[Geowanking] EU GIS / metadata standards

[Allan Doyle]

On Wednesday, March 24 2004 at 13:26:34(+0000) jo walsh wrote:
 > 
 > 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?

You can find the OGC version of ISO 19115 at 
http://www.opengis.org/docs/01-111.pdf

However, it's as close to official w4r3z as you can get. There are
two semi-conflicting copyright messages in it, one talking about OGC
members being allowed to make copies, and the other being the ISO
copyright message. The intent was that as OGC and ISO "dual brand"
their specs that the OGC versions would be publicly available. 

Other metadata you might want to look at is FGDC (which is converging
with OGC/ISO) and GCMD DIF
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/User/difguide/difman.html

There are a number of web resources comparing formats, such as
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/interoperability/
http://staffweb.library.northwestern.edu/dl/metadata/standardsinventory/
etc.

Some other interesting work linking "traditional" metadata to
"modern" ontology:
http://ndg.badc.rl.ac.uk/public_docs/AHM-2003-KON.pdf
http://sweet.jpl.nasa.gov/

In particular, this paper discusses the limitations of XML metadata
vs. the promise of RDF...

http://www.itc.nl/library/Papers/Wuhan%20paper%20Rob%20Lemmens%20v3.pdf

 > 
 > 
 > [0] http://www.mindswap.org/2004/geo/geoOntologies.shtml 

I could not get at [0]

 > [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
 > 

Now I wish I had enough time to try to understand all this stuff!

    Allan

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Allan Doyle                                        +1.781.433.2695
http://www.eogeo.org
adoyle at eogeo.org