Boyan Brodaric

Natural Resources Canada | NRCan

3D geological modelling algorithms can generate multiple models that fit various mathematical and geometrical constraints. The results, however, are often meaningless to geological experts if the models do not respect accepted geological principles. This is problematic given the expected use of the models for various downstream purposes, such as ha...

Implicit neural representation (INR) networks are emerging as a powerful framework for learning three-dimensional shape representations of complex objects. These networks can be used effectively to model three-dimensional geological structures from scattered point data, sampling geological interfaces, units, and structural orientations. The flexibi...

Implicit neural representation (INR) networks are emerging as a powerful framework for learning three-dimensional shape representations of complex objects. These networks can be used effectively to implicitly model three-dimensional geological structures from scattered point data, sampling geological interfaces, units, and orientations of structura...

Three-dimensional structural geomodels are increasingly being used for a wide variety of scientific and societal purposes. Most advanced methods for generating these models are implicit approaches, but they suffer limitations in the types of interpolation constraints permitted, which can lead to poor modeling in structurally complex settings. A geo...

Loop is a new open source 3D geological and geophysical modelling platform in full development. The new platform consists of 4 main work packages: • Knowledge Management: use of AI techniques for knowledge extraction from literature, maps and reports using geological ontology. Geological rules will be encoded to ensure proper knowledge extraction....

Article on what the Geological Survey of Canada is doing in 3D mapping and modelling and the development of the flagship 3D project — Canada in 3D. Published in an Alberta Geological Survey special issue reporting 3D geological modelling from 22 geological survey organizations in Europe, North America and Australasia.

Water features such as rivers, clouds, and aquifers are primarily understood from sensor measurements. Ontologiesfor the hydro domain play a key role in describing sensor measurements, particularly to aid water data interoperability, but waterfeatures are under-represented in such ontologies. In this paper we build upon existing work in hydro ontol...

The explosive growth of geospatial data has stimulated the development of many standards aimed at decreasing data heterogeneity and enhancing data use. Well-established design methods for geospatial data standards typically involve the creation of two schemas for data structure, designated here as logical and physical, but this can lead to conceptu...

GWML2 is an international standard for the online exchange of groundwater data that addresses the problem of data heterogeneity. This problem makes groundwater data hard to find and use because the data are diversely structured and fragmented into numerous data silos. Overcoming data heterogeneity requires a common data format; however, until the d...

The rapid growth of distributed geographical data and software has fueled development of interoperability approaches that enable such resources to function together for specific purposes. The problem at the heart of these approaches involves overcoming heterogeneity in the digital representation of geographical entities and related computing proces...

The goal of a data manager is to ensure that data is safely stored, adequately described, discoverable and easily accessible. However, to keep pace with the evolution of groundwater studies in the last decade, the associated data and data management requirements have changed significantly. In particular, there is a growing recognition that manageme...

Water data networks are increasingly being integrated to answer complex scientific questions that often span large geographical areas and cross political borders. Data heterogeneity is a major obstacle that impedes interoperability within and between such networks. It is resolved here for groundwater data at five levels of interoperability, within...

The Canadian Groundwater Information Network (GIN) and the US National Ground-Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) connect data from a variety of sources including states, provinces and federal agencies. Data heterogeneity is a major challenge faced by these networks, one that must be overcome at five distinct levels: systems, syntax, structure, semant...

The relation between an object and its matter is fundamental to all physical sciences, and represented widely and diversely in scientific ontologies. An under-appreciated aspect of this relation is the emergence of voids at finer levels of physical granularity. In this paper we enhance the constitution relation to account for the presence of finer...

Material-spatial interdependence (mat-dep) is a type of dependence in which the physical extents of two entities are necessarily and mutually contingent, e.g. an object and its matter, or a hole and its host. Such dependence is commonly found amongst arrangements of physical entities, particularly in models of the natural environment. In this paper...

Full physical containment is the relation in which one physical entity is completely inside another. It is central to the description of natural resources held in reservoirs above or below the surface. Previous ontological representations of containment are located in abstract space, incomplete, or insufficiently incorporate voids, so in this paper...

Current approaches to the discovery of scientific resources (publications, data sets and web services) are dominated by keyword search. These approaches do not allow scientists to search on the deeper semantics of scientific resources, or to discover resources on the basis of the scientific approaches taken. This paper presents an approach to the...

Current approaches to the discovery of scientific resources (publications, data sets and web services) are dominated by keyword search. These approaches do not allow scientists to search on the deeper semantics of scientific resources, or to discover resources on the basis of the scientific approaches taken. This article evaluates a user interface...

Although many different types of data mining tools have been developed for geographic analysis, the broader perspective of geographic knowledge discovery the stages required and their computational support  have been largely overlooked. This paper describes the process of knowledge construction as a number of inter-related activities and the supp...

Evaluation of the utility of a geologic map can require understanding of its knowledge evolution. In such cases, online usage further requires machine representation of both the knowledge and the evolution. To meet these needs, an informal structure is developed here that involves the interaction of the three reasoning forms of abduction, induction...

Voids are extremely important to water science, because their size and connectivity determines the storage and flow of water both above and below the ground surface. While previous formal theories about voids strictly consider holes hosted inside objects, we generalize voids to also include spaces between objects, and distinguish voids in macroscop...

Increasing stress on global groundwater resources is leading to new approaches to the management and delivery of groundwater data. These approaches include the deployment of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) to enable online data interoperability amongst numerous and heterogeneous data sources. Often an important component of an SDI is a global d...

The need for a national groundwater monitoring network within the United States is profound and has been recognized by organizations outside government as a major data gap for managing ground-water resources. Our country’s communities, industries, agriculture, energy production and critical ecosystems rely on water being available in adequate quant...

Data and information volumes relevant to the upstream energy industry continue to expand in a growing number of diverse, distributed repositories, which makes discovery and integration of information exponentially more difficult for knowledge workers. We believe that improving this situation requires adoption of a knowledge management infrastructur...

The Groundwater Interoperability Experiment, initiated by the Open Geospatial Consortium's Hydrology Domain Working Group, was conducted to develop a mechanism for interoperable exchange of groundwater data between the United States and Canada. A framework was developed which incorporates a mediator to transform data in heterogeneous formats into a...

Ontologies are being widely used in online science activities, or e-Science, most notably in roles related to managing and integrating data resources and workflows. We suggest this use has focused on enabling e-Science infrastructures to operate more efficiently, but has had less emphasis on scientific knowledge innovation. A greater focus on onlin...

Geoscience data capture is expensive. In order to extract maximum value, the data need to be consistently described, easily found, and then shared among those who need it. There has been recent momentum in the geoscience community to develop a common descriptive framework which facilitates data sharing. While storage and transfer standards are vita...

The Hydrology Domain Working group of OGC is working in collaboration with the WMO to develop WaterML 2.0. WaterML 2.0 is a data transfer standard that is used in conjunction with other OGC standards, such as SOS, to transmit surface water and groundwater information. We discuss our preliminary progress on a proposed OGC Interoperability Experiment...

Online scientific research, or e-science, is increasingly reliant on machine-readable representations of scientific data and knowledge. At present, much of the knowledge is represented in ontologies, which typically contain geoscience categories such as `water body', `aquifer', `granite', `temperature', `density', `Co2'. While extremely useful for...

E-science systems are increasingly deploying ontologies to aid online geoscience research. Geoscience ontologies are typically constructed independently by isolated individuals or groups who tend to follow few design principles. This limits the usability of the ontologies due to conceptualizations that are vague, conflicting, or narrow. Advances in...

A cornerstone of effective groundwater resource management is access to available groundwater information and tools for analysis, modeling, and eventually decision-making. In Canada, information access is inhibited by the heterogeneous nature of groundwater information, which is collected and maintained by many agencies using different digital stru...

The developing cyberinfrastructure affects the knowledge system by which geological surveys collect, represent and communicate their knowledge, and thereby influences their view of the geology. Consequences for four interacting aspects of the overall ...

Cross-disciplinary e-science can be enabled by using foundational ontologies such as Dolce to integrate knowledge representations from different geoscience domains. Geoscientists are increasingly concerned with big problems related to climate change, natural hazards, and environmental health. In solving these problems, they're regularly encounterin...

Interest in and requirements for the next generation of information technology for science are expanding. e-Science has become a growing subject of discussion covering topics such as grid computing for science as well as knowledge-enhanced scientific data retrieval. The demand for deep integration of scientific data and knowledge within and among d...

Online access to Canadian groundwater information is being realized through the groundwater information network (GIN). GIN is an evolving collaboration of six provincial agencies, several conservation authorities, along with a federal facilitating agency. Groundwater information is provided via Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)-compliant Web service...

A common task in cyber-based data environments, hydrogeologic or otherwise, is an initial search for data amongst distributed heterogeneous sources, followed by amalgamation of the multiple results into a single file organized using a common structure and perhaps standard content. For example, querying water well databases to obtain a list of the r...

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) was pleased to present the AAAI 2008 Spring Symposium Series, held Wednesday through Friday, March 26-28, 2008, at Stanford University, California. The eight symposia were titled (1) AI Meets Business Rules and Process Management, (2) Architectures for Intelligent Theory-Based Ag...

This report provides a partial description of the ontology for Science Knowledge Infrastructure (SKIo), an ontology that represents science knowledge primitives such as theory, prediction, geoscience model, observation. SKIo is developed to enhance digital representation and use of such knowledge in e-Science environments. It is specified in this r...

An ontology of general science knowledge (SKIo) is developed to enhance machine representation and use of scientific theories in emerging e-Science Knowledge Infrastructures. SKIo specializes the DOLCE foundational ontology with science knowledge primitives, such as science theory, model, data, prediction, and induction. These are arranged to refle...

Conceptual representations are being developed within many geoscience domains to aid semantic-enabled scientific computing, e.g. geology, geophysics, hydrology, marine science, planetary science. These representations often make different ontological assumptions, causing their integration to be impeded. This is particularly problematic for science...

The CGI-IUGS Interoperability Working Group released GeoSciML as a geoscience mark-up and interchange language in 2006. Since then the model has incorporated changes resulting from further testing and use case analysis. The modelling framework remains primarily based on ISO 19109 Rules for Application Schema that specify the use of �features� as re...

Though groundwater data are important inputs to hydrologic decision-making, they are highly distributed and heterogeneous, and thus difficult to access in a coordinated manner. The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) is developing an information system for coordinated groundwater data access, using the standards and technologies of Spatial Data Infra...

The emerging growth of OGC web services in the groundwater domain is likely to follow trends in other disciplines and result in a rich supply of groundwater data in heterogeneous and complex GML formats (Geography Markup Language), even within a single organization. The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) has developed the Groundwater Markup Language...

Ontologies are being developed bottom-up in many geoscience domains to aid semantic-enabled computing. The contents of these ontologies are typically partitioned along domain boundaries, such as geology, geophsyics, hydrology, or are developed for specific data sets or processing needs. At the same time, very general foundational ontologies are bei...

Abstract Geo-Pragmatics is introduced here as an enhanced representation for ontologies in which geospatial, geographical and geoscientific concepts are not only defined, but their pragmatic context is also captured and potentially reasoned with. A framework for representing such context is developed using three core aspects: dimensions, agents and...

Ontologies are being developed in many geoscientific domains. They are typically populated with two types of concepts: upper-level concepts that apply across many or all domains, and domain concepts that apply only within a specific domain. Previous work has refined this distinction by identifying a particular type of domain concept, called a situa...

SUMMARY The CGI data model working group have established an initial geology data model and XML based exchange language to accommodate geological map data, referred to as GeoSciML. The language is based on prior work carried out at North American, European and Australian geological survey and research organisations. Unified Modelling Language (UML)...

Ontologies are increasingly viewed as a key enabler of scientific research in cyber-infrastructures. They provide a way of digitally representing the meaning of concepts embedded in the theories and models of geoscience, enabling such representations to be compared and contrasted computationally. This facilitates the discovery, integration and comm...

Scientists are confronted with significant data- management problems due to the large volume and high complexity of scientific data. In particular, the latter makes data integration a dicult techni- cal challenge. In this paper, we describe our work on semantic mediation and scientific workflows, and dis- cuss how these technologies address integra...

Networks of databases and tools are being constructed in the geosciences to facilitate geoscientific computing and to stimulate new research. These efforts are contributing to an emerging geoscientific cyberinfrastructure that has the potential to be an important new operational paradigm for the geosciences. However, limited research has been under...

Digital libraries extend traditional library tools, collections, and metaphors in new and sometimes radical directions. Geoscience information, traditionally found in libraries in the form of maps, reports, books, and journal articles, can potentially gain enormous benefits from digital interfaces that allow geospatial information to be effectively...

GeoSciML is an information model and XML encoding for geoscience information. It is intended that GeoSciML will ultimately encompass a broad range of geoscience concepts. Version 1.0 (released in January 2006) is concerned with a set of objects and concepts underlying geologic maps, including geologic units, structures, materials and boreholes. Geo...

1. Abstract Geoscience interpretations are founded on many sources, including field data, remotely sensed imagery, laboratory analysis and literature reviews. The different sources typically involve various acquisition methods and lines of reasoning, often leading to various interpretations that can reinforce or compete with each other. However, de...

The design of Web-based digital libraries for thematic education, concept exploration, and community decision support represents a fundamental challenge in cybercartography. The incorporation of ideas from knowledge representation, education theory and practice, geomatics, cartography, and hypermedia into a consistent and usable suite of tools repr...

GeoSciML is a harmonised information model and XML encoding for the exchange of geologic data. It is unique in its breadth of inputs and content, drawing from precursory national geoscience data model efforts in North America, Europe, Australia and Japan. The common suite of feature types is based on geological criteria (units, structures) artefact...

1. Abstract Geoscience interpretations are founded on many sources, including field data, remotely sensed imagery, laboratory analysis and literature reviews. The different sources typically involve various acquisition methods and lines of reasoning, often leading to various interpretations that can reinforce or compete with each other. However, de...

Like many activities in the geosciences, geological mapping of surface bedrock involves the construction of a model for a geographic region via field-based surveys. Individuals interpret field evidence to constrain possible histories and explanations, and these are regularly under-determined by available theory and data, resulting in multiple valid...

Databases containing geological field information are increasingly being constructed directly in the field. The design of such databases is often challenged by opposing needs: (1) the individual need to maintain flexibility of database structure and contents, to accommodate unexpected field situations; and (2) the corporate need to retain compatibi...

GEON (GEOscience Network) is a new NSF-sponsored initiative designed to create the cyberinfrastructure for the earth sciences through information management. Its fundamental objective is to facilitate interlinking of earth science data in four-dimensional space by establishing an interoperable network consisting of digital resources, including both...

Networks of databases and software tools are being constructed in the geosciences as part of an emerging cyberinfrastructure. These networks are responding to (1) the need to access high performance computing resources and data stores remotely, (2) increases in the size, complexity and heterogeneity of data, and (3) the need to share computational...

The North American Geologic Map Data Model Steering Committeeʼs (NADM) Digital Interchange Tech- nical Team (see http://nadm-geo.org) is tasked to create an interchange format compliant with the North American Geologic Map Data Model conceptual model, known as "NADM C1". XML was unanimously selected as the technology of choice, and after initial at...

The Georgia Basin Digital Library Project aims to provide an environment that fosters awareness and understanding of issues related to sustainability. This paper presents a summary of the conceptual approach that we have taken for interconnecting Web-based geographical information systems, knowledge representation, community mapping and public part...

In many geoscientific disciplines concepts are regularly discovered and modified, but the architecture of our geospatial information systems is primarily aimed at supporting static conceptual structures. This results in a semantic gap between our evolving understanding of these concepts and how they are represented in our systems. The research repo...

National geologic map databases are presently being constructed in the U.S. and Canada, as well as in several other countries. Here, we describe an object-based model for geologic map information, specifically designed to represent digital geologic maps and related geoscientific information. Although oriented to geoscience, several fundamental issu...

This paper explores the development of categories shared in the field logging of a region by a team of geologists. Visualization, neural networks and spatial statistical tools are employed to gain insight into the complex space of attributes observed, and into the categories developed. Background material and a discussion of results examines the fi...

The National Mapping Program (NATMAP) is a major geoscience initiative, conceived in 1988 by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), aimed at increasing the level of geoscientific mapping in Canada through multiinstitutional and multidisciplinary projects. The methodology used to accomplish this goal includes multiparameter synthesis of geoscience i...

In this paper we describe a web application, called Pathways-Phoenix (PX), that facilitates collaboration between scientists, planners, and the public. PX leverages open geospatial standards and technologies for information delivery, and enables users to deliberate about the informa- tion in custom designed projects. To demonstrate its re-us- abili...

GeoSciML is an information model and XML encoding for geoscience information. It is intended that GeoSciML will ultimately encompass a broad range of geoscience concepts. Version 1.0 (released in January 2006) is concerned with a set of objects and concepts underlying geologic maps, including geologic units, structures, materials and boreholes. Geo...