levels
• Broadening the participation of underrepresented groups – Three of the PIs are women; one is a woman of
color. All will play vital roles in encouraging women and minority scientists to enter research careers. NACSE,
a component of Virtual Oregon, has an established policy of recruiting from underrepresented groups, who
consistently account for over 50% of its staff and student researchers.
• Benefiting society – Developing workshop materials and demos/tours/presentations for international GIS Day
will allow us to analyze, interpret and synthesize research and education results into formats understandable
and useful for non-scientists.
• Economic impact - The project heavily involves geographic information system (GIS) development, use, and
education. GIS is now a $7 billion industry, still expanding. 2001 software revenue topped $1.1 billion, an
increase of 14.3%. ESRI, a major industry partner in this proposal, has software revenues accounting for nearly
1/2 of the total. We have a specific goal of increasing the scientific and technological capabilities of the
workforce in GIS and similar geospatial technologies within the state of Oregon and to more fully meet these
important needs through internships with our partners.
Virtual Oregon:
A Center of Innovation for Data Cataloging, Access, and Geospatial Awareness
Narrative Description
(8- page limit according to NSF Program Solicitation 03-521)
The Challenge and the Need for Innovation
The economy and culture of western U.S. states, indeed of the entire nation, rely heavily on natural
resources. As such, it is vitally important that the resource managers, resource user in government agencies,
researchers, extension agents political leaders and activists, and the public be better informed about the
status of ecosystem conditions, the nature of the forces affecting ecosystems, and alternatives to past
management practices [Michener et al., 1994]. In Oregon, for example, analyses of vegetation patterns in
the western Cascades of Oregon [Spies et al. 1994] demonstrate the value of using diverse data sources
across political boundaries to assess spatial patterns and managerial options, particularly when wildfires hit.
For any specific geographic region, a repository of geo-referenced data on natural resources that can be
accessed by both governmental and non-governmental organizations is absolutely invaluable [e.g.,
Goodchild et al. 1996]. The public, the politicians, the resource managers, the scientists, etc. all must have
seamless, speedy, and efficient access to high-quality data. However, environmental and scientific data
on Oregon are too hard to find and access. Key data are dispersed across agencies, universities, and
organizations statewide, each using different types of software, data organization, and access mechanisms.
Digital data sets are growing exponentially nationwide, especially with recent launches of high-resolution
satellite systems [e.g., Carlson and Patel, 1997] and the increasing ease with which digital imagery, video,
and sound are delivered over the Internet. Digital libraries now enable 24-hour access to digital papers,
journals, books, and data [Buttenfield and Goodchild, 1996; Buttenfield, 1998]. And with the steady rise in
adoption and use of geographic information systems (GIS), there has been a proliferation of spatial data
available in digital form and a considerable increase in the number of users and producers of these data,
making access and effective integration a very difficult challenge [e.g., Nedovic-Bujic, 2002]. All of these
developments are literally changing the way people think and work, giving rise to the notion of "digital
worlds":
While the politicians struggle with the baggage of history, a new generation is emerging from the
digital landscape free of many of the old prejudices. These kids are released from the limitation of
geographic proximity as the sole basis of friendship, collaboration, play, and neighborhood.
[Negroponte, 1995, p. 230]
As scientific research becomes increasingly complex and interdisciplinary, scientists see the need to
develop 'collaboratories,' centers without walls in which "the nations' researchers can perform their
research without regard to geographical location--interacting with colleagues, accessing
instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, [and] accessing information in digital
libraries. [NSF Information Infrastructure Task Force, 1993]
Indeed, our society has changed from being data-poor to data-rich, but our ability to derive knowledge and
management decisions from all of these data in an analytical context remains poor. Any problems that
remain in finding data are now compounded by the additional challenge of effectively filtering through
large volumes of it in order to find meaningful knowledge. From an organizational perspective, although
geospatial data sets are legion, there has been a general inability and often unwillingness to exchange data
across boundaries, exacerbated by low levels of coordination [Mapping Science Committee, 2001;
Nedovic-Bujic, 2002]. In the United States, several national initiatives relate to the building of nationwide
partnerships and data infrastructures (e.g. e-Government, National Spatial Data Infrastructure, The National
Map, and Geospatial-One-Stop) [Mapping Science Committee, 2001; Nedovic-Bujic, 2002]. These
initiatives call for the development of data portals (aka clearinghouses) that connect the variety of spatial
data producers with their users, including government at all levels, private sector, and academic institutions.
Government agencies, businesses, academic institution, and even non-profit organization all have a
tremendous stake in the development and management of geospatial data resources. However, as reported
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recently by Sakar [2003], despite the expense and energy devoted to information sharing initiatives,
government at all three levels (local, state, and federal) is left to wonder if it really knows how to
implement them successfully. The pieces are out there, but they haven't been applied well to large-scale
efforts (e.g., statewide). Communication about the availability or the need for data is also lacking (caused
usually by the lack of proper metadata in order to properly assess geographic coverage, quality, accuracy,
point of contact for access, etc.), and thus the duplication of data sets is still a huge problem. In Oregon for
example, even experienced users of geospatial data with some GIS sophistication working in state agencies
and local governments continuing to have a serious problem finding natural resources data. They can
locate bits and pieces here and there but, over time as they locate a data type (e.g., a digital elevation model
to be used in a landslide susceptibility study along the Oregon coast), they end up finding several different
versions of the same in varying degrees of completeness or update. This problem is experienced by workers
in different agencies and regions around the state, obtaining different data sets to solve the same natural
resource problems and yet coming up with different answers. Data portals are proliferating in response but
that too may be become as problematic as the duplication of individual data sets (i.e., the duplication of
portals adding to the confusion – which portal to use and why; portals developed outside of comprehensive
partnerships such as the one proposed here). Again as reported by Sarkar [2003] in quoting the director of
the Center of Technology in Government, State University of New York at Albany:
We've talked for many, many years about one-stop shopping. We had those ideas about what was
possible, what those might mean in terms of the user. But only, I think, in the past number of years
have we begun to realize the extent of integration among all of those things. And what we've also
learned is we don't know very much about how to do it. [T. Prado in Sakar, 2003, www.fcw.com]
These challenges have also been identified by the University Consortium for Geographic Information
Science (UCGIS, www.ucgis.org), a non-profit consortium of over 70 of the nation’s leading universities
and research institutions in spatial theory, methods, technology, and data and the academic voice of the
geographic information science community, as a major short-term research priority. In fact, regional
partnerships that seek to guide and/or influence regional planning and urban development have been
identified by the UCGIS as critical not only for data solution but for enabling creative solutions to broader
environmental and socio-economic problems, for economic development, community service, and even the
homeland security issues of responding to threats, disasters, and developing emergency operation plans and
procedures [Nedovic-Budic, 2002; www.ucgis.org/f2areser.html; Sietzen, 2003]. The situation cries out for
innovation, innovation in the way that we catalog, distribute, and communicate regarding spatial data.
There are substantial economic workforce issues as well. In addition the GIS and broader geospatial
technology industries (which include global positioning systems, GPS, remote sensing, surveying, digital
and multimedia cartography) will continue to grow and require qualified candidates. These candidates must
NOT be just button pushers, but geospatially aware people who understand how to think critically about
data and the accompanying issues of data quality, data mining and knowledge discovery, data uncertainty,
data visualization, spatial analysis, [UCGIS, 1996], and how to capitalize on new knowledge produced
from efforts such as our proposed PFI partnership. GIS is now a $7 billion industry, with 2001
software revenue topped $1.1 billion, a 1-year increase of 14.3% [Daratech, 2002]. The Environmental
Systems Research Institute. ESRI, a major industry partner in this proposal, has software revenues
accounting for nearly one-half of the total. ESRI along with literally hundreds of other companies in scores
of different industries (e.g., forestry, agriculture, transportation, environmental management, defense and
intelligence, telecommunications, banking and insurance, retail and commercial business, petroleum,
water/wasterwater, law enforcement, etc.) are looking for individuals with excellent training and practical
experience with GIS.
Proposed is the development of innovations in the cataloging and distribution of place-based (geospatial)
environmental data of Oregon, along with education and outreach throughout the state on how best to
incorporate various data sets, images, and geospatial tools into classroom teaching and environmental
activism. Our new catalogue will have innovative features such as authentication, platform services, access
control, and the ability to manage different web services for data flow, backup, load balancing, etc. Planned
C-2
innovation outcomes include a main metadata and data catalogue incorporating both library and statewide
metadata standards; a web portal of data (with accompanying tools and services); training workshops for
faculty, agencies and non-governmental organizations; training sessions and educational modules for K-12
teachers and the general public (GIS Day); and a lecture series featuring distinguished specialists in digital
catalogues, databases, and libraries (including Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a supporter of digital
geospatial technology and keynote speaker at this year’s GIS in Action 2003 Conference, Portland, OR,
April 21-23, and, happily, with a conference theme on collaboration and partnerships).
The focus of the project is on geospatial technology (GIS, web GIS, servers and services, global positioning
systems or GPS, relational database management systems or RDBMS), and data within Oregon. Why
geospatial data? It is: (1) critical for managing our natural resources (forestry, agriculture, fisheries, water
and air quality, wildfire prevention and fighting, coastal and ocean management, etc.), all public
infrastructure, land use planning, and health services; (2) management is more difficult for most types of
geospatial data sets because of their large volumes do not lend themselves to existing database management
approaches, particularly over the web; and (3) maps and imagery (especially of local features) are unusually
compelling tools for teaching and public awareness.
Why Oregon? Oregon has a governor and legislature that are extremely supportive of natural resources
and the leadership of Oregon State University (OrSt) in this arena, good communication and collaborations
between the various state and federal natural resource agencies, local governments, non-governmental
organizations and citizens groups, as well as our close colleagues in higher education such as the University
of Oregon. As a national leader in ecological studies (ranked 11th nationally in general ecology and 1st in
forest ecology), OrSt already houses several major natural resource databases and has developed extensive
expertise in all aspects of natural resource information management. OrSt already has the required
infrastructure already in place: a high-speed data network and staff experienced in data archiving and user
support, as well as a strong record of cooperation among the colleges, other OrSt administrative units, and
Federal agency partners located on the OrSt campus. The partnership that we propose includes 14
representatives from academic, state/local government, the private sector, a federal research lab, and a nongovernmental environmental organization, all major stakeholders in the Oregon geographic information
science community, all of whom have expressed a desire and commitment to contribute to innovations in
data cataloging, access, and distribution (and for the longer term in data mining and knowledge discovery).
Further, all wish to avoid mass duplication of effort, of data, and the development of fragmented digital
systems. We note that the NSF PFI program has not yet funded an Oregon partnership (Figure 1), nor one
that focuses on geospatial data in the manner that we are proposing. We also have a specific goal of
increasing the scientific and technological capabilities of the workforce in GIS and similar geospatial
technologies within the state of Oregon, and to more fully meet these important needs through internships
with our partners.
Figure 1. Map of existing NSF Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) projects,
showing the geographic distribution, and along with awardee profiles on
the NSF PFI web site, the diversity of lead institutions and distribution of
industry sectors served. No grants have been awarded to an Oregon
partnership yet.
Broader Impacts of the Proposed Project
• Wide data dissemination to enhance scientific and technological understanding – Data will be broadly and easily
accessible to the state of Oregon’s natural resource community and to libraries, high schools, and outreach sites.
Linkages will be made to parallel research in geographic information science, digital library development, and
computer science.
• Advancing discovery and understanding; promoting teaching, training and learning – Our partnerships with
government, private sector, and non-governmental organizations will allow us to incorporate natural resource
data sets into faculty resource materials. Moreover, the project advances research in each of the component
disciplines by building on other recent work, an approach that will yield a number of student research topics at
C-3
both undergraduate and graduate levels
• Broadening the participation of underrepresented groups – Three of the PIs are women; one is a woman of color.
All will play vital roles in encouraging women and minority scientists to enter research careers. NACSE, a
component of Virtual Oregon, has an established policy of recruiting from underrepresented groups, who
consistently account for over 50% of its staff and student researchers.
• Benefiting society – Developing workshop materials and demos/tours/presentations for international GIS Day
will allow us to analyze, interpret and synthesize research and education results into formats understandable and
useful for non-scientists.
• Economic impact - The project heavily involves geographic information system (GIS) development, use, and
education. We have a specific goal of increasing the scientific and technological capabilities of the workforce in
GIS and similar geospatial technologies within the state of Oregon and to more fully meet these important needs
through internship arrangements with our partners.
Background on the Virtual Oregon Initiative
In May 2000, $60,000 in seed funding was received from the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium
(NWACC), under the auspices of a software collaboration grant, to establish the Virtual Oregon initiative at
OrSt, so that it might begin to address long-standing technical and institutional problems on campus and
throughout the state with regard to archiving and distribution of environmental and other place-based data
on Oregon; to identify key data that are not yet available; and to facilitate development of statewide
standards for archiving, documenting, and disseminating data. In order to best meet these objectives Virtual
Oregon was organized into a four “node” distributed architecture, representing the entities on campus most
concerned with and experienced in geospatial data collection, management and interpretation:
¸ Department of Geosciences (College of Science): with a focus on GIS data sets of land terrain, biodiversity,
land ownership and land use, water quality, vegetation, coastal and marine features, as well as digital aerial
and ortho imagery and associated base data; data analyses and data management for physical geography,
landscape ecology, geology, and oceanography.
¸ Forestry Sciences Laboratory (USDA Forest Service and College of Forestry): specializing in forest canopy,
ecological, resource management, wildfire, and agricultural databases and related analyses; data from
computational simulations.
¸ Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering (NACSE): databases based on specimen
collections, field observation, images, or analysis of historical documents; user interface design
¸ Wayne and Gladys Valley Library (our university library; hereafter referred to as the “Valley Library”):
published maps, books and archival publications, gray literature, photographs and videos.
Startup activities (which ended in December of 2002) resulted in the following deliverables: an inventory
and needs assessment of existing data on the OrSt campus (including support of a parallel survey and needs
assessment conducted statewide on behalf of the Valley Library in anticipation of a Natural Resources
Digital Library); a preliminary strategic and implementation plan for Virtual Oregon’s longer-term
objectives and expected outcomes, as well as strategies and actions to enhance coordination of data, first on
the OrSt campus and then throughout the state of Oregon; and working proofs-of-concept for web-based
access to data [Keon et al., 2002; Wright, 2002; www.virtual-oregon.nacse.org].
The proposed project expands and improves upon an existing protocols already developed during this
startup period and on the two working proofs-of-concept (Figure 2), one that focuses on existing geospatial
data resident at OrSt, as well library publications and images (internal to OrSt); and the other, named
initially the Oregon Spatial Data Portal (OSDP), providing simple access to natural resource data sites
throughout the state of Oregon (links only, not actual data, images, or documents; external to OrSt).
C-4
Figure 2a. Virtual Oregon proof-of-concept web application at
virtual-oregon.nacse.org/develop/data/. Data are harvested from
a variety of individuals and research centers and maintained in
the distributed nodes using enterprise RDBMS products (Oracle,
Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server) residing on UNIX and
Windows platforms. Query Markup Language (QML, a
middleware product developed at NACSE) supports database-toWeb interactions by transparently performing queries across
multiple RDBMSs and displaying the results as though from a
single source. Web-based mapping interfaces (powered by
ESRI’s Internet Map Server and Spatial Database Engine
products) can also be used to explore data visually. Users
currently have the option of beginning with either the "thematic"
or "place-based" interfaces. Ultimately, users will be able to
move freely back and forth between the two paradigms, for
example initially narrowing the scope of inquiry based on
discipline or attributes, moving to the visual interface to refine
the search based on location or some set of geospatial
characteristics, then moving back to query-based exploration to
delve to fine levels of detail.
Figure 2b. The Oregon Spatial Data Portal at virtualoregon.nacse.org/statewide/, which provides an entryway to
data residing all over the state (i.e., web links to 30 providers,
some with 100’s of total records on their sites). The user may
search by theme but no data are actually part of the site, only
metadata. A separate entity of the project is a Lotus database
with: Name of data, description, information provider, contact
person, organization owner name and URL. Link to metadata,
disclaimers; Size of dataset, format of dataset. A goal of the
proposed project is devise a method for automatically updating
an Oracle 9i database with new web links (not data), which
can then be incorporated in to the main catalog and portal of
Virtual Oregon (more details below).
Hence, the startup grant was very successful, but was also meant to be leveraged into larger funding to truly
establish the center and its objectives for the long-term. The NSF PFI program provides a perfect
opportunity for us to implement the innovation ideas that we have already been discussing and testing
during the 2-year period of the startup. And in the process we have already communicated with various
entities around the state (see table at end of Project Description and in Supporting Documents) that are
now ready to enter into a formal partnership so as to move us beyond inventory, needs assessment, and
discussion about what we don’t have and why we don’t have it, to actual innovation and speedy
dissemination.
Summary of Overall Approach
Conceptual Model
Our goal is to build innovations in three areas: (1) cataloguing of metadata for available data sets and data
sources; (2) a backend framework to connect the catalogue to the front-end web portal; and (3) the front end
web portal itself where users can actually view and access the metadata and data that they need. We
consider a distributed approach to be crucial, as establishing and maintaining a single centralized database
is impractical considering the diversity, volume, and complexity of multidisciplinary data sets that presently
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exist. Furthermore, unless all data providers are willing to release their data to one data archive, the
centralized approach is likely to prove redundant, wasting valuable computer resources. Computer science
and geographic information science literature are replete with examples and successful case studies of
distributed data management systems [e.g., Katz et al., 1991; Gärtner et al., 2001; Miller and Han, 2001].
Our approach is based on the scientific information model of Helly et al. [2003] for distributed Earth
science/natural resource data in both relational databases and web links. Establishing well-maintained links
over distributed websites and developing methods for rapidly disseminating and integrating data sets are
critical to creating a community-wide resource. The proposed catalog and web portal will serve as a
resource both for project planning and for establishing data and metadata standards for collecting,
processing and documenting data to be accessed online.
Issues relating to data ownership and accreditation are often cited as obstacles to the creation of a
centralized database. A catalog alleviates this problem by acting as a library with substantive metadata tags
as well as key types of information. Issues regarding proprietary protection of data, proper referencing, and
data provider accreditation will be dealt with via clearly defined citation criteria and protocols. In cases
where a data provider desires to make the data available without a specific publication reference (e.g.,
journal article), a project web site will be treated as the publication reference. For academics, the
fundamental difference between data sets and data interpretations should allow this style of referencing to
take place without undermining the peer review journal process.
Proposed Work
Step 1 – Building the catalog of metadata for available datasets, starting with the hundreds scattered about
OrSt.
Key partners necessary to ensure innovation: SDSC, ESRI, USDA Forest Service
Most catalogues use one of the following standards with regard to geospatial metadata: the Federal
Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) standard (describes the content, quality, condition, and other
characteristics of data), state variations on the FGDC standard that are often less complex, or library
standards (MARC, MAchine Readable Cataloging, originally written to automate the production of catalog
cards by the Library of Congress but now an international standard for library documents;
www.loc.gov/marc/). Our innovation will be to incorporate and accept all three standards in the design and
construction of our Virtual Oregon catalog. For instance, most university libraries have not yet thought
about the implications of integrating the MARC catalog standards with FGDC. This will exponentially
increase the amount of data searchable and usable by their constituents. In the proposed case, library GIS
data sets will have an FGDC-compliant metadata record created for them as well as MARC record, which
will then be stored in an SQL database and can be further parsed into text and/or XML for provision to the
backend framework (Step 2 below).
We propose to expand the existing online data repository compiled by Virtual Oregon staff to include
additional data that fall into the categories currently available, as well as other data types that are not
presently included. We also propose to increase the amount of metadata available. Current cataloging
efforts will involve dealing with the following issues: How do we make sure there is adequate metadata for
every dataset? Who is responsible for checking out the data, updating the data, and checking it back into
the catalog? How do we motivate people to add their data and metadata? How do we minimize duplication
of effort in creating catalog records across all four Virtual Oregon nodes? These issues will be initially
addressed in Year 1 workshops, in which, among other solutions we will create a task force to harvest
gather and catalog metadata for providers, and to provide training to them on quickly, easily, and
effectively writing their own metadata
Step 2 – Build the backend framework to link the catalog to actual data sets or web links that lead to
external data sets.
Key partners necessary to ensure innovation: ESRI, Alsea Geospatial, Titan
Most of today’s geospatial data portals serve metadata records (which describe or link to internal data sets
resident on internal servers), and/or web links to external data at other agencies. Update in all cases is
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tedious and time consuming. Our innovation here will be to serve both metadata and web links but have
them updated automatically via backend services. For this we will install and customize a new product
being developed by our chief industry partner, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), the
ArcIMS Metadata Server (Figure 3). This application is comprised of the ArcIMS Spatial Server combined
with data residing in a relational database (ArcSDE, Spatial Database Engine that provides a GIS gateway
to RDBMSs such as Oracle and Informix). For metadata applicable to OrSt data sets we can convert
existing FGDC compliant metadata records into XML for the server or create new metadata with several
required fields specified: ISO international standard category (aquatic, biological, admin boundaries….);
Bounding Coordinates; Title; Publisher; Publish place; Other fields (Availability (online, CD)); Web
Searchable (bounding box, keyword…).
Figure 3. Conceptual diagram for ArcIMS Metadata Server, which
allows users to search for metadata and data: (1) metadata catalogs
from a clearinghouse (Z39.50 clients); (2) the ArcGIS ArcCatalog
software's Search tool, or (3) the web-browser-based Metadata
Explorer (ESRI, 2002)
The ArcIMS Metadata Server is also the best fit for incorporating the libraries data in MARC format. It
uses the Z39.50 communications protocol, which are common to library servers, as well as geospatial data
clearinghouses as part of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, serving FGDC-compliant metadata (e.g.
Geospatial One Stop). It also automatically generates some of the metadata. And finally, the ArcIMS
Metadata Server can be used to as an innovative way of incorporating links to data without existing
metadata (such as the scores of web URLs to external sites around the state that make up the current
OSDP). A metadata entry must be created for each URL (and stored in ArcSDE) and then we must code in
the ability to create subsequent web pages (lists of these links) dynamically instead of through static HTML
pages. To do this, a database structure will need to be created and dynamic web pages would be created
with Active Server Pages. This in fact would be the initiation of a web-enabled catalog, which hopefully
could be formatted to a library-cataloging standard. In this way, when a new data source or web site is
identified, the new information is added only once, automatically going into a database but then
automatically reflected in the web site itself so that it is not necessary to keep re-writing HTML pages. To
improve searching capability, "meta" tags with keywords will be added to all web pages dynamically as
well.
Step 3 – Redesign and build an improved web portal (aka clearinghouse) of data
Key partners necessary to ensure innovation: State of Oregon Department of Administrative Services
(DAS), OWEB, ONHIC, U of O, Ecotrust. GMT, City of Corvallis, WV Council of Govts.
In this step we redesign and implement an improved web-based interface, based on the first Virtual Oregon
proof-of-concept described above and in Figure 2a for internal OrSt data, while also incorporating all of
the web links from the second proof-of-concept, the OSDP for external sources around the state (Figure
2b). Again the goal is to provide one place to see all data sets and corresponding metadata in order to
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evaluate quality and fitness-for-use. We want to mitigate the aforementioned pitfall of people from different
agencies with the same mandates or environmental problems to solve using different data sets and hence
arriving at different answers. For this step we are very much committed to the incorporation of data from
around the state, as well as previously unaccounted-for data at OrSt. We are very much committed to
including pointers to data from the Oregon Geospatial Data Clearinghouse of the State of Oregon DAS
(much of which is already included as this is our official statewide GIS clearinghouse). It is important to
note that the catalog and portal do not seek to duplicate data sets or map products presently online. For
example, we will certainly keep the work already accomplished for the OSDP (i.e., the transparent data
links to scores of external web sites) and fold it back in to one major interface. To the average user the
interface will look like a single portal – all of the distributed data and metadata (from the major “nodes” of
Virtual Oregon, as well as the State of Oregon DAS, etc.) will be hidden from the user. The state’s Oregon
Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB; another key partner and cost share contributor) needs the portal to
be searchable by watershed basins, as dictated by the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds (State of
Oregon Revised Statute 541.365, www.oregon-plan.org), and informed by the Oregon Enterprise
Information Technology Strategy (irmd.das.state.or.us/soen.htm). In addition they need to have their
Willamette Basin Conservation Project data incorporated, as well as the University of Oregon map products
developed for the OWEB Willamette River Basin Planning Atlas. The case is similar for the Oregon
Natural Heritage Information Center. And a most important effort will be the coordination of our holdings
(metadata most importantly) within the national framework of the National Biological Information
Infrastructure (NBII; www.nbii.gov). We intend to contribute to NBII’s Pacific Northwest Information
node, which specializes in geospatial data sets for forest management and planning, as well as for fisheries,
endangered species habitat, and water resources.
For Long-Term Sustainability
Ultimately our desire is to use the web to access data in real-time using SOAP and more advanced XML
technologies, along the lines of the current Geospatial One Stop for national transportation data. This will
be in the next major proposal that we write to move beyond the NSF PFI effort. research and develop data
mining and knowledge discovery techniques. One goal will be to discover new patterns in very large,
spatial databases (that are "data-rich" but "knowledge-poor"). In addition new methods will be developed
for analyzing and presenting data in ways that make sense to non-scientists. Target audiences will include
natural resource managers, industry, extension offices, students, and the general public. Research activities
will necessitate a collaboration between geographers (led by Wright), library scientists (led by Butcher),
and computer scientists (led by Pancake). Computer science offers a variety of methods to formalize
geographic knowledge, but many of them have not yet been broadly applied in geographic information
science [Egenhofer and Herring, 1991]. We have already developed fundable, exciting research questions
for this next phase that include:
• What is the best way to "mine" semi-structured map or vector data versus unstructured image raster
data and can the two mining methods be combined in a single web-accessible system?
• How best to "mine" for data that is not explicitly stored in the database, for instance the position of
salmon in a stream at any given point in time
• How can feature extraction be modified to facilitate knowledge discovery?
• How do emerging perceptions of digital (virtual) space map onto traditional conceptions of geographic
space and how do we handle their interfaces analytically? [e.g., Janelle and Hodge, 1998]
• Development of data queries and strategies that go beyond just simple retrieval to content-based and
knowledge-based retrieval.
• Statistical and classification tools to automate feature extraction and pattern identification, as well as
the tools to visualize them in 2-D and 3-D.
• How can we use this to improve delivery of data through digital (virtual) space?
These will be explored during visits by those chosen for our NSF PFI distinguished speaker series as part of
the current grant.
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Management Plan
(3-page limit)
Implementation and Administration
We propose to complete the project over a 3-year period with a project timeline to include an intensive
effort in late 2003 and early 2004 to meet the immediate needs of the two state government partners who
are contributing 10% cost share ($60,000) to the project. Initial administrative functions of Virtual Oregon
(lead institution OrSt) will include: (a) accepting data and metadata submissions for input to the catalog; (b)
tracking data sets from initial data gathering through final submission; (c) working with data providers on
data quality control; (d) providing information of proper procedures for submitting data; (e) providing
information and limited technical support via telephone or email; and (f) disseminating information to
campus and statewide communities on additions/changes to the catalog or changes in
infrastructure/procedures.
Virtual Oregon team members will meet monthly throughout the 3-year period of the project to monitor and
assess progress toward innovation goals, refine the strategic and implementation plans (virtualoregon.nacse.org/background/strat.html), discuss roadblocks and their removals (often in consultation with
our industry and government partners), and plan for the workshops and community outreach activities. All
Virtual Oregon team members, partners, and interested supporters will be subscribed to a listserv to keep
everyone apprised of progress on the project (especially as we set up the initial drafts of our data catalogue
and web portal). This has been a challenge in our state (i.e., keeping abreast of what others are doing). A
representative of each partner will sit on the Virtual Oregon Center Advisory Board, which will meet at
least twice in Year 1 and annually in Years 2 and 3. Partners will be invited you to workshops and seminar
series. Internship or job opportunities will be passed on to our students and we will provide you some of
our best students using funds from the grant for internships.
Partners and Roles
The respective roles and responsibilities of each of the 13 partner organizations with Virtual Oregon are
summarize in the table near the end of this Project Description and in the Supporting Documents. Our
Partnership for Innovation is founded on five sectors: private (business), non-governmental organization
(NGO), state and local government, academic, and federal.
Our private sector and NGO partners gain access to new knowledge and a workforce that can capitalize
on it, as well as the ability to use the resources and capabilities of academic institutions. They contribute
bring developing and state-of-the-art information technologies and services. Their participation reflects
both an interest in the practical applications of technology and a long history of successful research and
development programs. Our private sector and NGO partners include ESRI, the world’s leading GIS
company (34 straight years and running) with more than 1,000,000 customers worldwide. It maintains a
business partner program with more than 1,500 developers, consultants, resellers, and data providers; a
network of more than 75 international distributors with users in more than 220 countries, and invests nearly
20% of its revenues each year in research and development (www.esri.com). Alsea Geospatial
(www.alseageo.com) is an independent GIS consulting firm in Corvallis, as well as a business partner with
ESRI (authorized trainer and reseller of ESRI products). In 2002 it was named ESRI Business Partner of
the Year. Global Mapping Technology (www.gmtgps.com) is another Corvallis company that excels in
the distribution and training of GPS and integrated GPS/GIS equipment and software. They are a
longstanding support of OrSt and have been critical in the success of our community outreach events and
workshops. This will again be an important role for them in the NSF PFI endeavor. Along with ESRI and
Alsea Geospatial, Titan Systems Corporation (www.titan.com) will provide valuable consultation on our
backend framework (especially merging ArcSDE with Oracle databases), while continuing as an important
collaborator with our State government. Their Geospatial Services Division specializes in the integration of
GIS with mainstream RDBMS and other information systems, as well as specifying requirements for
various geospatial information, analysis and output, and authentication, platform identification and access
control services for databases. Ecotrust is one of the largest non-profit environmental conservation
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organizations in the Pacific Northwest, and a leader in public access GIS and interactive mapping. For
many years it has served one of the best web-based portals to bioregional information for the Pacific
Northwest, providing data on local watersheds, estuaries, forest ecology, and many other themes. Their
input will be vital to the effective design of our web portal.
Local and state government partners gain sustainable development activities and access to personnel and
resources to help them reach their goals. They often seek innovative applications of technology to improve
public services and government operations. Without a partnership with academia and industry, they often
find it more difficult to take full advantage of opportunities for innovation. The State of Oregon DAS
houses the Information Resources Management Division, and within that the Oregon Geospatial Data
Clearinghouse. This entity is under the direction of the Oregon statewide GIS coordinator, and leads or
assists in the coordination of GIS activities throughout the state, facilitates communication about GIS
issues, and maintains the website that hosts statewide “framework” geospatial data for the State of Oregon
(i.e., the most basic, commonly used geographic data such as elevation, geodetic control, street network,
and rivers and streams, etc.) (www.sscgis.state.or.us). OWEB (www.oweb.state.or.us) is a state agency led
by a board of natural resource agency commissioners and citizens to promote and fund voluntary programs
that support Oregon's efforts to restore salmon runs, improve water quality, and strengthen ecosystems that
are critical to healthy watersheds and sustainable communities. Previous sections of the proposal have
outlined the critical roles that both of these entities will play in the proposed project. The City of Corvallis
GIS (www.ci.corvallis.or.us) was recently recognized by ESRI with a Special Achievement in GIS Award
for innovative field data collection and mapping and the development of GISMO, a customized interface
for viewing, querying, report-generation, and simple mapping. As with Global Mapping Technology they
have been a longstanding supporter of OrSt and will be critical to the success of our workshops and
community outreach. We will also seek their input on the usability of our final web portal. The Willamette
Valley Council of Governments (www.mwvcog.org) represents 3 Oregon counties, 31 cities, 9 special
districts, and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Rhonde. They also coordinate the Willamette Valley
GIS User Group, the membership of which includes government workers but also GIS technicians,
analysts, and researchers at community colleges, universities, and small companies throughout west-central
Oregon. They will play an important role in testing and giving us feedback on our final products. Do our
proposed innovations work for the average user?
Academic and federal partners bring a wide range of expertise in a variety of fields and have very active
research and education programs, but sometimes not the infrastructure that is needed to foster innovation.
These are brought to fruition by an exchange of knowledge or joint investigation. The University of
Oregon is the state’s sole member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. It’s Social
Science Instructional and Data Services Labs (ssil.uoregon.edu) provide computing classrooms, data
access, purchase, manipulation, and archiving, and are constantly seeking innovations that will improve
these services. They too will provide an important role in testing and feedback for all three products:
catalog, backend and portal, particularly from the standpoint of faculty and student needs. The USDA
Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Lab is resident on the OrSt campus within the College of
Forestry’s Forestry Sciences Lab and conducts research in resource inventory and management, land
use/land cover, aquatic/land interactions, and ecosystem processes. It will provide a critical researcher to
the Virtual Oregon team at no cost (Valentine) and lead in the development of the ArcIMS Metadata Server
and Explorer applications. The San Diego Supercomputer Center (www.sdsc.edu) is a national laboratory
housed at the University of California, San Diego, for developing and applying high-performance
information technologies to scientific and societal problems. The Data and Knowledge Systems group is
building a national digital library to accelerate the publication of scientific data 9 (www.sdsc.edu/DICE),
hence their interest in our project, with its strong library and scientific database emphasis. The group is
involved in several projects related to geospatial information, data sharing and grid computing, including
an ESRI-sponsored research project on the use of backend services to better access gridded geospatial data
and images (as opposed to the common vector type). Hence, they will be of tremendous aid to us in our
catalog and database design/implementation. As they continue to develop innovative tools for project
related to ours we can provide the natural resource data (geospatial data) that they lack with which to test
the tools, along with interpretative expertise.
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OrSt Research Team and Results of Prior NSF Support
The PFI program solicitation states that “a senior institutional administrator (Dean or higher) in the lead
institution must serve as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator”. As such, our project PI team
consists of:
• Curt Pederson, Vice Provost for Information Services. Our Vice Provost provides coordination, vision,
leadership, and advocacy for the effective application of information technologies to the instructional, research,
and service missions of the university. He has line responsibility for university computing services (including
central web services), classroom support via the Communications Media Center, student computing facilities,
telecommunications, television engineering, distributive education infrastructure, and the Valley Library.
• Karyle Butcher, Donald and Delpha Campbell University Librarian and Deputy Vice Provost for
Information Services. Our University Librarian has direct responsibility for supervision and coordination of The
Valley Library on the OrSt campus and the Guin Library in Newport at the Hatfield Marine Science Center,
including cataloguing services and the development of digital library initiatives and resources. In the Vice
Provost's absence, she has responsibility for supervising and coordinating central computing, classroom support,
community network, instructional media, network engineering, telecommunications and central web services.
Butcher was Oregon's Librarian of the Year in 1998.
• Hal Salwasser, Acting Director of the new Institute for Natural Resources (INR) and Dean of the College of
Forestry. The INR was created by the State of Oregon legislature with the Oregon Sustainability Act of 2001. and
seeks to improve the sustainability of natural resources within Oregon, and to secure their ongoing contributions
to our environments, economies and communities. Salwasser will serve as the main INR liaison for the proposed
project, the activities of which will fall under the purview of the INR’s “Information Office” (inr.oregonstat.edu).
As INR Acting Director, Salwasser oversees the development of grant proposals and the projects contracted by
agencies to the institute.
Salwasser, Pederson, and Butcher, along with Catherine Williams, Director of OrSt Central
Computing, will all serve as senior members of the Virtual Oregon Advisory Board, ensuring that our
vision and partnership activities stay on track, while also facilitating the incorporation of innovations in to
the policies and practices of the university. The PI team is rounded out by two leading faculty members
with proven NSF results.
Dawn Wright, professor of Geosciences at OrSt, will serve as lead PI on the project, with primary
responsibility for overseeing the implementation of all aspects of the project, including the provision of
budget and progress reports to both NSF and the State of Oregon partners providing cost-share, and annual
progress/workshop visits to the NSF PFI program. She will also maintain communication with all the
partners and organize/lead advisory board meetings. Wright was a lead PI during the Virtual Oregon startup
phase. She is involved in the development and maintenance of several data and analysis portals and has
been a leader for a variety of GIS mapping and process studies of the marine environment, as well as the
development of experimental user interfaces and data models for coastal and marine data, culminating in
the publication of the first book on the subject [Wright and Bartlett, 2000]. Her Results of Prior NSF
Support are outlined in Supporting Documents.
Cherri Pancake, Professor & Associate Director for Research, School of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, and Director of the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering
(NACSE), will serve as co-PI on the project, serving as usability engineering advisor in the development of
the catalog and web interfaces, and assist in overall project management. Pancake was a lead PI during the
Virtual Oregon startup phase and has extensive experience leading multidisciplinary teams drawn from
academia, industry, and government agencies. Among these are the Parallel Tools Consortium and the
Oregon Coalition for Interdisciplinary Databases. She is a Fellow of both the Association for Computing
Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Her Results of Prior NSF Support are
outlined in Supporting Documents
In addition, we have assembled an experienced team of nine senior personnel uniquely qualified to
complete this project, and representative of all four nodes of Virtual Oregon. Their roles, duties, and levels
of effort are described in the Budget Justification.
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Innovation Outcomes
(3-page limit)
The primary outcomes to foster innovation that have been described thus far include the design and
development of: (1) a data catalog adhering to FGDC, statewide, and MARC standards for geospatial data,
(2) a backend metadata server/database framework for connecting the catalog to the(3) front-end natural
resource portal (clearinghouse). Related outcomes that will foster innovation include:
Data Search and Retrieval within the Portal
The search and retrieval interface of the main data portal will be based on ESRI’s ArcIMS Metadata
Explorer which is a Java Server Pages (JSP) application that can be used to build a customized, browserbased means of searching for metadata. Searching for metadata is quick and efficient because users can
perform searches based on any combination of geographic extent, content type, data format, or keyword.
the user can view the title, abstract, and thumbnail of the documents in the search results and choose to
view the full metadata for any documents of interest (ESRI, 2002). The Metadata Explorer provides a
uniform interface for connecting to heterogeneous data resources over a network regardless of whether they
are on a web server, an ftp archive, a user’s desktop, an application, etc., without the user knowing the
name or location of the data (Figure 4). This will be the engine upon which we will build a main portal to
meet the aforementioned objectives.
Figure 4. An example of a
prototype ArcIMS Metadata
Explorer application recently
installed at the OrSt Forestry
Sciences Laboratory with the
aid of Federal partner USDA
Forest Service Pacific
Northwest Research Station
(SDMG = Spatial Data
Management Group of OrSt
Forestry). We propose to build
on this by programming
innovative customizations that
incorporate library metadata
standards, as well as Federal,
and bring a much larger
population of natural
resources metadata than the
forestry examples shown.
Together with local, state,
private sector and nongovernmental agencies
involved, we will in fact, be
creating a "geography
network" within Oregon.
Evaluation and Extension
Usability engineering methodologies will be applied by co-PI Pancake so that all navigation and query
mechanisms are both maximally productive and easily learned by novices. The premise of usability
engineering is that by involving users more closely a more directly in software design, it is possible to
arrive at more intuitive interfaces that are easier to learn, easier to apply, and less likely to be applied in
inappropriate circumstances – thereby improving the productivity of software use. This is particularly
important in designing software environments for non-computer scientists [Pancake, 1997b]. A
combination of two classic usability methods will be applied: participatory design and iterative refinement
[Jeffries, 1991; Pancake 1997a]. Periodic sessions involving representative users and interface developers
will be used to explore various aspects of interface support. Based on the information acquired at these
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sessions, initial “paper prototypes” and successively more refined versions of the testing environment
components will be developed in response to user preferences and suggestions. The most immediate benefit
of active user participation is that it allows developers to concentrate their attentions on those aspects of the
interface that reflect users’ highest priorities [Gould, 1989; Pancake, 1997a].
Automated collaborative filtering systems predict a person’s affinity for items or information by connecting
that person’s recorded interests with the recorded interests of a community of people and sharing ratings
between likeminded persons [Herlocker et al., 2000]. We will experiment with these as we develop the
portal. Collaborative filtering specialist Herlocker will advise on the incorporation of a recommender
system for the final portal, with sets of pointers, that will provide for a user, based on their previous queries,
related metadata directories and web sites within our catalog.
Community Feedback
Any resource intended for wide dissemination and use must incorporate a method to allow feedback from
the community. We propose to provide simple forms online that allow users to make suggestions for
improvements to the portal, inquire about search capabilities or data sets that are not presently available and
report errors. A primary function of the Virtual Oregon data librarians and data managers (see project team
description below and in the Budget Justification) will be to monitor these messages so that the PIs may
designate the appropriate senior personnel on the project to address the points that are raised, and in a
timely manner. Additionally, we will take advantage of various geospatial data and GIS meetings
throughout the calendar year, such as gatherings of the Oregon Geographic Information Council,
Framework Implementation Team, GIS Program Leaders, GIS in Action, Willamette Valley GIS User
Group, etc. to describe and demonstrate the catalog and portal and solicit suggestions from the community.
Public Outreach
A major outreach component of this project will be the participation of project personnel and partners in
GIS Day. GIS Day is a global grassroots event where GIS users, educators, and vendors open their doors to
schools, businesses, and the general public to showcase real-world applications of this important
technology (www.gisday.com). OrSt's GIS Day activities are sponsored by the Department of Geosciences
and the College of Forestry, and include map and poster galleries, mapping demonstrations, and open
houses. The City of Corvallis will again be asked to provide their mobile wireless mapping truck for an
exhibit in the Memorial Union Quad, and industry partners Alsea Geospatial, ESRI , and Global Mapping
Technologies will provide exhibits and presentations about their services and products in relation to the
proposed work. In addition, several OrSt graduate students will also be traveling to local area high schools
to make special presentations. A new event planned for subsequent years is a special program for 100 local
middle and high school students and their teachers, including a Geography Bowl competition, special
videos, and a lunchtime question-and-answer session with campus GIS and remote sensing specialists. Part
of this special program will include a "GPS hike" across the OrSt campus so that students may learn about
the GPS data that are often used in a GIS.
Workshops and Lecture Series
These will provide opportunities to meet and discuss or present ideas, topics, and proposals that are of
interest to the larger community with regard to data cataloguing, archiving, distribution, exchange, etc.
Several workshops are planned including:
•
Workshop #1 to inform the campus and statewide community of data exchange and distribution
efforts to see what everyone is doing and to reconfirm user needs revealed in the initial Virtual
Oregon survey of the OrSt campus as well as a statewide natural resources digital library survey
conducted by J. Salwasser, now Information Policy Advisor for OWEB. This will also inform the
State’s Oregon Plan Information System which has a natural resource component with progress
made with managing framework data for the state, but not as much progress as of yet for
information systems in economic development, human resources and public safety.
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•
•
•
Workshops #2 and #3 on metadata training and how to incorporate NSDI and campus/statewide
data source into classroom teaching (“teaching the teachers”)
Workshop #4 focusing on state clearinghouses in order to exchange ideas with related efforts in
Idaho, Montana, Washington, Calif.;
Workshop #5 on participating in national data efforts such as the NBII, the National Map, and the
National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC).
Distinguished speakers will be inserted into the existing lecture series of the Virtual Oregon nodes of
Geosciences, Forestry, and Computer Science. One distinguished speaker will provide either kickoff or a
culmination to the academic year. We plan to invite two distinguished speakers in Year 3 and four in Year
3. The visit of each distinguished speaker will last up to 2 days, so that they may deliver a major seminar,
but also brown bag presentations or guest lectures in OrSt and University of Oregon classes, and meet with
project PIs, senior personnel, graduate and undergraduate students, and our partners based in Corvallis and
Salem. Desired speakers and topics include:
1. Harvey Miller, University of Utah (www.geog.utah.edu/faculty/index.html?id=2/) or May Yuan,
University of Oklahoma (geography.ou.edu/people/myuan.html) - Data mining and knowledge
discovery
2. John Helly, San Diego Supercomputing Center, (http://www.sdsc.edu/~hellyj/ ) - Scalable models
of metadata and data sharing in Earth sciences/natural resources
3. Susan Stafford, University of Minnesota College of Natural Resources,
(www.cnr.umn.edu/about/dean.php) or Mike Goodchild, Professor of Geography, UCSB,
National Academy of Science Member (www.geog.ucsb.edu/~good/) – Environmental information
management and analysis
4. Mary Marlino, UCAR and Director of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)
Program Center (www.dlese.org) or Xavier Lopez, Oracle - Research progress in geospatial data
cataloguing and digital libraries
5. Theresa Pardo, Project Director Center for Technology in Government, State University of New
York at Albany (www.ctg.albany.edu/people/theresa_bio.html) - Innovations in government
information strategies or Knowledge networking in the public sector
6. The Honorable Earl Blumenauer, U.S. House of Representatives, Oregon’s 3rd District (Portland
area; www.house.gov/blumenauer/) – Geographic information partnering and collaborative
problem solving using technology.
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List of Partnership Organizations and Personnel
(2-page limit)
ACADEMIC
Partner
Oregon Natural Heritage
Information Center
Oregon State University
Virtual Oregon
San Diego Supercomputer
Center
(National Lab)
University of Oregon
Social Science Instructional and
Data Services Labs
Senior Personnel
James S. Kagan, Director
1322 SE Morrison Street
Portland, OR 97214-2531
jimmy.kagan@orst.edu
503-731-3070
Wright, Pederson, Butcher,
Salwasser, Pancake, 9 others
Chaitan Baru
University of California, San Diego
MC 0505
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0505
858-534-5035
baru@sdsc.edu
Cathleen Leué, Director
5246 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-5246
cleue@oregon.uoregon.edu
541-346-4642
Commitment/Role
Contribute large, spatial and
tabular resource data, esp.
vegetation; needs Virtual
Oregon to distribute complex
vegetation data sets
See sections below for
description of OrSt team
Create innovative database
designs and implementations
that we can provide test data for
to improve our catalog and
portal. They have tools but need
nat. res data & interpretative
expertise.
Data contributor; host
workshop; provide testbed for
new metadata creation tool
STATE & LOCAL GOVT
Partner
Senior Personnel
State of Oregon
Department of Administrative
Services
(Oregon Geospatial Data
Clearinghouse)
Cy Smith, State GIS Coordinator
Michael Freese, Chief Information
Officer
955 Center St. NE, Rm. 470
Salem, OR 97301
cy.smith@state.or.us
503-378-3160
State of Oregon
Oregon Watershed
Enhancement Board
(with 89 local Watershed
Councils throughout Oregon)
Janine Salwasser, Info. Policy
Advisor
Geoffrey Huntington, Exec. Dir.
775 Summer St. NE, Suite 360
Salem, OR 97301-1290
Janine.salwasser@state.or.us
503-986-0199
Alice Grucza, City GIS Coordinator
Jon Nelson, City Manager
501 SW Madison Avenue
Corvallis, OR 97339-1083
alice.grucza@ci.corvallis.or.us
541-766-6901
Lesley Hegewald
105 High St. SE
Salem, OR 97301-3667
lhegewald@mail.open.org
503-588-6177
City of Corvallis GIS
(Benton County)
Willamette Valley Council of
Governments
(includes Marion, Polk, Yamhill
Counties; 31 Cities; 9 Special
Districts; Confederated Tribes of
the Grande Rhonde Community)
C-15
Commitment/Role
Coordinate catalog and portal
with state natural resources
clearinghouse; coordinate with
National Biological Info.
Infrastructure (NBII) Pacific
Northwest Information Node;
provision of major cost share to
project
Provide input on design and
usability of catalog and portal;
disseminate results of project to
watershed councils, implement
statewide info. sys. strategy;
provision of major cost share to
project via DAS (OGDC)
Provide internships, workshop
presentations, guest lectures in
OrSt classes; technology transfer
via Dept. of Public Works; GIS
Day participant
Provide input on design and
usability of catalog and portal;
provide information to
university partners on
internships, technology transfer
via Willamette Valley GIS
User Group
PRIVATE SECTOR
Partner
Alsea Geospatial
Environmental Systems
Research Institute (ESRI)
Global Mapping Technology
Titan Systems Corporation
Senior Personnel
Commitment/Role
John Gabriel, General Manager
Karen Gabriel, President
450 SW Madison Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97339-2380
john@alsegeo.com
541-754-5034
Rob McDougald
John Sharrard
ESRI Northwest
Suite 300
606 Columbia Street NW
Olympia, WA 98501-1099
McDougald@esri.com
JSharrard@esri.com
360-754-4727
Richard Ash, President
1107 NW Oak Avenue
Corvallis, OR 97330
gmtgps@peak.org
541-738-2934
Provide internships, workshop
presentations, guest lectures in
OrSt classes; technology
transfer; GIS Day participant
Roger Crystal, Site Manager
Geospatial Info. Systems Division
4099 SE International Way, Suite
206
Portland, OR 97222-8853
rcrystal@averstar.com
503-794-1344
Provide input on effectiveness of
catalog and portal; provide
workshop, seminar presentation
2-way technology transfer; GIS
Day participant; lend homeland
security perspective
Consulting on software products
that are central to project
(ArcIMS Metadata Server,
ArcSDE, etc.); internships; help
to teach workshops; provide
software via site license; 2-way
technology transfer; GIS Day
participant
Provide expertise, advice,
teaching materials in GPS,
GPS/GIS data collection
techniques, training, service;
GIS Day participant
NON-GOVT ORG
Partner
Ecotrust
Senior Personnel
Mike Mertens, GIS Manager
Ecotrust
721 NW 9th Ave., Suite 200
Portland, OR 97209
mikem@ecotrust.org
503-227-6225
Commitment/Role
Contribute data, internship info;
help build local capacity to use
GIS through training of
watershed councils, teacher
groups, non-profits, community
organizations
FEDERAL
Partner
USDA Forest Service Pacific
Northwest Research Station
(NATIONAL LAB)
Senior Personnel
Theresa Valentine
Forestry Sciences Lab
3200 NW Jefferson Way
Corvallis, OR 97331
theresa.valentine@orst.edu
541-750-7250
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Commitment/Role
Provide critical researcher to
OrSt team at no cost. Assist in
developing ArcIMS Metadata
Server applications
Intellectual Property Rights
(1 page limit)
The proposed partnership will adopt the Oregon Board of Higher Education’s Policies Relating to
Intellectual Property reproduced in part below and found in full on the OrSt Research Office web site at
oregonstate.edu/research/TechTran/form1.html. This policy is also in keeping the NSF policy on
intellectual property in section 730 of the NSF Grant Policy Manual (NSF 95-26).
Policy
580-43-006 The educational and research activities of employees and partners of the Board of Higher Education and
its institutions frequently result in the discovery of new knowledge in the form of invention, technological
improvements, and the production of educational and professional materials. It shall be the general policy of the
Board that such results be made available to the public in the most expeditious manner.
Stat. Auth.: ORS ch. 351 ; Hist.: HEB 8-1978. f. & ef. 12-5-78
Objectives of Policies
580-43-007 It is the Board's intent to:
1) Provide systematic means of bringing inventions, technological improvements, and educational and professional
materials into the public domain; 2) Encourage the development of new knowledge while protecting traditional
academic freedom of employees and partners in the publication of materials, development of inventions, and
discovery of technological improvements; 3) Establish principles and procedures for equitable sharing net royalty
income with employees, partners, and with sponsoring agencies when required by an agreement. Stat. Auth.: ORS ch.
351; Hist.: HEB 8-1978. f. & ef. 12-5-78
Employee Responsibilities and Rights
580-43-011
1.As a condition of employment, all Board and institution employees and partners shall agree to assign to the Board
rights to:
(a) Any invention or improvement in technology conceived or developed using institutional facilities, personnel,
information, or other resources; and (b) Educational and professional materials, whether or not registered for
copyright, which result from the instructional, research, or public service activities of the institutions.
2.Employees shall be responsible for disclosing to designated institutional representatives all inventions,
technological improvements, and educational and professional materials conceived, developed, and/or produced
during the conduct of normal activities.
3.Employees shall be responsible for cooperating and assisting Board, institutional representatives, and partners
responsible for patenting, licensing, registering for copyright, publishing, and generally assisting public access to new
knowledge resulting from employee activities.
4.Employees and partners shall be eligible to share in net royalty income from each invention or separate
improvement thereof, an amount not to exceed: (a) 40% of the first $50,000, 35% of the next $50,000, and 30% of all
additional net royalty income received by the Board for inventions and technological improvements; and (b) 50% of
net royalty income from educational and professional materials.
5.For the limited purposes of administering the policies under Division 43, persons acting in the following capacities
shall be entitled to the benefits and subject to the responsibilities of said rules: Graduate teaching assistants, graduate
teaching fellows, graduate research assistants, and student employees.
Stat. Auth.: ORS Ch. 351
Hist.: HEB 8-1978. f. & ef. 12-5-78. HEB 9-1980. f. & ef. 8-20-80. HEB 1-1982. f. & ef. 4-20-82
Reporting of Inventions
580-43-015 [HEB 3-1978, f. & ef. 6-5-78, Repealed by HEB 8-1978, f. & ef. 12-5-78]
Office of Administration Responsibilities
580-43-026 The Office of Administration shall:
(1) Assist institutions in the development of procedures implementing Board policies and managing new knowledge;
(2) Monitor institutional application of Board policies; (3) Review and approve institutional recommendations
regarding assignment of rights, applications for patents.
C-17