September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 1

The Great Australian Byte

The Newsletter of the Australian Geoscience Information Association (Inc.)

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 ISSN 1325–3700

When: 7.30am Friday 26 September 2014

Where: BHP Billiton, 125 St Georges Tce. Perth

RSVP is essential for building entry and teleconference participation.

RSVP to Rae Davie on secretary@agia.org.au by Wednesday 24 September

CONTENTS AGIA News Highlights .................................................................................. 2 AESC 2014, Newcastle 6-11 July 2014 ........................................................... 3 2014 Brisbane & Perth Data Management Symposiums .................................... 5 CSIRO’s Data Access Portal .......................................................................... 7 Articles of interest ..................................................................................... 11 Upcoming Events ...................................................................................... 11 Websites & Mailing Lists of Interest ............................................................. 11 AGIA National Committee 2013-14 .............................................................. 12

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September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 2

AGIA NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

AGIA GROUP DISCUSSIONS ON

Rise and Demise of North West Shelf Public Databases (from PNR online)

GA makes Tim O'Driscoll lineament maps available (item from GA Mineral Alerts)

Links to free ANDS & AuScope events

Links to software developers data & metadata innovations

WA DMP's Core Library featured on Today Tonight

Sharepoint & Dublin Core - all about metadata

Elsevier journal metrics

PPDM Symposium discounts for AGIA members

AGIA events updates

Reminder: Members of AGIA’s LinkedIn group are encouraged to share items of interest on

the Discussions tab and are welcome to post positions vacant on the Jobs tab. You can join

the AGIA LinkedIn group here.

FROM THE NEWSLETTER EDITOR

This edition of the GAB focusses on AGIA’s engagement with allied associations and

organisations which have an interest in geoscience data and information:

AGIA President Angela Riganti reports back on her attendance at the Australian Earth

Science Convention (AESC), the biennal meeting of the Geological Society of Australia

Jess Kozman provides a wrap-up of the Professional Petroleum Data Management

(PPDM) Association’s 2014 Perth Data Management Symposium, which this year was

sponsored by AGIA

Notes on Sue Cook’s tour of the CSIRO’s Data Access Portal – front and back end – at

the AGIA Winter Warmer

This will be the last GAB under the supervision of the 2013-2014 AGIA National Committee.

Remember - if you have attended an interesting event, found a new application or

interesting website please contact the Newsletter Editor at webmaster@agia.org.au so your

knowledge can be shared.

Vanessa Johnson

Newsletter Editor

®

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 3

Prof. Iain Stewart delivering the first plenary

session in the 1927 Newcastle City Hall.

Photo by Angela Riganti

Morning tea in the exhibition hall.

Photo by Angela Riganti

AESC 2014, NEWCASTLE 6-11 JULY 2014

More than 600 delegates flocked to Newcastle (NSW) for the Australian Earth Science

Convention (AESC), the biennial meeting of the Geological Society of Australia. For the first

time the convention was held in a regional rather than a capital city, with Newcastle selected

not just for its geological merits, but to engage a historically ‘coal community’ in a

sustainable energy discussion.

The proceedings opened with a very

inspiring talk by Prof Iain Stewart of

BBC fame on science

communication and the importance

of storytelling in earth sciences.

Other plenary talks addressed

Australia’s big challenges – the role

of geosciences (Dr Chris Pigram,

Geoscience Australia), Groundwater

and the geosciences – miles to go

before we sleep (Prof Craig

Simmons, Flinders University), and Developing

understanding about Australia’s past, present and

future from research into the World Heritage fossil

deposit at Riversleigh (Prof Mike Archer, University of New South Wales).

The conference was structured around the major themes of Energy, Environment, Resources,

Dynamic Planet, Infrastructure Service & Community, Living Earth Planet, with 6 concurrent

sessions focussing on more specific topics. Two symposia addressed advances in the study of

the Sydney Basin and the geology of circum-Pacific orogens. Daily poster sessions,

workshops and field excursions completed the conference. – the full program and abstracts

proceedings can be viewed at http://www.aesc2014.gsa.org.au/.

The conference also engaged the public through a series of lunchtime lectures held at the

nearby Newcastle Museum. Amongst

other topics, the lectures focused on

Newcastle coastal tales, how coal is

made, and the contribution the local

mining industry made to WWI

tunnelers of the Western Front. In

order to give people the opportunity to

hear the science rather than the ‘policy

debates’, a public forum with a Q&A

format allowed the public to put

forwards question to a panel of

experts. The Mawson lecture was

delivered by Dr Gavin Young on Early

vertebrate evolution – some

contributions from the rocks of East

Gondwana (Australia–Antarctica).

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 4

Representatives from South Australia, Western Australia and the ACT enjoying a drink at a late afternoon poster session. Photo by Angela Riganti

My contributions to the conference were varied.

They included a talk titled Towards automatic

geological map legends: GSWA’s Explanatory

Notes reporting System, presented in the

session on ‘Geological Mapping: its power and

its future’. A talk on The glass-negative

photographic collection of the Geological Survey

of Western Australia was delivered in the

session on ‘Geotourism – Enhancing Public

Appreciation of Geoheritage and Earth Sciences

History’. Both talks were well received. I also

took part in the Business meetings of the

Stratigraphy Commission (as the only WA

representative) and the Earth Sciences History

Group (to hand over the committee to

Queensland after its 6 years of residence in

WA). A planned face-to-face meeting of the

members of the Australian Geoscience Council

did not eventuate, as not enough societies were represented at the conference.

Attending the conference was beneficial in that it allowed me to get up-to-date with the

latest developments in the work of other geological surveys in the area of data processing

and delivery, as well as to touch base with recent developments from service providers,

particularly in the rapidly moving field of geological phone applications. I also engaged in the

discussion on several aspects of geotourism. Many talks highlighted the importance of the

China tourist market to WA, and particularly topical in the current climate was the debate

about employment opportunities for geoscientists in the field of geotourism. I attended the

workshop on ‘Establishing and defining stratigraphic units’, so as to keep abreast of the

latest discussions on stratigraphic matters and developments in the Australian Stratigraphic

Units Database, in order to keep the WA stratigraphic repository (the Explanatory Notes

System I work on) perfectly aligned with the national database – an important task in an age

of data proliferation and information overload!

In closing, I’d like to express my

sincere thanks to AGIA and its

committee for their generous

sponsorship, which covered the costs

of flight and transfers. The next

AESC convention will be held in

Adelaide, South Australia, in 2016.

Angela Riganti

On the way to the airport: a pile of coal waiting to be loaded in the harbour. Photo by Angela Riganti

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 5

AGIA Vice President Jenny Mikucki spreads the news about AGIA. Photo by Camille Peters

Chocolate sponsored

by AGIA. Photo by

Vanessa Johnson

2014 BRISBANE & PERTH DATA MANAGEMENT SYMPOSIUMS

AGIA’s sponsorship of the Professional Petroleum Data Management (PPDM) Association’s 2014 Perth Data Management Symposium was a great opportunity to raise awareness of AGIA, provide value to the

AGIA membership through discounted attendance, and keep participants happy by providing a plentiful supply of quality chocolate!

There were many thought-provoking presentations, particularly those by Guy Holmes, Mike Wiltshire, and Justin Strharsky & Zane Prickett. The following article was kindly provided by Jess Kozman, who kept proceedings at the Symposium rolling along at an entertaining pace.

Details of presentations can be found at the conclusion of the article.

They came, they talked Big Data and professional certification, they covered history from the

mastery of fire to the latest ‘Hackathon’, and they referenced everything from clay tablets to

petaflop computing.

During a two-week period in August, over 100 professional data managers from the Asia-

Pacific petroleum and resource industry met for a day of workshops and two days of

symposia in Brisbane and Perth, Australia.

Organized by the Professional Petroleum Data Management Association

(PPDM), the meetings brought together industry experts and

practitioners to address technical standards and how data, information

and knowledge add value to high-tech and capital intensive oil and

gas projects.

The Brisbane workshop featured a presentation on visualization

and analytics of business data from a Senior Business Intelligence

Architect at Santos, discussions on the fragility of storage

media, and an update on the status of digital well data in

Australia.

Interactive workshop sessions covered topical themes in

petroleum data management, including the mix of personality,

training, education and experience needed for successful data

management, the most important tools that data managers need, and the

future of the profession in two, five, and 10 years.

In Perth, the theme was ‘Making Today's Vision Tomorrow's Reality’ and

highlighted collective action and community building. The agenda included

technical presentations from operators, vendors, government regulators,

consultants and academia, along with a 20/20 (20 minutes of presentation and 20 minutes of

audience conversation) session on conservation of data quality, a workshop on data types

and metadata, and three sessions around professional certification, job descriptions and

testing.

Participants had the opportunity to work in groups discussing the business impact of poor

quality metadata and the relevance of continuing education credits in a new Professional

Data Management certification regime. In Perth, presentations were rated in real time on a

scale of how much “out of the box” thinking was generated, with some of the second day

sessions hitting a spot index of 2.4 x 109 GAGAs, or 2.4 GigaGAGAs (the GAGA scale was

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 6

Off the GAGA scale. Photo by Jess Kozman

developed spontaneously at the bar at the PPDM

conference; it is logarithmic, self-referential,

entirely subjective and assigns an arbitrary value

of 1.024 x 106 GAGAs to the amount of out of the

box thinking required to come up with a meat

dress. There is no upper limit but a lower bound

close to the Planck limit can be assumed for some

political discourse).

Audience feedback suggested the highlight of the

Perth conference was a presentation from

Resources Innovation through Information

Technology (RIIT) about their Open Data

Innovation Event (otherwise known as a

“Hackathon”), at which developers and coders had

54 hours to prototype solutions to industry problems

using open data from the industry and well-defined problem sets. PPDM is actively pursuing

a similar event for the petroleum industry.

Jess B. Kozman

Lead Consultant / Data Management Practitioner

Westheimer Energy Consultants Limited

Presentations can be found on the PPDM website:

Understanding and Adressing Systemic Uncertainties in Geoscientific Data Interpretation- Eun-Jung Holden, UWA's Centre for Exploration Targeting

The DNA of Data Quality - John Owens, John Owens International

Incorporating Drilling Data to PPDM at Santos - Martin Henderson, Santos

20/20: Conversations about Conservation of Data Value - Martin Storey, Well Data QA

Big Data in Oil & Gas - Jess Kozman, Mubadala Petroleum

A System for Detecting and Analysing Planar Structures in Downhole Image Logs - Daniel Wedge, UWA's Centre for Exploration Targeting

PPDM Implementation in Indonesian PSC Controlling - Adji Arinda Setyarman, SKK Migas (Indonesia)

Petroleum Industry Data Management Issues within the Australian Environment - Michael Wiltshire, Occam Technology

A Collective Approach to Effective Data Management Practices - Jess Kozman, Mubadala Petroleum

Data Management as a Profession - Ingrid Kristel, PPDM Association

The Importance of Quality Data for Accountable Resources Estimation - Scott Tideman & Mike Silva, Petrosys

Tools and Techniques for Real-time Optimisation, Scheduling and Logistics - Lyndon While, UWA

Integration and Effective Management of Heterogeneous Petroleum Digital Ecosystems Using Big Data Paradigm - Amit Rudra, Curtin University's School of Information Systems

Unearthed 2014: Lessons from Mining's First Open Data Innovation Event - Justin Strharsky & Zane Prickett, Resources Innovation through Information Technology

Search & Rescue - The Data Lost and Found Initiative - Guy Holmes, Spectrum Data

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 7

Sue Cook presents. Photo by Camille Peters

CSIRO’S DATA ACCESS PORTAL

Following the ANDS Roundtable earlier this year,

AGIA invited Information Specialist Sue Cook to give

a geoscience-oriented tour of the CSIRO’s Data

Access Portal (DAP). Below are excerpts from the

presentation – you can read the full account and view

the presentation slides via AGIA’s Dropbox.

The need for an enterprise-wide solution to handle

the full breadth of data generated by the wide range

of scientific disciplines within CSIRO was important in

the design of the DAP. The DAP project began with a

reference group of early adopters and the first version

was released in 2012. Since then there has been a

program of continuing improvements e.g. search by location, a web search interface,

machine to machine transmission of data, the ability to include supporting documents in the

metadata, and support for software publication.

As an organisation CSIRO sits between the corporate and university environments – CSIRO’s

scientists don’t have undergraduate students, but their performance is similarly measured by

their scholarly output through published papers and citations. One of the early drivers of the

DAP was the need for a secure repository for external publication of scientific outputs, and it

has become an important tool for scientists who don’t publish papers – researchers can cite

the publication of data and software deposited in the DAP as a scientific output.

The DAP is a self-serve repository. There is a team of four supporting the DAP nationally –

writing documentation, conducting training, providing support. Their role is to encourage

researchers to use the DAP and help them create metadata, and they also work closely with

the scientific IT group to provide technical support. Loading data to the DAP is not mandated

by enterprise policy since scientists working with private companies need to be able to

restrict access to their data. The geosciences are traditionally locked down and scientists

working in this field are not good targets for uploading to the DAP. Disciplines that are

accustomed to sharing data (e.g. genomics & astronomy) have been early adopters.

Q: What has worked in getting researchers enthusiastic about the DAP?

Cross-linking of data, software & publications

Discovery

Sharing with collaborators

Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for preservation of access to data after deposit. DOIs

are a URL which is a unique identifier for a publication and a permalink. DOIs are

commonly associated with journal articles, and DOIs for data collections are issued via

the ANDS service via Datacite.

Timing – DAP uploads increase when researchers are about to publish a paper and this

can be linked to pressure from funders and journal publishers to make data accessible.

IM&T would prefer to engage scientists at the start of the data cycle, and they are

working on changing the culture.

Q: Is old data findable? Much is not. There are undescribed data scattered in various

locations across CSIRO including USB drives in desk drawers. This is the issue the DAP is

trying to solve.

Q: Why keep the old data if it is not accessible? Old data is not well managed and this

includes decisions around retention and disposal. (Comment from the floor – a well-known

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 8

WA geologist has data on floppy disks in his garage. GSWA has made a strategic decision to

keep hardware which can read old physical media.)

Q: Is there a register of past projects? Maybe. The publications repository has 80 years’

worth of publications made up of hundreds of thousands of records.

At the outset of the DAP project the huge amount of legacy data that is held across CSIRO

was considered, but determined to be out of scope. People are allocated to projects in CSIRO

and if you are looking to upload data from a project which is not current scientists don’t have

the time, energy or money to consider it. There are also issues with IP and old formats, all of

which would have made the inclusion of legacy data very time consuming and difficult. As

there is no enterprise policy for mandatory deposit of data in the DAP it means that scientists

only want to upload old data to the repository if there is some motivation or need (e.g. for

use in a current project).

In the past scientists didn’t have a tool like the DAP to make their data easily accessible.

IM&T are trying to educate researchers that the safest place for their data is in the DAP – not

on a shared drive or other isolated location.

Q: Does metadata include information about data formats? It might – as a self-serve

facility what metadata is put in is entirely up to the researcher. Searchers can see the file

extension when they view the dataset on the data tab. Scientists are advised to tailor their

formats to their audience (the collaborators in their field) and this usually works.

Q: Is there concern about unusable formats?

There is a push to consider longevity. The DAP is relatively new, and now that scientists are

being encouraged to upload data, questions about longevity of data formats arise – will the

format still be usable in 20/30 years’ time? Getting the data into the DAP and people

motivated was the first priority, and now more & more people are depositing without

prompting. When this happens there is often a close correlation with journal article

publication.

Q: Is there peer review of data before it is published via the DAP? To makes

collections public there is a mandated approval workflow – this works as peer review.

Q: Is there any mandatory metadata? Yes

Title

Description

Keywords

Organisational information

Field of research

ABS Field Research Codes – researchers are familiar with these codes as they are used

for grants & funding submissions

Attribution statement – everything must be attributed – minimum license is

attribution, license CC-BY – citation is a currency

Permission setting - there are three settings for metadata & data – public, CSIRO only,

and restricted group. Some project groups are using the DAP for joint projects with

external parties and the permissions settings for these groups is locked down

Licence choice

Optional metadata

Location (not pertinent to all datasets)

Attachments – scientists are able to include READMEs which can be updated

independently of the dataset (when changes are made to files included within the

dataset a new DOI is generated)

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 9

Core Scientific Metadata (CSMD ) contributes the base metadata schema

There are a number of additional optional metadata schemas available to choose from,

appropriate to particular fields of research e.g. ANZLIC (geospatial) Darwin core

(biological taxonomy), VO resource (Astronomy), Sensor Networks, Software

Other features:

Version control – if data is updated it is published as a new version with a new DOI

The server location for data storage can be selected – originally it was only loaded to

the Canberra servers, but now other locations are available e.g. Perth. When hooking

up to data centres it makes sense to have data on servers closer to the High Power

Computing Centres

Upload <10MB via browser, >10MB via sftp

Datacentres are backed-up. (Discussion around the room about back-up locations

currently in use – other Australian cities, Norway, Asia. Some university repositories

have problems with capacity for storing data)

DAP has an Oracle back-end. The code is available to the public – with a lot of

dependencies. You could take the software & create your own DAP if you were

prepared to wade through the dependencies

Google Analytics is used to track use of the DAP – there are hundreds of thousands of

hits per month. China is a big user of datasets – this is seen as a success story as

CSIRO has Chinese collaborators

Q: Do you remediate dodgy metadata? Only if it’s outrageous! The team is not resourced

to fix things and it is also difficult to do from the back-end. When people are self-motivated

to lodge their data (their product, their ownership) the metadata quality is quite high. If they

are nominated, there is usually just the bare minimum metadata. Scientists don’t want to fill

out metadata forms – they want a magic code that will do it automatically for them – some

of this exists. Some data within the DAP is automatically uploaded from instruments (e.g.

microscopes showing Hendra Virus). There is data coming through from Geraldton for the

Square Kilometre Array (SKA) prototype now - ASKAP. The processed data from the

telescopes is being stored (the raw data is too big) – there is a project currently working on

automatic ingestion of metadata.

Q: Are there ever conflicts between collaborators about granting access to

datasets? No – as part of the deposit process researchers can give credit to other

institutions and/or acknowledge

ownership by other institutions.

Requirements for sharing data

need to be established at the

beginning of the data

management process. Scientists

need to be aware if they have the

license/permission to deposit in

the DAP.

Q: How do you get researchers

on board early enough in the

data cycle? Basic librarianship –

getting out & talking to people, sending emails, accepting invitations to presentations and

conferences. There has recently been a restructure at CSIRO - the business units are new, as

is their leadership, so now is an opportunity to promote the DAP.

Photo by Camille Peters

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 10

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 11

ARTICLES OF INTEREST

The rise and demise of North West Shelf public databases

“Sadly the halcyon days of free access to comprehensive and extensive structured well databases being

supplied by the government to promote exploration efforts and create efficiency are just a fading memory

amongst the now grey haired petroleum geologists plying their trade on the North West Shelf (NWS)”

[www.pnronline.com.au, 8 September 2014]

Society for petroleum data managers to be created – “A Memorandum of Intent (MOI) to establish

a global professional society for Petroleum Data Managers has been agreed by representatives from

Common Data Access (CDA), the Expert Community for Information Management (ECIM) and the

Professional Petroleum Data Management Association (PPDM)” [www.ppdm.org, 29 July 2014]

Australia's big challenges - the role of geoscience – “This Insights article is an

overview of the keynote presentation by Geoscience Australia's Chief Executive Officer Dr Pigram at the 2014 Australian Earth Sciences Convention” [www.ga.gov.au, 8 July 2014]

2014 Open Access Survey: examining the changing views of Taylor & Francis authors

UPCOMING EVENTS

11th Annual iPRES Conference on Digital Preservation, 6-10 October 2014, State

Library of Victoria, Melbourne

International Conference on Data Sharing and Integration for Global

Sustainability (SciDataCon), 2-5 November 2014, New Delhi India

Big Data & Data Privacy: Beyond the Hype – 1-2 December 2014 Melbourne, 4-5

December 2014 Sydney

BIG Data, Inspiring Information and Strategic Knowledge, 23-24 March 2015,

Perth WA. Presented by AIG and Geoscientists Symposia. An international

symposium that aims to examine data management and effective data conversion

to knowledge that delivers growth in the exploration and mining sectors.

WEBSITES & MAILING LISTS OF INTEREST

Exploration Connect http://www.explorationconnect.com.au/ Includes a geoscience

resources section with publication reviews, latest journal articles, upcoming

conferences and a compilation of links & information about open-file geoscience

databases, associations & societies

Australian National Data Service (ANDS) http://ands.org.au/ newsletter

AUGEN www.geoscience-education.edu.au

GeoEdLink subscribe, archives

WAIN mailing list subscribe

NTGS Update subscribe

WA DMP eNews subscribe

PNRonline www.pnronline.com.au PNRonline is produced by Australian

independent resource industry publisher, Resolutions Publishing & Media

September 2014, Volume 15 Part 2 Page 12

AGIA NATIONAL COMMITTEE 2013-14

PRESIDENT

ANGELA RIGANTI Content Manager GSWA, Department of Mines and Petroleum PH: (08) 9222 3063

FAX: (08) 9222 3633 Email: angela.riganti@dmp.wa.gov.au

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/angela-riganti/50/90/744

VICE-PRESIDENT

JENNY MIKUCKI Manager, Upstream Technical Computing Chevron Australia Pty Ltd PH: (08) 9485 5176

FAX: (08) 9216 4353 Email: jenny.mikucki@chevron.com

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/jenny-mikucki/4b/31b/191

SECRETARY

RAE DAVIE

Manager Information Management Iluka Resources Email: Rae.Davie@iluka.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/rae-davie/44/33/a02

TREASURER

SANDY HAYWARD

Geological Consultant PH: 0417 095227 Email: Sandra_hayward@optusnet.com.au LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/sandy-hayward/4b/240/b75

MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY

KERRY SMITH Email: membership@agia.org.au LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/kerry-

smith/52/730/425

NEWSLETTER EDITOR & SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR

VANESSA JOHNSON IM Analyst, Technical Library Shell Development (Australia) Pty Ltd

PH: (08) 9338 6000 Email: vanessaj85@gmail.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/vanessa-johnson/17/930/7b5

COMMITTEE MEMBER

LIZ AMANN BHP Billiton Nickel West PH: (08) 6274 1339 FAX: (08) 6274 1339

Email: elizabeth.amann@bhpbilliton.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/amann-elizabeth/28/895/602

COMMITTEE MEMBER

CAMILLE PETERS Information Resources Specialist Apache Energy Ltd PH: (08) 6218 7253

FAX: (08) 6218 7200 Email: camille.peters@apachecorp.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/camille-peters/1b/b13/993