[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]
Subject: OASIS TC Call for Participation: OASIS Forest Industries TC
To: OASIS members and interested parties A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS Forest Industries Technical Committee has been proposed by the members of OASIS listed below. The proposal, below, meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process [a]. The TC name, statement of purpose, scope, list of deliverables, audience, and language specified in the proposal will constitute the TC's official charter. Submissions of technology for consideration by the TC, and the beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting. This TC will operate under our 2005 IPR Policy [b]. The eligibility requirements for becoming a participant in the TC at the first meeting (see details below) are that: (a) you must be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an individual member of OASIS; (b) the OASIS member must sign the OASIS membership agreement [c]; (c) you must notify the TC chair of your intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting, which members may do by using the "Join this TC" button on the TC's public page at [d]; and (d) you must attend the first meeting of the TC, at the time and date fixed below. Of course, participants also may join the TC at a later time. OASIS and the TC welcomes all interested parties. Non-OASIS members who wish to participate may contact us about joining OASIS [c]. In addition, the public may access the information resources maintained for each TC: a mail list archive, document repository and public comments facility, which will be linked from the TC's public home page at [d]. Please feel free to forward this announcement to any other appropriate lists. OASIS is an open standards organization; we encourage your feedback. Kind regards JBC ~ James Bryce Clark ~ Director, Standards Development, OASIS ~ jamie.clark@oasis-open.org [a] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php [b] http://www.oasis-open.org/who/intellectualproperty.php [c] See http://www.oasis-open.org/join/ [d] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=forest ==== PROPOSED CALL FOR PARTICIPATION OASIS FOREST INDUSTRIES TECHNICAL COMMITTEE Name of TC: OASIS Forest Industries Technical Committee Statement of Purpose: The purpose of the OASIS Forest Industries TC is to develop specifications for the electronic transfer of forest industry data from forest to customer. There are currently two standards in use covering electronic trading (eFIDS), and the transfer of spatial data (GIS data transfer standard). e-Forestry Industry Data Standards (eFIDS) -- One of the major hurdles to the widespread use of e-Business within Forestry was the lack of standard structured formats for the exchange of data between organisations within the industry. This meant that any e-Business solutions were restricted to the respective parties involved and were not easily applicable industry-wide. This problem now may be overcome with the development of the e-Forestry Industry Data Standards (eFIDS). eFIDS will provide the basis for the implementation of a range of e-business applications. eFIDS have been developed by a number of leading organisations within the forestry industry and there has been wide consultation on their applicability. Full use has been made of the promotional activities of government development agencies such as Scottish Enterprise as well as the trade associations such as UKFPA and other forestry groups such as ConFor. eFIDS are designed to cater for the full range of electronic trading circumstances. They employ an XML schema encoded from United Nations- EDIFACT directories. The schema was originally provided by CITE (Construction Industry Trading Electronically), with whom our developed version was previously hosted. CITE verified its compliance with relevant W3C Recommendations. The TC will continue to develop eFIDS as an international standard. GIS Data Transfer Standard (GIS DTS) -- Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used widely throughout the Forestry Industries to help manage and plan forestry related information. Over the last 15-20 years many different GIS systems have been adopted, with different methods of data storage being used. It is difficult to transfer information between these systems, leading to many isolated "islands" of forestry data. The GIS Data Transfer Standard (GIS DTS) is a mechanism to facilitate information exchange, making the Industry more efficient and competitive. The GIS DTS works with different GIS systems and does not require any specific data storage format, though some basic compliance to The GIS DTS is necessary. New GIS and database systems being designed for use in the forestry industry should take note of the Data Transfer Standard, and have data models built in a compatible way. This in turn will further reduce barriers to the flow of information in the future. Scope of Work: The scope of the work is to maintain, improve and promote the two standards already developed, and develop new standards for the industry according to needs as additional use cases are brought to light. We anticipate that the TC will coordinate the standards through the work of its sub-committees. Discrete tasks to be addressed will include: * developing and maintaining the specification for each standard, * defining the meta data to be used by each standard, * soliciting and considering suggestions to improve or extend each standard, based both on evolving forest industry needs, and on opportunities to more robustly use and leverage other open standards for e-commerce, * developing code lists for common use in the standards, * developing implementation practices and guidance for the standards, as needed, and * proactively engaging with related standardization activities within OASIS and in external forums. Deliverables: 1. Electronic Forestry Information Data Standard (eFIDS). Current implementation includes the following use cases: Delivery: Q4 2006 * Stream 1: Initial Round Timber (RT) Despatch from Supplier to Buyer * Stream 2: Return RT Weight from Buyer to Supplier (Weight Sales) * Stream 3: Return RT Volume from Buyer to Supplier (Volume Sales) * Stream 4 : Conventional RT Invoicing from Supplier to Buyer * Stream 5 : Self-Bill RT Invoicing from Buyer to Supplier (Weight Sales) * Stream 6 : Self-Bill RT Invoicing from Buyer to Supplier (Volume Sales) * Stream 7 : Self-Bill Residue Invoicing from Processor to Processor * Stream 8 : Sawn Goods Despatch from Processor to Sawn Goods Buyer, * Stream 9 : Invoicing from Processor to Sawn Goods Buyer, Version 1.0 of eFIDS was completed in 2003. The TC will maintain, consider improvements to and issue updated versions of eFIDS, beginning in Q4 2006. EFIDS are capable of being used for all forest industry supply chain instances/scenarios, including stock notification. 2. Geographic Information Systems Data Transfer Standard (GIS DTS) Version 1 The Forestry GIS Data Transfer Standard v1.0 provides a means to transfer information relating to: * Organisation - describing the organisation transferring the data * Physical Description - describing the land, including any trees. Version 1.0 of GIS DTS was completed in 2005. The TC will maintain, consider improvements to and issue updated versions of GIS DTS. Future developments of the GIS DTS are planned to include: * Management Plan - describes the management plan for the land, GIS DTS version 2 * Operation - describes the Operations that occur as part of the Plan, GIS DTS version 3 * Product - describes the output from the Operation, GIS DTS version 4 Timing of these developments will be driven by industry need for them, and development work on those significant extensions probably will not commence before 2Q 2007, with a target completion date of 4Q 2009. 3. Harvester data standard The TC or a sub-committee should investigate developing a new standard for transferring data from harvester on-board computer files to office and other locations. The target completion date for assessment of the project is 4Q 2007 with a target completion date of 4Q 2009. Anticipated Audience: Primary consumers of the standards will include any company or organisation in the forest industries which trades with, or shares spatial data with a customer or supplier electronically, as well as those who provide support or services to those operations. Language: The TC shall conduct its business in English. IPR Policy: The TC will operate under the Royalty Free on Limited Terms mode according to the OASIS IPR Policy. === Non-normative information regarding the startup of the TC: === Related Work: While there are other OASIS TCs working on e-business standards, there are none which are exclusively involved with the forest industry. The development of eFIDS was based on a standard used by Construction Industry Trading Electronically (CITE), which was itself a subset of the UNEDIFACT standard. Considerable modification of the CITE standard was required to enable its use in the forestry sector. eFIDS addresses a specific need, which is not currently met through other OASIS standards. We believe the GIS DTS to be unique, and it has been developed in conjunction with ESRI (UK) from scratch. The TC is keen to liaise with other work being done in the GIS area by the OASIS Emergency Management TC, which may produce synergies. The Forestry Data TC will also invite participation from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The eFIDS work will be coordinated with any applicable work currently underway within UN/CEFACT, and liaise with any appropriate international organizations to help to make the standards as widely applicable as possible. The TC is also keen to liaise with other standards organisations in the forestry sector, such as PapiNet, who have developed standards in other areas of the forest industry supply chain. Anticipated Contributions: eFIDS v1.0 and GIS DTS v1.0. The two current standards have been developed in an open environment, and are freely available for use, royalty free, from their owner, ConFor (The Confederation of Forest Industries UK). Date and Time of First Meeting: The first meeting of the Forestry Data TC will be a telephonic meeting held at 1500 GMT/UTC on 18 October 2006. The conference bridge information will be posted to the TC's website, and will be sponsored by Scottish Enterprise. On-going Meetings and Sponsors: It is anticipated that the TC will meet via teleconference quarterly, on a schedule and at a time determined by the TC members during the TC's first meeting. Scottish Enterprise and the other proposers are willing to sponsor conference bridge facilities for meetings of the TC. Proposers of the TC: Bill Allison, bill.allison@bsw.co.uk, Individual member Steve Atkins, steve.atkins@forestry.gsi.gov.uk, Forestry Commission, Roger Coppock, roger.coppock@scotent.co.uk, Scottish Enterprise, Ben Ditchburn, ben.ditchburn@forestry.gsi.gov.uk, Forestry Commission Chris Inglis, chris.inglis@forestryandtimber.org, ConFor TC Convener: Roger Coppock, roger.coppock@scotent.co.uk, Scottish Enterprise Proposed Chair: Chris Inglis, chris.inglis@forestryandtimber.org, ConFor END
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]