Advancing the International Geo Sample Number as an International Standard for Sample Identification

San Diego Supercomputing Center, UCSD, La Jolla, CA

February 22-24, 2011

Workshop Summary & Recommendations

A group of international leaders in Geoscience informatics met on February 22 to 24, 2011, at the San Diego Supercomputing Center to review the status and approach of the International Geo Sample Number IGSN as a global unique identifier for Geoscience samples and specimens. The group included representatives from a range of Geoscience disciplines, from national agencies, major Geoscience projects, and international standard organizations (see Table 1). The workshop was organized by SESAR, the System for Earth Sample Registration, with funds provided by the US National Science Foundation.

The workshop reviewed use cases from a range of domains, institutions, and projects that are potential users of the IGSN-based infrastructure, e.g. marine geology, earth surface science, hydrology, geology, petrology; USGS, GFZ Potsdam, Geoscience Australia; US Extended Continental Shelf Program, scientific drilling projects ICDP/IODP, Geoscience Information Network, Critical Zone Observatories, Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R).

Workshop participants agreed on the value of an internationally unified approach for registration and discovery of physical specimens in the Geoscience community. They refined the existing SESAR architecture to become a modular and scalable approach, separating the IGSN Registry from a central Sample Metadata Clearinghouse (SESAR), and introducing ‘Local Registration Agents’ that provide registration services to specific communities, including tools for metadata submission and metadata management (Sample Metadata Toolkits), and metadata archiving (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Scalable IGSN architecture

All participants committed to establishing a formal governance structure for the IGSN model, consisting of (a) the IGSN Implementation Group, which will be structured as an incorporated not-for-profit organization to govern the IGSN, and (b) a Science Advisory Board that supports & guides policies, technology, and best practices of the SESAR Sample Metadata Clearinghouse and Local Registration Agents.

The workshop generated a draft of the metadata schemas for the IGSN Registry and the SESAR Clearinghouse (Sample Discovery Metadata), conformant with international standards from ISO and OGC.

Participants agreed that the approach developed at this workshop represents a generic model for describing and identifying specimens and samples in other science communities that deal with physical specimens.

Next Steps

Participants agreed to present the results of the workshop at upcoming international meetings and conferences, including EGU 2011 (Lehnert, Klump, ICDP booth), DMT 2011 (Richard), IUGG 2011 (Wyborn), GSA 2011 (Richard, Lehnert), and AGU 2011 (IGSN session). A short workshop report will be published in EOS. The web domain www.igsn.org was purchased during the workshop, and a web site will be set up soon to inform and engage the broader community.

As a first step toward the new architecture, SESAR will start registering all IGSNs with a handle service at the GFZ Potsdam. A coordinated approach will be taken to pursue funding from national agencies to further the project through international collaboration and workshops, and advance the implementation of the new IGSN architecture.

List of Participants