[Geowanking] EU GIS / metadata standards

[jo walsh]

i spent a few hours in the strange online world of EU GIS initiatives[3]. 
http://www.ec-gis.org/inspire/ seems to be where development is focusing;
amongst the group's "Principles":

[[ Geographic information needed for good governance at all levels should
be abundant under conditions that do not refrain its extensive use ]]           

during my journey i saw many references to ISO 19115, a metadata standard
for geographic information. curious to know how this compares to
public metadata schemas such as femke's work with mindswap[0], the cyc
vocabulary for geography[1], descriptions for OGC Simple Features, with an
eye to establishing mappings between ontologies or extrapolating a 'core'
feature description set.

imagine my chagrin when i discover i have to *buy* ISO standards. suddenly
the OGC seems a model of enlightened, web-clue transparency. 
does anyone have IS0 g3o w4r3z i could look at?


[0] http://www.mindswap.org/2004/geo/geoOntologies.shtml 
[1] http://www.cyc.com/cycdoc/vocab/geography-vocab.html
[2] 
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=26020&ICS1=35&ICS2=240&ICS3=70
[3] http://del.icio.us/zool/EU


jo
--
"Common sense won't tell you. We have to tell each other." -DNA