Promoting the creation of data catalogs for improved sharing of environmental data
The development of an indexing and search tool for environmental data fulfils a scientific and organizational need being increasingly felt by institutions that want to promote information sharing and accessibility.
The emergence of virtual organizations, such as environment observatories whose participants are usually varied stakeholders (scientists and land managers), requires tools capable of providing services for wide accessibility of the produced information.
Most importantly, these services should improve inter-disciplinary approaches to the issues involved. It is within this framework that the MDweb application is offered to respond to these issues of sharing and exchange of multi-producer, multi-actor information.
MDweb, tool for cataloging and locating environmental information
MDweb is a generic, multi-language, multi-standard, multi-platform tool for cataloging and locating environmental information, and, by extension, geographical data. MDweb has been developed by IRD – US 166 in conjunction with its partners of the South (the members of the ROSELT programme). It is the result of a research and development effort undertaken in partnership with, most notably, LIRMM (Montpellier) and Cemagref (JRU Tetis). MDweb has been designed to create, manage, administer, and locate data catalogs via the Web.
Its aim is to draw attention to and share data originating from within a project or an institute to a community wider than that of the information producers (administrators, scientists). The specifications adopted for the cataloging of geographical information are based on the ISO 19115 standard and conform to Open Geospatial Consortium specifications and European directives (INSPIRE directives).
Based on these standards, MDweb extends its relevance to all types of environmental data (text document, paper map, relational database, spreadsheet, bibliographical reference) by adopting a fully generic schema for description and storage.
The major features of MDweb are:
Access controlled by password
Customization of the application for each user
Management of contacts and data-entry parameters by the user
Indexation vocabulary controlled by auto-completion of words in thesauri
Entry of geographical extents assisted by a cartographic module
Entry of and updating of metadata records
Attaching of resources to catalog records
Searching records by keywords or geographic location
General management of the tool: management of users, languages, entry forms, publication parameters, catalog parameters
Import/export: compatibility with metadata originating from other sources (XML ISO 19115)
