OASIS Forest Industries Technical Committee

The original Call For Participation for this TC may be found at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/codelist/200608/msg00007.html

The charter for this TC is as follows.

Name of the 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.

 

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