UIS Informatics Commission (UISIC)

UIS-WikiCaves Sub-commission

Rationale

We cannot ignore the role that the Internet plays in the 21st century, and how much it is changing the way we see and do caving and research in today's worldwide context. More and more cavers and researchers travel, work and explore not only around their own country but around the world. Clearly, every caving and research community should be able to access and improve their knowledge of the caves as well as be aware of any restrictions and conservation measures applying to the caves and cave systems. That is why the UIS-Wikicaves Sub-commission was established by UIS and WikiCaves in 2013. The goal of the sub-commission is to gather this information and make it easily available, including clear protocols on cave information for each country in accordance with local situations and regulations.

Vision

Our Vision is UIS and WikiCaves working together to develop GrottoCenter into a comprehensive and authoritative global source of basic cave and karst information, with open access, adherance to standards, manual and machine accessibility via the web, together with the data protection protocols needed for each country, for the benefit of the caving, research and cave management communities.

Goals and Activities

1. Facilitating information collection from countries and individuals.
2. Ongoing loading and updating of basic cave and karst data, together with bibliographical abstracts from the BBS/SA.
3. Organising suitable open-access licences for the data, based on Creative Commons and others, to suit the various countries. Our current default licence is "CC BY-SA 3.0" (Attribution-ShareAlike).
4. Safe storage and archiving of data.
5. Making the data available as W3C Linked Data to better allow machine-based access. See KarstLink.
6. Collaboration with the UIS Informatics Commission (UISIC) regarding the use of recommended cave and karst data fields and field values, together with other international data standards.
7. Collaboration with the Karst Information Portal (KIP).
8. Collaboration with the UIS Bibliography Commission for the BBS/SA.
9. Advising designated country representatives about any changes to the data for their country, or elsewhere in the world.
10. Facilitating contacts and agreements for the benefit of the caving community.

Of course, many projects and databases have already been developed around the world aiming at similar goals. Yet their geographical coverage is often quite limited, access may be difficult, and the long term availability of the servers hosting the data can be quite variable. This project is not intended to compete with these databases, which are often specialised and adapted to local needs, rather, we are aiming for only general basic data, but global coverage, open access, standards-based, and reliable long-term availability.

Facts and figures

• On the web since 2008.
• Over 60,000 caves described.
• Caves from more than 126 countries.
• Over 3800 contributors from around the world.
• Over 2300 organisations registered.
• Fifteen languages are available on the database website.
• Hosting of the UIS Speleo Abstracts (BBS/SA), with an active contributor interface, over 130,000 references, and over 8000 full-version documents accessible.
• Current data available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-SA 3.0). Other licenses can be applied.
• Hosted on mature commercial servers with the usual facilities, and with a KarstLink Linked Data interface.
• Infrastructure financially supported by the European Speleological Federation (FSE) since 2013.

Action Plan

1. Prepare a web page and a UIS Bulletin article. (Done)
2. Contact organisations in each country to establish their protocols concerning location precision, and hopefully start discussions with them about how we can collaborate on data. (Done. A UIS Letter was sent in 2016 to all national organisations and country delegates. Several countries have responded and are collaborating. Other countries are still encouraged to respond. As stated in the letter, we will have to take a non‑response as meaning there are no restrictions on presenting that country's data.)
3. Adapt GrottoCenter V3 to accomodate country-based location precisions and any other restrictions needed. (In progress. Currently Grottocenter offers two options for data protection depending on the degree of protection desired.)
4. Participate in UISIC's coming project to produce UIS Guidelines for Cave/karst Data Sharing.
5. Add country cave data to the GrottoCenter database whenever it is received. (Ongoing.)
6. Collaborate with the Karst Information Portal (KIP). (In progress.)
7. Investigate setting up the data as Linked Data on the Semantic Web. (Done. A KarstLink interface has been implemented.)
8. Host the UIS Bibliography Commission's Speleo Abstracts (BBS/SA) on GrottoCenter. (Done. In collaboration with Patrick Deriaz, GrottoCenter now hosts the BBS/SA - over 134,000 documents referenced and over 8000 full-version documents stored and downloadable. BBS/SA contributors can now work directly through the GrottoCenter interface.)
9. Add more options for the usage licence. (Done.)
10. Adapt the next version of GrottoCenter to accomodate UIS cave data recommendations. (Migration of GrottoCenter v.2 to v.3 is in progress.)
11. Add a mobile phone application with an offline function. (In progress.)

Of course in the meantime the GrottoCenter database will continue to be populated with new and updated caves by interested cavers and organisations.

Invitations

1. Involvement: Who can be involved? Every interested organisation and individual is welcome to contact us and join the sub-commission in order to add their experience, their input and their perspective. Just fill in this form.
2. Archive: Caving agencies and clubs wishing to archive publications in the BBS in order to save them permanently and make them available to the caving community may contact the Wikicaves Association. We are able to proceed quickly with the archiving, and the number of files is not an issue. Note: Paper-only publications could be OCR-scanned for searchable archiving. Contact: https://en.wikicaves.org/contact
3. Share: If you manage a karst-related database and want to participate in Karstlink – you might want to share your data, or participate in Karstlink design. Contact the Karstlink team http://uisic.uis-speleo.org/exchange/karstlink/index-en.html
4. Download: You can use the data on caves, documents, organisations, massifs, etc provided by Grottocenter for your own purposes. They are freely accessible via APIs. Contact the Wikicaves Association: https://en.wikicaves.org/contact

Links

Contact

Leader: Didier BORG, France.