OneGeology
Yesterday the British Geological Survey (BGS) announced their intention to map the geology of the planet – OneGeology. They believe the political will and technology are now in place to enable such an ambitious task. The technical details are sketchy, but it’s been planned as a distributed model – a dynamic set of geological map data served mostly on a national basis by individual Geological Surveys and other bodies (e.g. the polar and marine surveys and research bodies). The data will be accessed via a web portal and as such will be frequently updated and improved by them and reflect the most up to date data they possess. The project will make use of GeoSciML, an XML flavour tailored for use in Geoscience. The service should make a great resource for the recent wave of ‘Earth Explorers’.
This is quite a grand scheme, and deliverables are no doubt someway down the line, but if the BGS can make it work, hopefully it can spur the UK government to work with the Ordnance Survey and ‘free our geodata‘ – then one day maybe the OS can lead national mapping agencies throughout the world in a similar scheme. The OS has a great start with a comprehensive GML dataset, and the INSPIRE directive can provide encouragement; all we need now is support of the UK Government. Likely?
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