Mission statement

The DIGGS UK eLIG will oversee the formalisation, publicity and industry adoption of the DIGGS format for the UK environmental community.

Background

Since the launch of Association of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental specialists’ data transfer format (AGS 3) the environmental industry has lobbied the AGS data format committee for a better representation of environmental data in the AGS 3 data transfer format. Initial work was completed in 2006 and was submitted to the AGS as possible AGS-E extension to the format. It was acknowledged by the report publishers and the AGS that the implementation would not be possible under the AGS 3 data format structure and the project was put on hold.

Work has been on going since 2006 and the integration of AGS-E into the new international data transfer format DIGGS (Digital Interchange for Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Specialists) has now been completed and is ready for official review. The AGS have been one of the core international teams working on DIGGS and have already announced that AGS4 will be an implementation of the DIGGS format.

This development has provided the UK environmental industry with an ideal opportunity to complete the data transfer format standardisation work which it started nearly 4 years ago. It has addressed all the issues raised by the environmental industry to the AGS in 2006 and at a recent meeting the original AGS-E report authors gave the new format’s data structure clear backing.

Committee

The committee will consist of expert representation from the following industry sectors; Environmental consultancies, Chemical Laboratories, Government bodies, Academic and Research Establishments and Software providers. It will report to the DIGGS UK LIG which is run the AGS data format committee.

The initial role of the committee will be to review the DIGGS format and make recommendations on any changes that need to be made to meet UK reporting requirements. Following this initial review the committee will be responsible for issuing UK notes for guidance, example files and general publicity material to raise awareness in the industry. On release of the format the committee members are expected to answer questions raised on the format’s discussion boards on their area of expertise and periodically review the format and propose additional requirements to the DIGGS UK LIG.

Organisations represented on the committee will be expected to be an early adopters of the format upon its release.

Environmental LIG UK

Environmental LIG US

Summary of the Florida Department of Transportation efforts to develop and implement a database for Geotechnical and piling information on transportation projects. The database used XML as a transfer in and out. The database uses an application focused approach so engineers use the applications to manipulate and submit information to the database.

A short history of the development of the DIGGS organization and the collaboration to develop the DIGGS schema and standard.

Need to have a method to issue unique DIGGS ID for use in the schema. DIGGS requires the unique ID for many fields. The process uses an 8 character ID assigned to each group that creates a DIGGS file.

We need a web process to allow the unique assignment of these IDs.

Registerd for Florida Department of Transportation
Registered by Marc Hoit

ID to be used for demo purposes as we are a software provide.

Some of the elements have a CRS assigned - when they should only have a UOM.

I believe this was a simple typing error that needs to be corrected.

Only elements that need a CRS should have one - all the rest (by default) should only be assigned a UOM.

One example is diameter needs only UOM

Need to correct source reference.

We added the ability to reference the source of something - intended for samples (such as source=hole or source=sample (when comes from another sample).

In the implementation a source reference was included BUT: it allowed any object to be the source. This is not correct as it allowed the object to become a child. The intent was to reference the object, not allow the object to be placed inside the current object.

The consequence was that the entire hole object could be placed within a sample.