After successfully going live with the Information Gateway in September 2010, CEH have now launched phase 2, adding support for GEMINI2. Using sdi.suite as a core, the CEH Information Gateway provides a web portal that enables users to discover and bind to spatial data resources within CEH and throughout the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Metadata records describing these resources conform to both INSPIRE and the UK GEMINI2 profile, ensuring compliance at both the National and International level.
sdi.suite securityManager ensures that the right people get access to the right data, while sdi.suite serviceMonitor will allow both administrators and users to gauge the health of spatial services essential to the usefulness of the Information Gateway. Future plans include the use of sdi.suite licenseManager to allow for broader access to spatial services and data, while protecting the rights of CEH and related organisations.
Gwyn Rees, Director of the Environmental Information Data Centre at CEH, said, “Implementation of con terra’s sdi.suite is helping us to play a leading role with regard to INSPIRE compliance in the UK. sdi.suite underpins the CEH Information Gateway, enabling us to provide easy access to a wide range of terrestrial and freshwater datasets . Datasets and map view services can be harvested into the UK INSPIRE Portal, and potentially onwards to other portals across Europe, providing increased exposure for CEH science, and added value for policymakers and the wider public.”
The CEH Information Gateway helps to deliver national capability in the environmental sciences in order to underpin the NERC research themes and to meet the challenges set out in the current CEH Science Strategy, Integrated Science for our Changing World.
