CA This is the first of four articles describing Geospatial Standards and the standards bodies working on these standards. This article will discuss what geospatial standards are and why they matter, identify major standards organizations, and list the characteristics of successful geospatial standards.
Conclusions
RQ Which federal and international standards have been agreed upon since this article's publication?
SOW
DC FGDC approved the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (FGDC-STD-001-1998) in June 1998. FGDC is a 19-member interagency committee composed of representatives from the Executive Office of the President, Cabinet-level and independent agencies. The FGDC is developing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) in cooperation with organizations from State, local and tribal governments, the academic community, and the private sector. The NSDI encompasses policies, standards, and procedures for organizations to cooperatively produce and share geographic data.
Type
Web Page
Title
National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) Metadata Primer -- A "How To" Guide on Metadata Implementation
The primer begins with a discussion of what metadata is and why metadata is important. This is followed by an overview of the Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) adopted by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). Next, the primer focuses on the steps required to begin collecting and using metadata. The fourth section deals with how to select the proper metadata creation tool from the growing number being developed. Section five discusses the mechanics of documenting a data set, including strategies on reviewing the output to make sure it is in a useable form. The primer concludes with a discussion of other assorted metadata issues.
Critical Arguements
CA The Metadata Primer is one phase of a larger metadata research and education project undertaken by the National States Geographic Information Council and funded by the Federal Geographic Data Committee's Competetive Cooperative Agreements Program (CCAP). The primer is designed to provide a practical overview of the issues associated with developing and maintaining metadata for digital spatial data. It is targeted toward an audience of state, local, and tribal government personnel. The document provides a "cook book" approach to the creation of metadata. Because much of the most current information on metadata resides on the Internet, the primer summarizes relevant material available from other World Wide Web (WWW) home pages.
Conclusions
RQ To what extent could the NSGIC recommendations be used for non-geographic applications?
SOW
DC FGDC approved the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (FGDC-STD-001-1998) in June 1998. FGDC is a 19-member interagency committee composed of representatives from the Executive Office of the President, Cabinet-level and independent agencies. The FGDC is developing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) in cooperation with organizations from State, local and tribal governments, the academic community, and the private sector. The NSDI encompasses policies, standards, and procedures for organizations to cooperatively produce and share geographic data.
Abstract The ability of investigators to share data is essential to the progress of integrative scientific research both within and across disciplines. This paper describes the main issues in achieving effective data sharing based on previous efforts in building scientific data networks and, particularly, recent efforts within the Earth sciences. This is presented in the context of a range of information architectures for effecting differing levels of standardization and centralization both from a technology perspective as well as a publishing protocol perspective. We propose a new Metadata Interchange Format (.mif) that can be used for more effective sharing of data and metadata across digital libraries, data archives and research projects.
Critical Arguements
CA "In this paper, we discuss two important information technology aspects of the electronic publication of data in the Earth sciences, metadata, and a variety of different concepts of electronic data publication. Metadata are the foundation of electronic data publications and they are determined by needs of archiving, the scientific analysis and reproducibility of a data set, and the interoperability of diverse data publication methods. We use metadata examples drawn from the companion paper by Staudigel et al. (this issue) to illustrate the issues involved in scaling-up the publication of data and metadata by individual scientists, disciplinary groups, the Earth science community-at-large and to libraries in general. We begin by reviewing current practices and considering a generalized alternative." ... 'For this reason, we will we first discuss different methods of data publishing via a scientific data network followed by an inventory of desirable characteristics of such a network. Then, we will introduce a method for generating a highly portable metadata interchange format we call .mif (pronounced dot-mif) and conclude with a discussion of how this metadata format can be scaled to support the diversity of interests within the Earth science community and other scientific communities." ... "We can borrow from the library community the methods by which to search for the existence and location of data (e.g., Dublin Core http://www.dublincore.org) but we must invent new ways to document the metadata needed within the Earth sciences and to comply with other metadata standards such as the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). To accomplish this, we propose a metadata interchange format that we call .mif that enables interoperability and an open architecture that is maximally independent of computer systems, data management approaches, proprietary software and file formats, while encouraging local autonomy and community cooperation. "
Conclusions
RQ "These scalable techniques are being used in the development of a project we call SIOExplorer that can found at http://sioexplorer.ucsd.edu although we have not discussed that project in any detail. The most recent contributions to this discussion and .mif applications and examples may be found at http:\\Earthref.org\metadata\GERM\."
SOW
DC This article was written by representatives of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Insititute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics under the auspices of the University of California, San Diego.
