[georss] GeoRSS for earthquake/tsunami reporting

[Brian Shiro]

Mikel,

Thank you for the very interesting information.  I'll certainly use  
<georss:elev> with a negative value to indicate depth.

I wish there were a more clear direction for indicating the magnitude  
with established namespaces.  It seems to me that the dc namespace is  
on the way out in RSS 2.0.  If this is true, do you think it's wise  
for me to follow the USGS's lead and use <dc:subject> as a proxy for  
magnitude?  Perhaps I'll get in touch with the USGS regarding their  
mysterious "eq" namespace.  Since I want valid feeds, I'll avoid the  
JRC approach of just creating my own fields directly in the RSS  
namespace.

In a later incarnation of our RSS feeds, I certainly want to try  
having polygons of the tsunami travel times (similar to JRC and  
GDACS) and of the countries put into a watch or warning.

FYI: There is an effort underway to create a Tsunami Warning Markup  
Language (TWML) to standardize some of this:
      http://xml.coverpages.org/ 
emergencyManagement.html#TsunamiWarningML

Brian


On Dec 30, 2006, at 1:19 AM, Mikel Maron wrote:

> Hi Brian
>
>
> There's been a bunch of forays for distributing earthquake, tsunami,
>
>
> and other types of warnings in GeoRSS. Both the USGS and European
>
>
> Commission have developed similar feeds and these might be good
>
>
> guides.
>
> Overall I think that earthquake, tsunami and other disaster
>
> information is very much in need of an open, "simplest thing that  
> works",
> RSS derived standard for distribution and aggregation.
>
>
> For earthquake depth, I see no problem with a negative value in
> <georss:elev>, and would recommend it.
>
>
>  #2 has more variety, and no clear answer..
>
> http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/catalogs/
>
> These USGS feeds were actually some of the first GeoRSS feeds.
> They use <dc:subject> to transport the magnitude.
>
> The newer "ShakeMaps" feed does reference an "eq" namespace,
> but the URI is 404. Elements include "seconds", "depth", "region",
> "shakethumb".
>
>
> http://tsunami.jrc.it/
> http://tsunami.jrc.it/model/Reports/9338/out_9338.xml
>
> The JRC tsunami model puts the "magnitude", "depth", and other  
> elements
> directly within the RSS namespace, so it's invalid.
>
> What is very nice about their feeds, however, is that the feed for  
> each
> warning contains a series of items, with polygons and timestamps
> corresponding to the hour by hour prorogation of the simulated wave.
> They use the old informal extension to the W3C "geo" namespace.
> I'd suggest using georss:polygon for the similar purposes in NOAA  
> feeds.
>
>
> http://www.gdacs.org/
> http://www.gdacs.org/XML/RSS.xml
>
> GDACS is a cooperative effort between the UN and the European  
> Commission
> to coordinate responses to natural disasters. They use GeoRSS, plus  
> a bunch
> of closed, invented namespaces which correspond to different  
> components of the
> system "gdas", "asgard", "glide".
>
> -Mikel
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Brian Shiro <brian.shiro at noaa.gov>
> To: georss at lists.eogeo.org
> Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2006 9:42:04 AM
> Subject: [georss] GeoRSS for earthquake/tsunami reporting
>
> GeoRSS gurus:
>
> I have created some RSS 2.0 feeds of tsunami bulletins from the
> Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.  These include <georss:point> tags
> with the earthquake location, but I'd like to also include earthquake
> depth and magnitude as XML fields.
>
> 1) Could I use the <georss:elev> tag with negative elevation values
> to denote depth?
>
> 2) Is there any generic tag I could use to denote the earthquake
> magnitude?  Perhaps I could use the <georss:radius> tag, although its
> purpose isn't really clear to me.
>
> I think GeoRSS's ability to define polygons and countries could
> really enhance our tsunami warning products since we could define the
> geographic areas pertinent to a given tsunami bulletin.  If anyone
> has suggestions along these lines, I'd be interested in hearing them.
>
> Thank you,
> Brian Shiro
> NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
>
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