ICANN,The NASA Digital
Earth Office (DEO) supports the .geo proposal with one reservation. The .geo
TLD will provide simple access to geospatial data using the familiar coordinates
of latitude and longitude - a goal supported by Digital Earth. The DEO concern
is that the ".geo Forum" to be established within SRI, may not reflect the wider
needs of the geospatial community. SRI should be the secretariat of the .geo
Forum with a membership structure as described below.
By providing simple access
to geospatial data, the .geo TLD will advance the geospatial community's progress
in providing the value of geospatial data. The geospatial community is vibrant
and active with multiple coordinated organizations representing all sectors: commercial,
government, not-for-profit; in the United States and worldwide. A sample list
of geospatial organizations:
- Digital Earth (www.digitalearth.gov)
- Federal
Geographic Data Committee (www.fgdc.gov)
- ISO Technical Committee 211 (www.statkart.no/isotc211)
-
OpenGIS Consortium (www.opengis.org)
- Committee for Earth Observation Satellites
(wgiss.ceos.org)
- Global Data Spatial Infrastructure (www.gsdi.org)
- Joint
Steering Group on Spatial Standardization (www.spatialstandards.org)
(The listing
of an organization in this message does not indicate endorsement of .geo by the organization,
except for DEO.)
The geospatial community has multiple examples of success in interoperability
of geospatial data based on standards. The geospatial community has been lauded
for its progress on metadata which is a basis for advancing the semantic web.
Recently, collaborations in the telecommunications industry have contacted several
of the geospatial organizations in support of building the location based services
infrastructure that would certainly use the .geo TLD.
The SRI proposal for the
.geo TLD does little to ensure that .geo will build on the successes of the geospatial
community. A measure of a sponsor in ICANN's definition is its "accountability
to the community it will serve". SRI proposes "to form a new body within SRI,
referred to as the .geo Forum, to provide explicit oversight of the new TLD." The
SRI proposal further states, "SRI will be responsible for all management and support
staff of the .geo Forum and for implementing a communication and marketing strategy
for these activities." This approach does not provide accountability to the
geospatial community.
The .geo TLD schema offers an efficient approach to organizing
any and all data related to the surface of the Earth. However, unlike other
TLDs where the namespace is limited only by the number of characters in the name
extensions, the .geo namespace is limited by its schema and is therefore a scarce
commodity. Management of this public resource requires that the sponsoring
organization be representative enough to take into account all users of the namespace.
DEO
endorses the adoption of the .geo TLD with an organization of the .geo Forum which
represents the geospatial community. To form the initial .geo Forum, SRI should
solicit nominations from the organizations listed above. Upon calling the first
meeting of the .geo Forum, SRI should become the secretariat of .geo Forum.
The .geo Forum should become a self-sustaining body with management elected from
its members. On a regular basis the .geo Forum should release a public call
for participation, with the Forum as a whole selecting new members from the responses.
This approach will make the .geo Forum representative of the geospatial community.
George
Percivall
for NASA's Digital Earth Office