The Carbon Project

Cross-Border SDI Project

The Cross-Border SDI Project is a collaborative effort to deploy new online data, services and applications to support critical infrastructure (CI) identification using a common spatial data infrastructure for Canada and the US. The project has developed and deployed four online services based on Web Feature Service (WFS), Filter and GML standards and CubeWerx software. The services are located in Montana and Quebec and constitute possible initial nodes for a Cross-Border SDI (CBSDI) Network. Each WFS also implements a prototype role-based access control framework - meaning there is a now testbed for a security framework that ensures CI information goes to the people that are supposed to have it.

The project also made substantial progress integrating infrastructure data models used by Montana with the National Infrastructure Data Models (NIDM) from Canada, with input from the DHS Geospatial Data Model. The result of this effort is an integrated "Common" data model and new GML community schema for cross-border infrastructure data exchange called CBSDI GML. The project also pioneered the implementation of dynamic, local-to-community GML schema transformation for infrastructure data - meaning each WFS speaks both its national schema and an agreed-upon community schema (powered by the same underlying databases).

As of September 2009, cross-border SDI users are now able to access the four data services using the free Gaia 3.4 SDI platform from The Carbon Project, web-based applications from CubeWerx, and CarbonArc PRO, an SDI interoperability extension for ESRI's ArcGIS. In the future, the collaborative group working on this effort will seek to advance the GML community schema for cross-border infrastructure data exchange.

This project is part of the 2008 National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP) - and brings together a collaborative group committed to joint US-Canadian Spatial Data Infrastructure including: the Montana Department of Administration; the Centre for Topographic Information, Natural Resources Canada; Canada's Department of National Defense; United States Federal Government partners, and industry partners L-3 Communications GS&ES, GCS Research of Missoula, Montana, CubeWerx and The Carbon Project.

Project Links

Cross-Border SDI Info

Project Final Report
Gaia Secure SDI Demonstration
Cross-Border SDI GML Schema

Montana Cross-Border SDI WMS:

Montana Cross-Border SDI WFS:

Sherbrooke Cross-Border SDI WMS:

Sherbrooke Cross-Border SDI WFS:

For more information please contact: info@thecarbonproject.com