Working Group 2 Report Back to the Meeting
Report of Working Group Meeting at Tsukuba on 25th April 2001

Business Arrangements
Working Group 2 and 4 were combined for the meeting
Date & time: 25 April 2001 9:00 - 18:30
Chair: Mr. Saeid Noori Bushehri (WG 2) and Ms. Evangeline C. Cruzado (WG 4)

Ms. Crusado chair of WG 4 proposed the following items to be discussed in the meeting.

i) Data sharing internally and externally (policy and constraints)
ii) Security issues (each country has different ideas)
iii) Copyright (some countries have more strict measure on copyright)
iv) Strategic policy on SDI (for funding and more participation)

2. Capacity building

Activities of member nations on education and training

Output of the WG meeting

Work plan should be made for the next two years
Resolution should be discussed

After the discussions on the agenda of the meeting, the participants agreed to have two presentations on administrative boundaries pilot project and data node & network as well as discussions on WG 4 issues during the morning. In the afternoon it was scheduled to have one-hour discussion on WG 4 and two-hour discussion on WG 2 including discussions on resolutions and work plan with one-hour extension.

1. Presentation by Mr. Abbas Rajabifard on Report on regional administrative boundaries pilot

Based on the experience of the pilot project that identified the issues related to boundaries data and developed the data specification, he explained the next step that should be taken by the WG. His recommendations include: 1) WG2 should undertake a study on data access, and evaluate and test the current access policy before finalizing the report; 2) PCGIAP should encourage all member nations to prepare their data sets based on the specifications developed in the pilot project; 3) create an APSDI Clearinghouse as the primary access point so that the data could be browsed, viewed, ordered and delivered through regional infrastructure; 4) WG 2 should undertake some further pilot project to develop the appropriate tools because the costs associated with the integration of the data sets may limit the access to such data sets; 5) WG 2 should use the Internet as the infrastructure for access and share the regional data sets; 6) WG 2 should accept the results of the pilot project for the future work plan; and 7) WG 2 should cover all member nations on administrative boundaries data and expand the project for the other fundamental data sets.

Discussions:

An inquiry was made from Russia on how the problem of discrepancy in international boundaries was solved. Mr. Rajabifard responded that no specific action was taken on the discrepancy to show the reality.
Participants appreciated the outcomes of the work undertaken by Mr. Rajabifard while identifying both technical and political issues associated with the boundaries data. Participants recognized that the PCGIAP has no power to resolve the latter issue, and agreed to establish a policy in relation to boundaries data clarifying that the data is for common good and has no political implications.
Mr. Akiyama explained the policy of the Global Map, which avoids dealing with political issue by having country-wise data and allowing overlaps between the adjacent countries. Mr. Rajabifard reemphasized the original purpose of the pilot project, which is to identify the issues associated with the boundaries data, and not to resolve political discussions.
Participants agreed to have two resolutions based on the morning discussions. The first resolution should come from the result of the administrative boundaries pilot project with the policy statement. The second one should be related to the development of fundamental data within APSDI including the definition of fundamental data, specification of data, and regional datasets incorporated into Global Map.

<Lunch Break>

2. Presentation by Mr. Zhou Xu of China on Design of the APSDI Data Node

Mr. Xu took over the responsibility of Prof. Jiang Jingtong on WG 2/Task 3, which is the development of network of APSDI data nodes.
He clarified that the network should consist of distributed nodes created one by one based on common standards. In terms of schema of the network, he introduced two schemas with pros and cons. The first schema has one gateway with a search engine and all the metadata physically located in the gateway. In schema 2, the gateway does not have searching capability but pass the search request to each node.
He also explained the architecture of data node including a data server and a GIS server that enable the users to get direct access to the data sets. He proposed that the WG adopt ISO/TC211 metadata standard
As the next step of the task, he proposed to set up four nodes for the demonstration purpose as a prototype of APSDI. Depending on its functionality, he also proposed three types of data nodes, basic (only for data down load and metadata), average (basic function plus online browsing), and advanced (average plus online access to the data with open interface).

Discussions:

Since Prof. Jingtong has another responsibility and no longer continues in this task, Mr. Xu was formally appointed to be responsible for this task.
From Korea, Prof. Kim, from Japan Dr. Tsuji (temporarily), From China Mr. Xu, from Australia Mr. Hobson (temporarily), from Iran Mr. Saeid noori Bushehri were nominated as the focal points for this task and will form a task force for the data node.

3. Presentation on a Clearinghouse Workshop by Mr. Bushehri

He explained the concept of clearinghouse and defined the APSDI clearinghouse. Based on the importance of developing APSDI clearinghouse, he proposed a Clearinghouse Workshop. It will have discussion papers including national reports, background papers on concept and other initiatives, and breakout group discussions.

Discussions:

Participants supported the idea of having a workshop on APSDI Clearinghouse and proposed that such a workshop should be held in conjunction with other meetings including the Executive Board and WG 2 meetings.