The International Archives of the Photogrammetry. Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beilins 2008 
29 
constructed on the internet, users can retrieve information at 
any time. 
\./± University UU Company 
la jy| 
Data Creators 
Figure 7. The Conceptual of Clearinghouse 
3.3 Clearinghouse Utilization 
As illustrated in Figure 8, the concrete flow of environmental 
data procurement by the clearinghouse can be explained by 
separating it into the “retrieval process” which retrieves the 
location of essential environmental data and the “procurement 
process”. 
“Retrieval Process” 
(1) Users refer to the clearinghouse to check for required 
environmental data. 
(2) Clearinghouse provides metadata matching the requirements. 
“Procurement Process” 
(3) Data users select the required environmental data from the 
metadata provided by the clearinghouse. 
(4) Data users request the required environmental data to the 
creators who possess the data. 
(5) Data users receive environmental data from the data creators. 
1 
| Clearinghouse |L "Refer the —x 
| Data Creators | 
^ required data 
Q 
Metadata Database 
fa)' r 
“Provide metadata 
1 
Select the . ' 
matching the 
required data” : LÜ 
requirements” 
Retrieval Process 
f 
L 
J 
“Request data 
] Data Creators "" 
Required Data 
Environmental Data “Receive data 
Environmental Data 
Environmental Data 
i«T«l!^S?SS8 
0 
Environmental Data 
Figure 8. Clearinghouse Utilization 
3.4 Use of Standard Data 
The clearinghouse will clarify the whereabouts of the necessary 
data, permitting its acquisition through the shortest channel. 
When progress is made in future toward creation of the 
environmental standard data based on the CML examined by 
the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, users can 
obtain the environmental standard data from various data 
management bodies. Users will integrate or extract obtained 
data to achieve respective results, but data processing will 
require labor because the obtained data are in the XML format. 
Therefore, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is 
developing and offering the “environmental standard data 
utilization tool (hereinafter referred to as a utilization tool)” that 
will support users’ efforts to process the data collected from 
various data management bodies after integration and extraction 
of those data without regard to the data format. The outline of 
the tool is shown below. 
Figure 9. The Conceptual of Utilization Tools 
Users will first load multiple environmental standard data into 
the utilization tool, and the utilization tool will read the contents 
(investigation item and location) of the loaded data and display 
a list. Users select the information to be extracted from the list. 
Finally, as shown in Figure 10, users specify the output format 
Figure 10. Extracted data by utilization tool (excel format) 
This tool can also draw four types of graphs listed blow. 
(1) Vertical graph 
(2) Bar graph 
(3) Sequential line graph 
(4) Scatter graph