Work Plans

NFIS 2003-2004 Work Plan

Click here for the 2002-2003 Work Plan

Executive Summary

This document details the 2003-04 Work Plan for the Canadian Council of Forests Ministers' National Forest Information System (NFIS), including the projects and activity areas that are scheduled for action. Each project and task will be prioritized based on partnership requirements and availability of financial and other required resources.

Activities will be carried out under a number of different development environments including in-house development by NFIS Project Office staff, contracts, partnerships with other Federal/Provincial agencies and partnerships with forestry, geomatics, Web software development companies and others. Services will be tested and operationally deployed on NFIS partner servers through the NFIS Project Office.

Seven major areas of activity are identified including Server Connectivity, Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) Services and Reporting, Content Loading, Security, NFIS Web Presence, Communications and NFIS Operational Environment.

Progress will be reported under Action Items.

The following sections describe the activities to be undertaken this year. It should be noted that a number of activities are ongoing and will continue past March 31, 2004.

SERVER CONNECTIVITY

The Project Office will connect the remaining Provinces and Territories that have requested a NFIS Server. At this point (June 2003), the Provinces of Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan have requested servers. The Project Office proposes to conduct NFIS workshops and presentations for Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut in the fall/early winter of this year. Connectivity and further discussions with other initiatives are planned (i.e. CISE (Canadian Information System for the Environment), NLWIS (National Land and Water Information Service), DFO and CGKN (Canadian Geoscience Knowledge Network)).

The Project Office will promote to partners the benefits of the NFIS Infrastructure and the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI).

SFM SERVICES AND REPORTING

The capability to access, analyse and report on forest resources information and SFM is central to NFIS. The access requirements have essentially been met through the NFIS interoperable infrastructure put in place between 2001-2002 and 2002-2003.

Distributed analysis and reporting capability (applications and services), along with connectivity to Provinces and Territories, are the top priorities for NFIS activities for 2003-2004.

Emphasis will be placed on the areas as defined by the CCFM. These include NFDP, NFI and selected Criteria and Indicators.

The Project Office will work on generic analysis and reporting tools. These tools will be developed and then customized or tailored to meet the specific requirements of such areas as NFDP, NFI, C&I. Tools identified include the functionality to:

• view a database schema that is being queried
• report on features based on an attribute from database
• generate basic statistical descriptors of an attribute (maximum, minimum, mean, mode, standard deviation, frequency distributions, and unique value)
• create nested reports (for, with, where, etc.)
• represent the results on a map (themed map based on statistical operations), and in tables, charts and plots

Reporting at the inter-provincial and national levels requires the ability to analyse and summarize data that crosses jurisdictions. This requirement is dependent on the ability to seamlessly merge and combine (intersect of overlay) spatial information. Two approaches are being developed, namely (1) a pseudo spatial model based on relational database architecture and (2) a Web-based spatial analysis system.

The pseudo spatial database model is in the process of being developed in support of NFI and like information sets. This design is based on a grid-like database that is sampled from source data and leverages the power of a relational database. This design will allow for the archiving management and reporting of national and local datasets. The model will give the ability to report and summarize data in a relational database using simple query statements and avoid the complexity of external GIS operations.

The NFIS Project Office will be further developing its Distributed Spatial Analysis Architecture (DSAA) based on Web Mapping technology that allows basic spatial operations. Further development will be undertaken to allow for intersection, buffering, corridor analysis and threshold (merge) capabilities.

In co-operation with GeoConnections, federal and provincial governments and industry, the Project Office is participating in the requirements definition of a future Service Registry. The project deliverable is a Service Registry that will be able to document all services that are available to the NFIS infrastructure.

Infrastructure and other activities in support of NFIS

This area will address infrastructure support, capability expansion and enhancements as required.

CONTENT LOADING

Content and Subject Theme

The Project Office will work with partners in defining data and information content in support of SFM reporting. Core information that has been confirmed by the Provinces visited include:

• Planimetric (roads, rivers, lakes, oceans, etc.)
• Forest Cover / Land Cover / Vegetation mapping
• Protected Areas
• Ownership

Other sources of information can be published via the NFIS infrastructure if the partnering jurisdiction wishes. The Project Office will contact key information providers for availability and access constraints. All information contributing partners in the NFIS initiative will be responsible for maintaining the best and most recent data.

Partners will provide input to the development of “Subject Themes” for public access. Typical views may include forested land, seral stage including old growth, historic insect outbreaks, and protected areas to name a few.

SECURITY

Distributed Access Control System (DACS) Enrichment

The Distributed Access Control System (DACS) that was developed last year will be packaged and made available to Canadian Industry (currently in negotiations with GeoConnections). The intent of this action is to allow a larger community of developers to maintain and make additions to the core package. Third parties will be able to incorporate DACS support into their products (e.g. CubeWerx, UMN MapServer). An installation and configuration guide will be developed under contract to assist in the deployment of DACS on new systems. Further enhancements to DACS are planned including that of a refined Access Control Language (ACL) to support boolean operations – and, or etc. A contract for a DACS controlled Open GIS Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Service (WMS) smart proxy will be released. The deliverable of the DACS-WMS contract will be a mechanism that will only display to a user the layers of information that they have permission to see. Other DACS integration projects may be started that combine DACS with CubeWerx products and to that of the UMN MapServer suite.

Access and Authentication Control Deployment

The Project Office will deploy the Distributed Access Control System (DACS) mechanism throughout the NFIS infrastructure where applicable or requested by partners. Authentication mechanisms for Public NFIS users will be managed through the Project Office. Proxy based implementation that allows access control from remote sites is being deployed.

NFIS WEB PRESENCE

The public front end or the public presence on the Web otherwise known as NFIS.ORG will be updated. Planned additional components and enhancements include:

• Public and Private (NFIS Partners) via DACS
• new view and content for the appropriate target audience (look and feel)
• a new Map Viewer based on the Chameleon UNM MapServer package
• an operational CubeView with bilingual capabilities
• thematic portals based on subject specific areas (e.g. protected areas, exotics, fire, etc)
• fixing links on the Web pages since many of the links to partner’s resources are no longer reachable
• new mapping tools allowing users to create their own themed maps, based on a users defined criteria

COMMUNICATIONS

The Project Office will prepare communications material and present the NFIS vision and activities at venues as requested. Communication materials will include brochures, videos, web presence and reports. Technical papers will be given at forums and conferences that promote CGDI and the NFIS initiative.

All partners are expected to promote the initiative in their jurisdictions and within the forestry sector.

The NFIS Project Office will continue to play a lead role in the initiative for integrating and developing common interoperable federal infrastructure protocols for accessing provincial and territorial information holdings via NFIS, CISE (Canadian Information System for the Environment), NLWIS (National Land and Water Information Service), DFO and CGKN (Canadian Geoscience Knowledge Network)

The NFIS Web site will host an “Initiatives/Development” page which will document all planned, ongoing and completed/operational initiatives with attendant manuals/user guides/Help functions, etc as appropriate. The page will have public and secure content and will provide NFIS partners, GeoConnections and other interoperability initiatives (e.g. GeoNova, LIO, Saskatchewan Forest Centre, CISE, NLWIS, and others) with access to NFIS activities. The intent is to develop a model for other interoperability infrastructure and service developers to host similar pages, thereby promoting joint development, avoiding duplication of effort and speeding the operational deployment of applications, tools and services.

NFIS OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Customizing spatial viewers and portals

Undertake customization and enhancements to existing OGC compliant software for the purposes of developing a common look and feel for thematic portals on NFIS. Current products include that of the UMN MapServer / DM Solution’s Chameleon and CubeWerx’s CubeView packages. Enhancements to language (bilingual), presentation and security / access control will be investigated. Technical enhancements to the products may be required to facilitate these additions.

NFIS OPERATIONAL DEPLOYMENT

The NFIS Project Office will provide for the technical support of the key infrastructure and for the operational deployment of applications and services developed through the NFIS Project Office, by its partners and through contracts.

Key NFIS infrastructure components, services and applications will be monitored for reliability, response, and access capabilities during scheduled times. Fail-over, backup and essential systems operations needs are required for operational NFIS components such as NFIS Spatial Operations and NFDP.

COORDINATION OF ACTIVITY

Subsequent to the drafting of the work plan, the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers reviewed and updated their Operating Framework. The NFIS Project Office, on behalf of the partners, will work with the Coordination Group as necessary to ensure that NFIS activities are integrated into the performance management framework.

NATIONAL FOREST INFORMATION SYSTEM
2003-2004 ACTION ITEMS FOR REPORTING