OneGeology-CCOP

What’s New…?

-          The OneGeology Global Portal has been launched at the 33^rd International Geoscience Congress held on 6- 14 August 2008 in Oslo, Norway.  At the time of launching, along with CCOP’s 1:2M Geologic Map of East and Southeast Asia, 1:1M geologic maps of 5 of the CCOP Member Countries, namely, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Philippines and Thailand, have been made available through the portal. Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) and the Department of Mineral Resources, Thailand (DMR) hosted their own data, while the Geological Survey of Japan, AIST (GSJ/AIST), other than their own data and CCOP’s, hosted that of Indonesia and Philippines.

-          The Kick-off Meeting of OneGeology-CCOP was held at GSJ/AIST, Tsukuba Japan on 25 January 2008.  Japan in conjunction with the CCOP-AIST GEO Grid Training Course.  This was organized by GSJ/AIST and the CCOP Technical Secretariat to introduce the outline of OneGeology Project and to discuss how to organize the project among the CCOP Member Countries.  It was attended by 13 participants from Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and 1 Resource Speaker from the British Geological Survey (BGS).  (See summary of the meeting for more information)

-          National Coordinators for the OneGeology-CCOP Project have been identified.

-          The 49^th CCOP Steering Committee Meeting held in Langkawi, Malaysia on 18-20 April 2007 approved the participation of CCOP to the OneGeology Project initiated by BGS.

-          The Director of the CCOP Technical Secretariat participated the OneGeology Workshop held in Brighton, UK on 12-16 March 2007.

Background

The OneGeology, a proposal of the British Geological Survey (BGS), is a truly multi-lateral and multi-national IUGS, UNESCO, CGMW, IYPE and ISCGM initiative to create dynamic and interoperable digital geological map data for the world.  Geological Surveys are invited to dynamically ‘serve’ the data for their territories to a web portal.  The target scale is 1:1 million, but the project will be pragmatic and accept a range of scales and the best available data.  The geological map data will be made available as a distributed web service, using the latest web feature mapping approach.  The plan is to make it available through GOOGLE Earth and other dynamic map browsers. 

The initiative is a contribution to the International Year of the Planet Earth.

Several Member Countries might have been invited to attend the high level Workshop to discuss about the initiative which was held in United Kingdom on 12-16 March 2007.   The Director of the CCOP Technical Secretariat was also invited and supported to attend the Workshop.

During the OneGeology Workshop held in Brighton, UK, 12-16 March 2007, the participants unanimously agreed on the great significance of the initiative as the geoscience community’s contribution to IYPE and in emphasizing the importance of geoscience to Society.   A 10-point accord was produced in the meeting, which calls for all geological organizations to join in the initiative, and to capitalize on the regional organization, such as CCOP, EUROGEOSURVEYS to help coordinate this massive initiative (Annex I).  The purpose and the outputs of OneGeology were discussed in great lengths.  It was agreed that the ultimate purpose would be products that are of use to Society, starting with the basic world geological maps as the scientific base for subsequent thematic maps on hazards, resources, environment etc. 

It was also agreed that this is an international initiative.  To move things along, initially, Ian Jackson of BGS has been named the Executive Secretary of OneGeology, and BGS will host the Secretariat until end of 2008.  Afterwards, the Secretariat for the initiative may find its permanent home.  For the management of the Project, a Coordination Committee and an International Steering Committee will be formed, and CCOP has been named as a member of one of the Committees.

In view of the complexity and diversity of such a massive initiative, it was agreed that map data in paper copy, raster or vector form will be accepted.  It was considered to first prepare the raster world geological map, and later upgrade to vector form.   

Being a multilateral and multinational project, CCOP is well placed to play an important role for the compilation for the East and Southeast Asia region.  CCOP can take a coordinating role in obtaining the geological information and to integrate them for the CCOP region as our contribution to OneGeology.   The benefit of this is that at the end of the exercise, CCOP would also have its own 1: 1,000,000 dynamic and interoperable digital geological maps.  CCOP has previously successfully compiled a series of maps for East and Southeast Asia, including the 1: 2,000,000 digital geological map and 1: 4,000,000 aeromagnetic map.

For more information on OneGeology, you may please visit its website http://www.onegeology.org

 Back to Top

Last Update:  September 2008