Sharing and Publishing Data

A. Acquired Data

Your story:

By now you should have acquired data for your project. As the project is completed you will be effectively publishing the data you have collected (even if the data is for restricted distribution, think of it as publishing it only to me). You may be sharing the data with the organization you have teamed up with. You may be making a map and making that available. You may have done some analysis and be supplying the results of the analysis. Technically, these are all uses of the data and may or may not be affected by any license you have signed or agreed to when you obtained the data.

Assessing you permissions and duties

1. First, look at any agreements you have signed or agreed to.
2. Now look at the metadata with the data, as this often has restrictions.
3. Consider the fair use requirements and see if your data usage and publishing fits these.
4. Many data suppliers agree to you publishing data if it has been changed from the original. If you have developed derivative data from your source data, is this reverse-engineerable? If it is simple to do, this might not qualify as derrivative data, e.g. if you have a raster and multiply the values by 10, this will not count as deriveritive data. If you instead take a raster image, apply a non linear stretch to it and not publish the stretch formula, this might in fact be derivative. How much difference is enough is a bit like the question, "How long is a piece of string?" It is not quantifiable.
5. Sharing raw data will be more problematic than publishing a final project map.
6. Putting it on the web with unrestricted access will cause more problems than publishing it within a closed Local Area Network. But what about your colleagues. Will they obey restrictions or will they share?
7. Quite often a not-for-profit clause will allow scientifc work to be published in a journal but not in a textbook.
8. It is always safer to be cautious when republishing restricted data. Much data is in the public realm, but then again much is not. Outside of the the USA, and for all data you pay for, most data will have legal restrictions.
9. Always supply data that originated elswhere with attribution to the source and licenses that it came with.

Data You Created

1. Provide data completely (if you subset the data say so)
2. Provide metadata
3. Provide a projection file if it is an ArcGIS format
4. Provide data disclaimers
5. Provided a scale and accuracy report
6. Limit liability
7. Put restrictions on further sharing
8. Zip or otherwise compress it into a single package (so that the metadata travels with shape files)
9. If the final product is an image, not data, place copyright information
10. Send me a copy of the FME saved Workbench FMW file, the logfile, and metadata for one layer. The metadata should include all the things needed.

B. Deliverables

This module is one week in length. Please refer to the course Calendar tab in ANGEL for the due date.

1. Readings:

Required:

• "Esri Standards and Interoperability"
  Esri whitepaper on concerns in operability with reference to standards
• FME Powerpoint
  A useful Powerpoint from the FME Users' conference showing how complex feature manipulation can be achieved in a realworld environment.

Recommended:

• "Arc/Info Export (E00) Format Analysis" (Look at this but do not try to learn it. This paper is useful to show how the data is stored in a single file)
• "GIS data exchange problems, solutions." by Zoltán Siki. Hungarian difficulties with interoperability

2. Make sure you have sent the FME saved Workbench FMW file, the log and metadata for one layer from Part I.

3. Post a project write-up including:

• map of imported GPS coordinates for your project data that you sent last week. Should be added to your project.. if you have collected only cultural points these can be added to your e-portfolio;
• map of GPSed survey control stations for your area overlayed with the shapefile you acquired from the NGS site;
• information about a geocache in your area;
• (optional) map of waypoints and/or track acquired when geocaching in your area;
• (optional) picture of degree confluence near you.

4. Discuss the weekly topics on the discussion forum.

5. Complete Quiz 3.

C. Register with Geospatial One-Stop (This optional if you want to publish your data for the community) for extra credit.

In addition to posting your final project to your portfolio, you can publish your data to a clearinghouse for extra credit.

1. Register to become a geodata.gov publisher.
2. Familiarize yourself with the instructions for publishing data.
3. Publish data at  geodata.gov publisher (for extra credit).

That's it for Part II and Lesson 8!

You have just completed module 8.

Don't forget...if you have any questions, feel free to post them to the Lesson 8 Discussion Forum.