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Making New Zealand's soils and land resource spatial information available on-line James Barringer Landcare Research Lincoln, New Zealand Also acknowledging David Medyckyj-Scott, Tim Heuer, Andrew Cowie, Sam Carrick, Allan Hewitt, Linda Lilburne

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Outline outline the objectives of sharing soils data and related knowledge briefly describe the design choices and demonstrate the functionality of LCRs portals What are the results of making these data and knowledge available.

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1.Objectives of sharing data and knowledge

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Landcare Research - Manaaki Whenua A Crown Research Institute Core purpose to drive innovation in the management of terrestrial biodiversity and land resources. Goal to protect and enhance the land environment and grow the countrys prosperity. Ten science portfolios aligned to stakeholders research needs Four national outcomes: Improve the measurement, management and protection of New Zealands terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity. Achieve the sustainable use of land resources and their ecosystem services across catchments and sectors. Improve the measurement and mitigation of greenhouse gases from the terrestrial biosphere. Increase the ability of New Zealand industries and organisations to develop within environmental limits and meet market and community requirements.

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Government Data Policy Open - for public access (except under Official Information Act or other government policy). Available - discoverable, accessible and released online. Authoritative - accurate, relevant, timely, consistent, unbiased. Well Managed - steward of government-held data, must manage, preserve, raise awareness, and provide access over data life-cycle. Reasonably Priced - Use of government held data expected to be free. Charging for access discouraged. Reusable - Data discoverable, shared, used and re-used. Copyright works should be licensed for re-use in accordance with the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework.

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High quality science data should underpin research, policy formation and business decisions around environmental resource use. LCR accepted the challenge of these policies by improving how it shares data and communicates information about soils.

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In the beginning there was a paper map and soil reports

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How we used to share digital data In 2009, Landcare Research supplied less than 50 copies of LRIS data to users 2000s 1970s 1980s 1960s

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2.Design choices and functionality of portals

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General Design Principles On-line digital delivery Two levels Digital raw-data delivery Minimal graphic display Optimised for discovery and download Browser knowledge delivery Simple user interface - ease of use Performance fast Mix of data/maps Access to soil related knowledge

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Platform Options Open Source vs. Commercial software Pros Free software/licensing Arguably more freedom Access to O/S community Cons Higher development costs Greater demands on expertise

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Data Download - LRIS Portal Data freely available to users Used existing technology (http://koordinates.com)http://koordinates.com User community familiar with approach Minimal visualisation capability Strong metadata component Ancillary documentation Focus on raw data download User registration mandatory Monitor downloads/usage

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Browsing Portals S-map Online and Our Environment Home page with good explanatory information Google Earth/Maps-like navigation Reusable BASE layers High quality on-screen cartography Fast redraws/zooms/pans Search by coordinates/location/address Informative - metadata, legends and documentation Soil fact sheets and query pop-ups High quality hard copy cartography

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S-map factsheet

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S-map print map

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3.Results of making data and knowledge available.

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User Statistics (LRIS) LRIS Portal - in 3 years 125 data layers publically available Over 2,200 registered users 44,000 visits from 31,000 visitors 450,000 pages viewed 10,500 downloads completed 1.35 Tb data downloaded LRIS Portal - in 3 years 125 data layers publically available Over 2,200 registered users 44,000 visits from 31,000 visitors 450,000 pages viewed 10,500 downloads completed 1.35 Tb data downloaded Examples of Users LCR NZ UNI NZ BUS NZ CIT

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LRIS Portal Trends

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User Statistics (S-map and OE) S-map Online (2 years) Launched 29/8/2011 36,000 visits from 22,000 visitors 90,000 pages viewed Nearly 1 million screen maps 50,000 point queries 2,500 maps printed 38,000 soil fact sheets generated

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S-map Online Trends

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Potential Cost/Savings of over-irrigation in Canterbury Decreasing average water use by 0.25mm/day would: save 275m cubic metres of water each year. Also reduce fertiliser leachate to groundwater by half a million tonnes. Avoid at least $3.8m of wasted expenditure on water, electricity and fertiliser. deliver environmental benefits.

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Value and LRIS Data Downloads Approximately 3250 downloads per annum. Between 50% and 70% of LRIS users strongly agreed that access to data from LRIS saved them time and money, created new possibilities and improved the quality of their work. If the average value per download to the user exceeds NZ$310 Then the total value data downloads alone would equal the total annual Government CORE funding investment in this area.

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S-map Soils Queries S-map online delivers approximately 17,000 soil fact sheets, 11,000 printed maps from 16,000 user visits per annum. If the average value per factsheet/map to the user exceeds $36. Then the total value would equal the total annual Government CORE investment in this area.

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Conclusions high quality science data should underpin research, policy formation and business decisions around environmental resource use. we are beginning to improve how we communicate data and information to policy makers and land users but need to do more. analysis of user activity speaks for itself many many more people are making use of the science data we provide.

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Questions? Comments? email: barringerj@landcareresearch.co.nzbarringerj@landcareresearch.co.nz Tele : +64 3 321 9609

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LINKs http://lris.scinfo.org.nz http://smap.landcareresearch.co.nz http://soils.landcareresearch.co.nz http://ourenvironment.scinfo.org.nz http://maps.scinfo.org.nz LRIS Portal S-map Online Soils Portal Our Environment WMS

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Software stack Backend Ubuntu Server Postgres/PostGIS Mapserver Mapserver's Mapcache (Berkley DB) Mapfish Print Apache Webserver Apache Tomcat Custom web services (Java) Application end Openlayers 2.12. (-> 3.0) JQuery (HTML/DOM manipulation in app) JQuery UI (for advanced GUI elements) JQuery Flot (for visualising graphs) ExtJS 3.4.0 (Windowing/Desktop like environment) GeoExt 1.1 (Map Widgets) PHP 5 (dynamic HTML generation for front-end pages and mini CMS) (Public web map services hosted on Amazon EC2)

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Where to next? Mobile apps?