The International Archives of the Photogrammetry. Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
to convert such data into the environmental standard data has 
been developed. These tools and data are provided free of 
charge by the Tokyo Bay Environmental Information Center 
described later. The flow of creation of environmental standard 
data is shown in Figure 5. 
Observation/Analysis 
Environmental 
Standard 
Data 
Observation Ocean 
instruments Radar 
■DepthShiftData 
■TimeShiftData 
■ LivingOrganismsData 
Figure 5. Creation of Environmental Standard Data by XML 
3. DEVELOPMENT OF “TOKYO BAY 
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION CENTER” 
WEBSITE 
TokyoBayEnvironmentallnformationCenter 
Contents aimed at information disclosure 
Contents aimed at information sharing 
Figure 6. The Conceptual of the TBEIC 
3.1 Overview of the Tokyo Bay Environmental 
Information Center 
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport commenced 
operation of the “Tokyo Bay Environmental Information Center 
(TBEIC)” website (URL: http://www.tbeic.go.jp) in June 2003, 
as a spatial data infrastructure for sharing environmental data 
regarding Tokyo Bay. Figure 6 shows a conceptual figure of the 
Tokyo Bay Environmental Information Center (hereinafter 
referred to as the center). In the center, the “contents aimed at 
information disclosure” and “contents aimed at information 
sharing” are being built up. The main contents are as shown 
below. 
“Contents aimed at information disclosure” 
(1) Contents of accumulated environmental data regarding 
Tokyo Bay retrievable by GIS. 
(2) Environmental study contents aiming at improving 
awareness of the environment and developing environmental 
improvement activities. 
(3) Contents that can be freely registered such as details of 
environmental improvement events and photographs related to 
the environment. 
(4) Contents which can obtain, in real time, the observation 
results of ocean radar continuously observing Tokyo Bay. 
“Contents aimed at information sharing” 
(1) Contents that retrieve and display the details and 
whereabouts of environmental data controlled by the various 
bodies, (clearinghouse) 
(2) Contents that provide tools to create and utilize 
environmental standard data and the standard specifications of 
the environmental data recommended by the center. 
The details of the clearinghouse that will be the foundation of 
data sharing are described below. 
3.2 Overview of the Clearinghouse 
In order to promote the sharing of environmental data it is 
important to have a mechanism where essential information can 
be easily obtained. In many of the databases constructed thus 
far for sharing environmental data, the data has been aggregated 
and controlled in one database. However, the problems related 
to constructing a database in such a way are listed below. 
(1) The format of environmental data differs according to the 
data management body. 
(2) Rules are necessary to define rights and responsibilities 
relating to environmental data. 
(3) Vast amounts of labour are necessary for maintenance and 
update of environmental data. 
(4) Each body is providing their own environmental data. 
Accordingly, in order to resolve these issues the Ministry of 
Land, Infrastructure and Transport has created a clearinghouse 
at the center, as shown in Figure 7, as a content which can 
retrieve the location of the environmental data which the 
various bodies possess. 
The clearinghouse only possesses the metadata which explains 
environmental data. In addition, environmental data is data 
managed by each body that obtains it and provided to data users. 
The volume of data is less in comparison with existing highly 
concentrated databases due to this structure. Accordingly, the 
burden of supervisors is reduced and it will be possible to 
develop a system taking into account the intellectual property 
rights of data creators. Furthermore, as the clearinghouse is