[Random-bits] .geo, an interesting TLD proposal

[James Love]

http://www.icann.org/yokohama/eoi4.htm

 ICANN Yokohama Meeting Topic: Introduction
of New Top-Level Domains
  Expression of Interest #4

Posted: 9 July 2000

  Letter Proposal for .geo, a New Global Top Level Domain

 Dr. Yvan G. Leclerc, SRI International 
  6/19/2000

In response to ICANN's call for statements of interest in proposing new
top level domains (TLDs), SRI International is pleased to propose the
formation of a new TLD called ".geo". The primary purpose of .geo is to
allow Internet users to find data by the geographic location that the
data refer to.  Data that refer to a geographic location or area is
called georeferenced data. Examples include a 3D model of the Golden
Gate Bridge, vacation photos of Yosemite taken with GPS-enabled cameras,
the menu for Les Halles in Montreal, a historical document or web site
on the Vatican, a weather map of the United States, traditional GIS
data, or dynamic data such as the location of a cell phone or airplane.

Our proposed TLD, infrastructure, and charter will allow anybody in the
world to publish, search for, and access georeferenced metadata for free
and in a manner that adheres to established international standards.  
(Metadata contains elements such as the author, date, data type,
geographic location, and URLs pointing to the data itself.)  This free
and open infrastructure for georeferenced metadata will enable radically
new services that are not possible on the Web today by allowing users to
transparently browse geospatial data by location. This capability will
enable a powerful new paradigm for navigating, accessing, and
visualizing georeferenced Web data.

Unlike other TLDs, the domains under .geo will not be arbitrary strings,
but instead will represent geographic areas with a naming convention
that clients will determine by downloading a simple XML schema from the
top level .geo domain. Consequently, .geo domains will not be subject to
the problems of trademark violations and the like. Indeed, the
importance of users knowing domain names and URLs is drastically
diminished with this architecture.

We believe that .geo warrants the creation of a new TLD because it
offers a fundamentally new kind of service on the Internet, one with
broad-sweeping implications and influences, one which would encompass a
potentially vast distribution of data, and one which encourages a global
network of users and providers of those data, much like the Web provides
for non-georeferenced data today. We believe that the potential impact
and openness of the proposed infrastructure deserves, and indeed
requires, the recognition of a charted TLD by ICANN in order to
safeguard its free and open access by contract with ICANN.

Motivation

The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 70% of web-accessible
data are georeferenced. Yet, it is currently impossible for a user to
find all web-accessible georeferenced data for a given area (or even a
significant fraction of the data). That's because the location that the
data refers to is typically not a searchable part of the data. Instead,
it is either implicit or part of associated metadata. Thus, today's
search engine technology is not applicable.

A number of companies and organizations have created private or
governmental databases that hold a small fraction of all georeferenced
data.  Companies like Mapquest maintain private map databases with
associated street addresses and pointers to businesses like restaurants
and shops. Organizations like the Federal Geographic Data Committee
maintain government-owned imagery and coordinate data databases that can
either be accessed directly or via a Clearinghouse that let's a user
find georeferenced data across many databases through a keyword-based
search engine. The FGDC Clearinghouse is an example of a database that
uses metadata containing the geographic location and URLs of the data.

None of these organizations is either capable of, or willing to, create
a database that would allow anybody in the world to publish and search
georeferenced metadata for free. Indeed, this task is so large that no
single, regional, organization could do it alone.

What is needed is a coordinated global infrastructure with participating
organizations from around the world, as we propose below. The proposed
.geo chartered TLD will greatly enhance the probability that such an
infrastructure can be built and sustained globally. It would also enable
existing search engine and mapping companies to search for georeferenced
metadata with minor modifications to their software architectures. New
markets for viewing and analysis of this data would emerge and add value
to existing commercial web capabilities.

Technical Approach

We propose to build and maintain an open standards-based infrastructure
on .geo that will enable anybody to publish and search for all metadata
referring to a given area for free. The infrastructure is based on a
hierarchy of servers whose domain names represent geographic areas,
nominally of the form minutes.degrees.tendegrees.geo. The exact form of
the naming convention will be available as a simple downloadable XML
schema from the top level .geo domain. No other names are anticipated
beyond a few administrative domains.

For example, consider a server with DNS name 10e20n.geo. Since it is a
server at the second level of the hierarchy (tendegrees.geo), it is
responsible for a 10 degree x 10 degree "cell" of the world. The service
area of the cell spans from longitude 10 degrees East and latitude 20
degrees North to longitude 20 degrees East and latitude 30 degrees
North. Similarly, server 1e5n.10e20n.geo is responsible for a 1 degree x
1 degree area.  Metadata is placed at the appropriate level and position
in the hierarchy as a function of the geographic footprint and location
of the corresponding data.  See http://www.dgeo.org/ for a prototype DNS
hierarchy and server that we have built as part of our DARPA-sponsored
Digital Earth project.  This hierarchy and related software will serve
as the basis for our proposed .geo infrastructure.

This naming convention and metadata placement strategy allows clients to
determine which host(s) to query for metadata referring to a given area,
thereby distributing the load over many servers with no single point of
failure or congestion. This is a significant advantage over current
approaches (such as the FGDC Clearinghouse) in which all client queries
pass through a single host. An open source API for publishing, querying,
and accessing the metadata will be made freely available.

The use of DNS also allows metadata to be transparently moved to new
hosts and subdomains as needed. For example, initially all metadata may
be physically hosted on a single computer, with all .geo domain names
aliased to that machine. But over time, as areas fill with metadata
(such as large urban areas), their corresponding subdomain and metadata
can be transparently transferred to new computers. These computers may
be maintained by other organizations who may, when necessary, transfer
data to new computers (and new organizations) deeper in the hierarchy.

This distribution and query method drastically reduces the storage and
bandwidth requirements of any given server, making it possible for
thousands of high-speed visualization systems to be simultaneously
searching for and retrieving metadata and data.

The .geo hierarchy and distributed infrastructure enables a radically
new approach to finding, visualizing, and interacting with data on the
web.  Instead of searching for data in Web sites or entering keywords
into a search engine and looking through the hundreds of resulting
links, a user can specify a profile and then simply navigate in 2D or 3D
and have the visible data presented within the spatial context of a
realistic model of the earth (which will itself be represented in the
.geo hierarchy). Spatial data freely available today can, and has been,
used to provide a very adequate baseline to build a world model to
enable this new browsing paradigm. Of course, a standard textual search
engine augmented with a location criterion is still possible.

Many other uses for this free and open worldwide index of georeferenced
data can be imagined. For example, a complete index of the geographic
location of IP-addressed devices, or static and mobile phones, becomes
not only possible but quickly accessible.

Business Model

The .geo hierarchy, were it to be expanded to the smallest cells, would
require tens of millions of servers and terrabytes of storage. It would
also require appropriate supervision to ensure that the free basic
services (publishing, searching, and disseminating of any metadata) are
being offered compliant with the appropriate standards and performed
adequately.

Such an enterprise cannot be sustained without significant financial
resources, which are clearly not available from the free basic services.
We propose that such resources be obtained through optional, non-free
services to data providers. Such optional services would include caching
and/or hosting data, and providing various security mechanisms for
restricting access to the metadata and/or the cached or hosted data.

These optional services would be provided by the franchise owners of the
particular domains, who would pass on a fraction of the data-provider
fees to the parent domains (ultimately .geo) whose responsibility is to
maintain the integrity of the hierarchy beneath them. Domain ownership
would be allocated on a franchise basis to qualified commercial or
government organizations.

Charter

The charter of the founding organization for .geo, which we have
tentatively called the GeoNIC, would be to define and enforce standards
and practices for hosts operating within the .geo hierarchy, including:
  

  registering domains (cells) in the hierarchy to qualified commercial
or government organizations;
  enforcing the requirement that cell owners provide free access to the
basic services (publishing,
  querying, and accessing metadata) for all users and data providers;
  enforcing adherence by cell owners to appropriate international
standards (e.g. ISO TC 211) for
  metadata, data, and access to services;
  participating in the international bodies that define such standards;
  providing a framework for testing conformance and ensuring that
performance targets are being
  met; and
  generally ensuring the integrity of the hierarchy.

SRI International as Founding Organization

SRI International is a non-profit research institute that is uniquely
suited to be the founding organization for the proposed top level .geo
domain. Its 2,500 researchers, scientists, technologists and business
consultants recently celebrated 50 years of scientific discovery, new
technology applications and innovative management approaches that have
benefited businesses, governments and organizations worldwide. Its
original charter -- to "promote and foster the application of science in
the development of commerce, trade and industry [for the] prosperity of
mankind" -- remains its mission.

As important as its charter and wide-ranging research, engineering, and
business experience, SRI has deep roots in the Internet:
  

Arpanet

SRI was one of the first two nodes of the Arpanet.

NIC

SRI served as the Network Information Center (NIC) for over two decades.

Furthermore, our team has wide-ranging experience in the creation and
use of standards for georeferenced data:
  

Digital Earth

SRI's Digital Earth project is currently being funded by DARPA to create
a testbed hierarchy that will serve as the basis for the worldwide .geo
hierarchy.

TerraVision

TerraVision is our freely available, multi-platform, network-based
terrain browser.  It is currently being re-engineered to use the .geo
hierarchy.

GeoVRML

SRI was the founder of, and is the primary contributor to, the GeoVRML
Working Group of the Web3D Consortium. GeoVRML is an extension of the
ISO standard Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML97) that enables the
creation of georeferenced 3D models. GeoVRML 1.0 has recently been
accepted as a recommended practice by the Web3D Consortium and is being
considered for adoption as an ISO standard.

Participation in Standards Organizations

SRI is an active member of the OpenGIS Consortium and the US Federal
Government Digital Earth Working Group, and is formally collaborating
with the Alexandria Digital Library Project.

When the size of the .geo hierarchy grows beyond certain limits, SRI
will transfer management of this hierarchy to a dedicated subsidiary.  
However, this would only be done with ICANN's approval and guarantees on
adherence to the founding principles of open standards and free access
defined in the charter.

Proposal Team

Our team consists of technical and management staff of SRI
International, whose headquarters are located at 333 Ravenswood Avenue,
Menlo Park, CA 94025. David Scott is located at the Washington, DC,
office, located at 1611 North Kent Street, Arlington, VA 22209-2111.

The point of contact for technical issues regarding this proposal is
Yvan Leclerc. The point of contact for business issues is Michael
Summers. Please do not hesitate to contact either of us (or any other
member of the team if we are not available) if you have any questions
about this proposal.

The team currently consists of the following individuals.
  

Dr. Yvan G. Leclerc Sr. Computer Scientist, Artificial Intelligence
Center Principle Investigator, Digital Earth Project TerraVision
Designer

leclerc@ai.sri.com http://www.ai.sri.com/~leclerc Tel: (650) 859-6153
Fax: (650) 859-3735


Mr. Michael Summers Vice-President, Business Development, Software

michael.summers@sri.com Tel: (650) 859-5555 Fax: (650) 859-6171


Dr. Martin Reddy 
Computer Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Center 
Investigator for SRI'S Digital Earth Project 
Co-chair of the GeoVRML Working Group 
TerraVision Software Engineer 
3D Visualization Expert 

reddy@ai.sri.com
http://www.ai.sri.com/~reddy
Tel: (650) 859-6468
Fax: (650) 859-3735


Dr. Lee Iverson 
Computer Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Center 
Investigator for SRI'S Digital Earth Project 
Co-chair of the GeoVRML Working Group 
TerraVision Software Engineer 
Open Source/Standards Expert 

iverson@ai.sri.com
http://www.ai.sri.com/~iverson
Tel: (650) 859-3307
Fax: (650) 859-3735


Dr. Michael Eriksen 
Computer Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Center 
Investigator for SRI'S Digital Earth Project 
Digital Earth Infrastructure Software Engineer 

eriksen@ai.sri.com
http://www.ai.sri.com/~eriksen
Tel: (650) 859-3389
Fax: (650) 859-3735


Mr. David J. Scott 
Program Manager 
GIS Expert 

david.scott@sri.com
Tel: (703) 247-8527
Fax: (703) 247-8537


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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology    
P.O. Box 19367        | http://www.cptech.org 
Washington, DC 20036  | love@cptech.org       
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