Hello, good morning everyone. I'm Christopher Peters and I'm going to present you Grotto
Center. So first a bit about me. I'm from Belgium. I'm mostly working as a trainer
and consultant in open source and DevOps. And in my free time I'm spending quite a lot
of time doing outdoor adventure stuff such as for example I go into caves. By the way
for the people who like to enjoy the pictures of my slides this is the only picture that
I didn't take. So it's a bit difficult to take it when you're posing for it. So first
a bit about caving or speleology. So what does it actually mean? It's mostly a scientific
study where we are going into caves or outdoors and explore cast phenomena or caves in particular.
If we are going into caves to study what is happening over there, there are different
sciences that are involved. There is geology, there is biology, there is also a lot of physics
and chemistry involved. But in general to get to the place that we want to study we need
to go and pass certain obstacles. We have to crawl through some small passages. We have
to descend into pits and for that we need a certain physical activity to get there.
So there are some people who do this for science to actually research things that are happening
down there. There are other people who just like to do the physical activity and so it's
also a bit of a sport. For the people who are a bit familiar with other terminologies
in English it's also known as caving, potholing, spelunking. So there are different words
for it but in general the idea is we go into caves. Now if we go into caves of course there
are a few things that we have to keep in mind and one of the things that I would like to
present to you today is a problem that we often have to deal with. So when we go into
caves on this picture you can see a person who is descending into a pit on a rope and
this is something you don't do just like okay it's 10 o'clock let's go and see what's
in this hole. We actually do some preparations. For that we are using a lot of information
that we are consulting to make sure that we have the other equipment with us. We have
also made sure that we are using the right tools that we are also making sure that we
are not going in the wrong moments because sometimes also weather conditions can make
a very bad influence on the conditions in a cave. Here you see an example of a survey.
We have quite a lot of surveys that provide us with information on how the cave looks
like if it has already been explored. And we can use these surveys to also make sure
that we have all the rigging material with us that we make sure that we know where we
are going, what we are going to do and what kind of dangers that could be involved in
this in this trip. For this we have the surveys. They provide us with this information. There
is also sometimes a description that is added to the survey which provides us more information
of for example how to get to the entrance, maybe some particularities, special things
we would like to see or special things we would like to avoid. And sometimes also separately
we have rigging information. That's not always the case but depending on how well a cave
has been researched and explored these documents are available. On this survey there is also
here, over here you can see that there is an indication which actually also tells that
this is a pit of 20 meters and so sometimes also this information is only available on
the survey. Except for that we also have other information which is not very necessary to
just facilitate the trip itself but which can give us some more background. For example
scientific research that has been performed, some information about the region that could
be geologically, that could be biologically. That could also be for example information
about how rivers are flowing above and underground. There is also other kind of research that
can have been performed that isn't necessarily limited to this specific cave we are going
to visit but that could be more broad and give more information about also the region
or maybe a particular kind of cave. And other documentation like for example when they made
this survey they also took measurements. This survey has been made probably with compass
and just measuring tape and thus they might have taken notes of that. They might have
also saved them somewhere. These days we are also using more modern technologies such as
radar and 3D scanners and also those data points that can be saved and they can also
be archived. All this kind of information is available at a certain location. Most of
the time it is the person who has generated this information who owns this information.
But if we want to share this we are very much scattered around the world and there is not
such a thing as a central database. That is the actual problem we have to deal with.
So if you look at how we are going to share this information these days a lot of this
happens by email or by websites or blogs. Sometimes also some file transfer services
but in general all the information is at one specific organization, one specific person
or group of persons and you have to know where you have to go to if you want to actually
access the information. There are some countries who do have their central databases but this
is not something which is also standardized or generalized. If we then have the information
about the cave like for example the survey how also are we going to link this with scientific
research that has been performed around this cave. That is also one of the problems we
have to deal with. If we are contacting someone because we want to visit the cave very often
we get a survey or we get a description or we get a combination of both but we don't
get all the information that is available. Also because very often this information is
not centralized in one sort of group of people. Some people have one part of the information
other people have another part of the information. And then when I contact someone to obtain
this information and if I have been using it for a while and then afterwards an update
has been provided on this information how am I going to make sure that I am also getting
this update. Because also in this world science is still moving on. We are still exploring
new places underground. We are still finding new places, new caves and so all these kinds
of information need to be shared as well because the survey that I was showing before is a
very old one. There are already several newer versions of that available right now and so
if I get this survey one day and a newer version is made the other day how am I going to make
sure that I also get this if the person who sent me the first one is forgetting to also
send me updates. For that there is a solution and this solution is GrottoCenter. So what
is GrottoCenter? It is a sort of wiki database which is made for cavers and also mostly made
by cavers. So there are a few people in France they have been starting developing a database
which they use to store all the information and it is made public available so that everyone
can use it. It is supported by the European Caving Federation and it is also supported
by the International Caving Federation who also officially hosts some parts of this.
The idea is to have a global source of all kinds of information about caves and caste
phenomena and to have it with an open access so that everyone can access this information
also with the idea to use standards so that all the information is saved in the same way
and it is very easy for everyone to also add information and also query this. And because
we are using standards we are also making it very easy to make it accessible by machines
as well so that you can query this using APIs. How are we going to then use these kind of
standards to make sure that everyone can access this information? For this we made a standard
which is called CastLink and which enables us to link all the different documents to
caves. For this we did not really try to reinvent the wheel, we just extended a tool which is
from the W3C linked data and semantic web and this enables us to store the information
in such a way that it is very easy to access also using machine readable ways such as APIs.
And then you have Grotto Center itself so here you see the front page of the website
where you have on the side menu bar which you can easily use to browse the information.
If we then go, you can see there is a quick search and advanced search, I am going to
skip those for a moment and I am going to skip to the map and then here you see a screenshot
of a part of Belgium where you can also see all the hexagons which are indicating where
our caves or cluster of caves. So these are just sort of caves bundled together, if you
further zoom in then you can actually see over here you can see that there are also
indicators which point where you can find certain caves and then you also have over
there the pop-up which appears when you click on one of those points which provides us with
some information like for example here which cave is being found at that location and then
also a link to the data sheet of this cave. So this is the data sheet of that exact cave,
you can see then where it is on the map, you can get some basic information such as for
example the exact GPS coordinates, some information about how deep and how long the cave is when
it's been discovered and then if you browse down here you can also find some information
about for example the location, if you go down a bit more in the description you can
also find documents such as the cave survey. Not all this information is of course very
extended, it events very much on the people who add this information so this is one that
has been created automatically using an import which is done during migration of Grotto Center
from version 2 to version 3 but most of this information is being provided by users, it's
just like Wikipedia, if I don't write a web page, a Wikipedia page about Grotto Center
then there is no Wikipedia page available about Grotto Center. So this is information
that can be shared by everyone, on the top there is also a login which enables you to
add your information yourselves. How are we making this possible? We are using different
technologies, the complete infrastructure is running on AWS and Microsoft Azure and
we are using Docker to also host our application. For the rest we are using quite a lot of
JavaScript, so there is NodeInvolved, there is Sales.js React. We are also using GitHub
to host our code so you can also browse the code freely because this is of course, it's
an open source project so the GitHub project is freely available, you can check out the
code over there. For the rest you can also get in touch using our Slack channel. There
is a wiki which explains how you can use this tool if you want to add information and then
for the rest a few other links, for example here you have the wiki caves foundation. The
wiki caves foundation is the foundation which is responsible for the project so Grotto Center
is being officially organized by wiki caves. They are also making sure that all the funding
and all the partners are being addressed. Then a link to what is called the documentation
center of the International Caving Federation where you can find all the scientific documents.
They have been imported into Grotto Center so these days if you are browsing information
about specific caves then you can also find all the scientific bulletins linked to specific
caves. And last link is one to the Cast Link project page where you can find more information
as well as the current standard. So we are building this mostly with people who are doing
a spillology and who are by accident also IT people but we are also very grateful that
we from time to time get some interns from different schools that want to build on specific
parts of our project to make it better and to also add more functionality. And for that
we can rely on interns from the Polytech of Montpellier as well as the Epitech from Montpellier
and the University of Grenoble. So many thanks to them as well. And now some of our partners
I didn't list all of them because then my slide will be very full but there are quite
a lot of caving clubs and caving associations, federations who are sponsoring the project
and who are making it possible that we can build this and we can host this on an infrastructure
that is also made that makes it possible that everyone can access this. So hereby I would
like to conclude my presentation. If there are any questions and I am very eager to answer
them and if you have any questions later you can also reach out to us on our Slack or GitHub
or project pages. Thank you very much.