The “Project Plan” (also referred to as the “Project Roadmap”) is presented in this document with details, tasks, and activities to be carried out for the remainder of the Transportation Pooled Fund Project TPF-5(111), “Development of Standards for Geotechnical Management Systems.” A draft version of this project plan was presented at a DIGGS team meeting in Orlando, Florida in late March 2009 (http://www.diggsml.com/march-2009-diggs-meeting-report-project-status-and-development-new-roadmap). Discussions and recommendations stemming from that meeting were used to revise the draft plan. Additionally, in the Summer of 2009, the DIGGS Project Team contracted with Galdos Systems and Compusult Ltd. to carry out independent reviews of DIGGS version 1.0a schemas (http://www.diggsml.com/diggs-project-team-contracts-galdos-systems-and-compusult-ltd-carry-out-review-diggs-version-1-0a). The recommendations stemming from this review were also used to identify tasks.

DIGGS needs to develop a sustainable governance structure that can be responsible for the standard, manage maintenance and support, provide a structure for input and new releases and provide a mechanism for keeping the standard international and collaborative. Resulting from the GMS meeting in Orlando, March 25 & 26, 2009, a task committee was assigned to develop and present options for a governance model. The models need to allow for a smooth transition from the current pooled fund (TPF) organization to one that provides long term stability.

The DIGGS Project Team contracted with Galdos Systems and Compusult Ltd. to carry out independent reviews of DIGGS version 1.0a. Final reports from Galdos and Compusult with findings and recommendations can be read here. A synthesis of the findings is also available for download. These reports will form the basis for work to be conducted later this year.

The DIGGS team met in Orlando, Florida in late March 2009 to assess the current state of DIGGS development and identify the path forward for development and deployment. A copy of the agenda, presentations, and papers can be found in the "Publications" section of this site (http://www.diggsml.com/publications/diggs-invitational-meeting-%E2%80%93-report-project-status-and-development-new-roadmap).

The first meeting of the AGS Data Management Sub-Committee for Implementation of DIGGS UK was held on 10th December 2008 at Geotechnics Limited, Coventry, UK.

At the meeting we agreed the goals of the group and timescales for reporting back to the main AGS committee and the DIGGS board. This post contains an extract from the minutes of the meeting for general interest.

On the 18th June 2008 the Association of Geotechnical Specialists (AGS) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) will present "Electronic Transmission and Storage of Data – Site Investigation to Piling" The National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham, UK.

This international event will showcase DIGGS and how the AGS continue to support its development, and will include four sessions as detailed below all of which have relevance to a DIGGS practitioner.

DIGGS is pleased to report the successful completion its first US Environmental SIG meeting in New Orleans on the 13th March 2008. The aim of the day was to introduce the structure and principles of the DIGGS group and how the DIGGS format will meet the needs of the environmental community.

Presentations were made by Kim Stagg and Roger Chandler. These presentations can be downloaded here.

After version 0.9.2 DIGGSML was split into several parts to aid its development and there have been some problems with using the schemas in various different parsers, many stemming from the xsi:schemaLocation attribute and it's varied implementation.

This article explains reasons behind the move from relative paths to canonical URI's and how to use the included catalog file to tell your parser where to find your local copy of the schemas.

After Monitoring and the SamplingPoint object - Part 3 we had reviewed various methods of encoding blocks of tabular data in XML and identified a number of previous implementations of this construct (WITSML, SensorML).

This article details how DIGGSML builds on the implementations in WITSML and SensorML and implements a generic Table structure for storing lots of repeating Monitoring data.

DIGGSML is an international standard, and since many people all over the world speak different languages DIGGSML must respect this. Whilst the element names themselves are in "international English" their content can often be in one (or more) different languages.

This article will explain the best practices for internationalising a DIGGSML file, including how to implement a bi-lingual file.