Start date: 10 October 2006
End date: 30 May 2008
Funding programme: Grid OGC Collision programme
Project website:
http://edina.ac.uk/projects/seesaw/index.html
JISC theme(s): Access management, e-Research, Information environment
Committees: JISC Support of Research committee
SEE-GEO will demonstrate the use of Shibboleth to securely access Geospatial web services using open interoperability standards running on the National Grid Service.
Aims and Objectives
The purpose of SEcurE access to GEOspatial services is to take a significant step towards providing Grid enabled access to EDINA national datacentre hosted geospatial services running on the National Grid Service (NGS).
The specific objectives are to:
- Make Geospatial data accessible using core Grid middleware by integrating the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Coverage Service standard interface into OGSA-DAI.
- Use best international practice to demonstrate secure access to geospatial web services with particular emphasis on integrating Shibboleth and Grid Security Infrastructure.
- Develop a small number of client applications which demonstrate successful operation of the approach used.
- Write a report for the JISC summarising the current state of play in respect of secure use of OGC web services using Grid technology, including WS-Security, and recommendations on how to progress with secure access to Geographic Information in a way which is compatible with the OGC process.
Project Methodology
SEE-GEO builds on existing investment in UK e-infrastructure and aims to take a significant step towards making national datacentre data available on the NGS using OGSA-DAI.
Consequently, there is a strong element of linking up and liaison with related projects. This is reflected in the partners involved, ie, EDINA, MIMAS, the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) and the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS). There is also a strong connection with the MIMAS GEMS (Grid Enabling MIMAS Services) and EDINA GEESE (Grid Enabling EDINA Services).
The intention is that the exemplar applications developed will demonstrate a sufficiently wide range of scenarios to not only test the approach, but also stimulate further thinking. NCeSS will assist with an application in the e-Social Science area, MIMAS will collaborate in a national datacentre context, and the Grid OGC Collision Programme sister project from the University of Newcastle SAW-GEO (Development of Semantically-Aware Workflow Engines for Geospatial Web Service Orchestration) a workflow demonstrator.
Implications / Deliverables / Stakeholders
The outcome of SEE-GEO should be a clear indication of the steps necessary to put up production services making geospatial data accessible on the NGS.
Geospatial data is ubiquitous and the geo services at EDINA are amongst the most heavily used services in the JISC Information Environment. Making these data available on the NGS should increase the number of users and assist realisation of some of the potential of Grid technology in this area. The wider Grid and Geographic Information communities both stand to benefit from having widely used open interoperability standards integrated into core Grid middleware.