[georss] Georss extension

[Pat Cappelaere]

Andrew,

The same way we need to geocode a point or a BBOX, the next step is to add
meta-data related to that point or area.  We are not concerned about an
address here (unless it is a Point of an address but how unlikely).  xAL
does not quite match here.

So my intent was to expand on the concept of georss for geocoding an atom
feed.  Using the georss tag raised some eyebrows (how unfortunate), so
geonames was born (since I was using a lot of info from geonames.org, and
the rest of USGS).  BTW, I would rather keep using the same tag name to
avoid namespace pollution and keep the feed as simple as possible...

It seems that there are 2 camps for international country codes : FIPS-10
and ISO-3166 (-1, -2...).  In this case, I used the ISO-3166 codes as
returned by geonames.org api I requested from Marc.  So that answers your
question.

Since a lot of eo-1 imagery users are interested in volcanoes, I also added
the Flinn-Engdahl regions/zones defined by USGS
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/epic/fer.html
This gives us 50 regions and 729 or so zones.
If you remember pubsub.com http://www.pubsub.com/earthquakes.php
This is what they use to define Area of Interest subscriptions.

(We are also very interested in defining subscriptions for our users)

Adding the nearBy places came from another project's idea and was also
supported by geonames.  It seems to be very important for wide-areas imagery
and allows to meet keyword subscription filters.

Mashing that information gives us quite some good meta-data (some of the
information may or may not be filled in).

This seems fairly simple... One tag would be better though... :)

Unless there is yet another standard out there that does this already!

Pat/


> From: Andrew Turner <georss at highearthorbit.com>
> Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 09:39:07 -0400
> To: Marc <marc at geonames.org>
> Cc: <georss at lists.eogeo.org>, Linda Derezinski <linda at innovatesolutions.com>,
> <ows-4-swe at opengeospatial.org>, Stuart Frye <Stuart.Frye at gsfc.nasa.gov>, Dan
> Mandl <dan.mandl at gsfc.nasa.gov>
> Subject: Re: [georss] Georss extension
> 
> On 9/23/06, Marc <marc at geonames.org> wrote:
>> The point I am trying to make is : 'How does Joe Average Programmer know
>> this?' Don't we need a simple and bulletproof specification
>> understandable also for non gis-specialists?
>> Maybe we can agree on a subset of xAL, a kind of "Simple xAL". The xAL
>> specification clearly says : "Important: Use only elements and
>> attributes that make sense to you. Ignore the rest that are needless for
>> you. "
> 
> I agree that this is the issue at hand (as well as the question if xAL
> supports non-inhabited areas like the ocean). Like georss:point vs.
> GML, a simple format makes the entire idea digestable to the large
> community that will actually implement the spec in publishing and
> consuming. Making something *full featured*, but difficult to use
> makes it very difficult for adoption.
> 
> I think we talked about a simplified xAL - similar to your geonames
> namespace perhaps? - at FOSS4G.
> 
> There are issues with your proposed geonames however. You still suffer
> from the country code problem. Pat's example used BR, where did that
> come from? Also, the countryName, is that assumed to be the English
> country name?
> 
> So how to have a simplified format, for easy adoption/understanding,
> and allow easy 'growth' into xAL for complex naming?
> 
> Andrew
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