RE: Feedback from OGC members on FIPS query to obtain geometry (polygon) for use in CAP demonstration

["Carl Reed" <creed@opengis.org>]

After our teleconference today, I put out a query to the OGC membership
asking if there are any web accessible services/portals out there that could
be accessed using some level of query, such as a FIPS code, and have a
geometry returned. (In OGC parlance, geometry = coordinate set for a given
geographic entity. Not to be confused with a feature, a feature collection,
or a geometry collection :-) )

In a couple of hours, I received half a dozen responses. There were some
questions back to the EM TC:

1. What is the Area of Interest for the demonstration?
2. What payload format should the geometry be returned in? (The OGC member
recommendation is that the geometry response should be GML)
3. What level of FIPs code (i.e., what type of administrative boundary)?

In general the responses were along the line of "If the goal is to retrieve
GML for a layer based on simple query like a fips code, it's fairly simple
to generate a
(WFS) GetFeature with a query filter specifying the parameter by which to
limit the response". Now, WFS is the OpenGIS Web Feature Service Interface
specification. GetFeature is the interface to retrieve a feature or set of
features and their associated geometry. The query filter allows the client
to specify the query and send it to a WFS. May sound a bit complicated but
is actually pretty simple. Their are some Open Source WFS implementations.

Anyway, below my signature are the unedited responses from the OGC members.
Most of their confusion is probably because I did not frame the question
very well.

Cheers

Carl

=================================================

Carl:
      What is the demonstration territory?  The counties in the
Baltimore/Washington CMSA, the rest of the counties in MD and the three
counties in DE are accessible from the WebTIGER prototype application that
includes WMS and WFS.  See http://aries.geo.census.gov/index.html for
descriptive project web pages that will lead you to WebTIGER.    You could
get the detailed county boundaries and attributes from it.   Or if you want
to roll your own, you can also download the TIGER/GML version 3 files
WebTIGER is  serving.  Or there are TIGER/GML version 3 files for the 5
counties around Detroit MI on the CIPI-1.2 portal.  Or see
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/index.html for TIGER/Line files of
several vintages for all the counties in the U.S., or see
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/index.html for generalized county
boundary files in ArcInfo Export, ArcView shapefile, and ArcInfo Ungenerate
(ASCII) formats.

      Cheers,
Paul

 Paul.W.Daisey@census.gov     U.S. Census Bureau


========================================================
Hi Carl,

We have a WFS with counties from BTS, the data contains the state and county
FIPS code so you can use a standard filter query to retrieve the counties.
How do they want the boundary information returned? Portrayed? GML2 or 3?
Zipped up shape file? SVG? These are all available.

I'm still tuning memory on the server, big requests blow out the stack, but
if they only returning on county feature per request, then it shouldn't be a
problem.

Capabilities:
http://www.redspider.us/ionicweb/wfs/NTAD2002?version=1.0.0&request=GetCapab
ilities&service=WFS

DescribeFeature:
http://www.redspider.us/ionicweb/wfs/NTAD2002?version=1.0.0&request=Describe
FeatureType&service=WFS&typename=BTS_COUNTY


I just wanted to show you that I actually do something productive in
addition harassing people on mailing lists.

Regards,

sonny
IONIC Enterprises

==================================================================
Carl:

I believe we can accommodate OASIS using GIS Portal and GeoSecurity.  We
would be interested in learning more.

Could you have someone contact me with further information?

Jim
James A. Aylward
Executive Vice President
Harvard Design & Mapping (HDM)

1601 N. Kent St., Suite 1102
Arlington, VA  22209
T: 703-224-1414 x211
F: 703-224-1818

New Cambridge Office Address -
Effective August 1, 2003:
125 CambridgePark Drive, 3rd Floor
Cambridge, MA  02140
T: 617-354-0100 x211
F: 617-868-6855

C: 617-233-8424
W: http://www.hdm.com
SMS: 6172338424@messaging.sprintpcs.com


=================================================
I have FIPS code via TIGER Census data
(and some other sources) with WFS
access. I also have an alert/notification implementation
(via old OCG sensors spec).

Also reviewed the draft OASIS CAP last week.

Could you be more specific on what/which FIPS code?

Also, I do not have the HTTP CAP Request format (protocol). I should be able
to produce a CAP
document with polygons via query, but I currently
do not have county boundaries, have Congressional dist, municipal bdy,
county subdivision, urban area in WFS/GML.
Current query is by bounding box, not FIPS.

Rick Tynes     703-428-6838   ext 2232
Tynes, Richard D ERDC-TEC-VA <Richard.D.Tynes@erdc.usace.army.mil>