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More than ever the need for standards and common methodologies in the representation and interchange of environmental data is evident, a fact that will be clearly reflected in the proceedings of this 5th annual SEDRIS Technology Conference. The topics, exhibits, and ideas presented at STC 2002 demonstrate the extraordinary efforts and enthusiasm by which the community, and the industry at large, is tackling the challenges we all face in dealing with environmental data and their applications. As the volume and availability of data is growing, the need for realistic and dependable methods for the representation and interchange of environmental data is also increasing. This in turn is creating new management and technical challenges. Access to data through standard interfaces, establishment of data repositories, creation of more sophisticated applications, and common processes and techniques for rapidly dealing with large data volumes will continue to be critical areas, but at a more complex and integrated level. The advancement of SEDRIS technologies towards international standardization continues to pave the way for tackling these challenges. But that in itself is not enough. Our community will continue to have significant and extensive needs regarding the representation and interchange of environmental data, which have to be met with inexpensive, robust, and easy to use value-added applications. These requirements are clearly going to continue to grow throughout the 21st century. The response to these needs from the international community of participants, as reflected in the STC 2002 proceedings and among the seven countries represented at the conference (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Republic of Korea, France, Germany, Sweden), has been truly innovative. Not only is the community of environmental data users and producers meeting the technical and management challenges, but it is again demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of SEDRIS and the related technologies to represent, interchange, and interact with environmental data. We look forward to this continuing trend and the exciting new innovations that are yet to come. |
SEDRIS is fundamentally about
two key aspects: (1) representation of environmental data, and (2) the
interchange of environmental data sets. SEDRIS does not try to judge, side
with, separate, or distinguish how various domains use environmental data.
Instead it provides a unifying mechanism for all of them to describe (and
subsequently share) such data, without detracting from one or the other.
The representational aspect of SEDRIS is much like a language or a method
for unambiguously describing the environment, independent of whether the
environment is geo-specific, geo-typical, or completely fictitious. The
interchange aspect of SEDRIS is a mechanism for sharing the described environmental
data. Put together, SEDRIS is simply an infrastructure technology. It provides
the enabling foundation for Information Technology applications to express,
understand, share, and reuse environmental data.
The SEDRIS web site, www.sedris.org, provides information and documentation that describe SEDRIS, its data representation model, and its application programmer's interface, among others. SEDRIS software and documentation may be retrieved for on-line viewing or downloaded for local use from the web site.
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