Some Experiences with Managing Standards

This study, evaluation and proposal of a standard suitable for the exchange of geographic data was conducted by the National Technical University of Athens as part of a research project on behalf of KTIMATOLOGIO S.A. and the Hellenic Mapping and Cadastral Organization. The primary application interest was the Hellenic Cadastre Project, which can be seen as a case-study of the role of standards, the functionality they provide, and their effects. The study reported relates mainly to theoretical and scientific issues of standardization. Several subjects were addressed during the process of selecting the standard and a series of evaluation criteria were formed. Three primary trends in standardization were considered, Open GIS, ISOX 211 and CEN/TC 287, and a generic-profile-product approach was pursued. The selected standard was DIGEST-C with a customized (and not modified) implementation version of an Urban VMap product. The customization process included the association of the schema available in the selected standard with the schema that have been used so far in Greece for cadastre applications. The utilization and implementation of the selected standard, intended to be a National Spatial Data Exchange Standard, has various implications, which are reported and evaluated. Interoperability and a national standard for the Hellenic Cadastre JAG l Volume 2 -Issue 2 -2000 Interoperability and a national standard for the Hellenic Cadastre JAG l Volume 2 -Issue 2 -2000 interoperability and a national standard for the Hellenic Cadastre JAG l Volume 2 -Issue 2 -2000

After information technology has enabled developing huge data storages and their remote providing and sharing, the value of informatisation consists increasingly in networking hitherto individual, ad-hoc data sets in multiple information systems. The economic aspects of data development and maintenance make data managers think about sharing and providing data sets for secondary use. In fact, most data sets are built secondarily upon another data; only minor part of data is entirely "purely primary" ones. However, the secondary and, more generally, multiple data use by numerous users emphasises the need for their transferability from original, primary manager and user to other subjects: secondary users of primary data, those who use the primary data for creating secondary data, "tertiary" users of the secondary data, etc. This ultimately leads to effort to establish and to enforce standards for data. Decision-making is a special case of use of GIS data. Here the accuracy, updateness and reliability are the prerequisites for correct decisions. Procuring, management and dissemination of such data needs special standards and special procedures to prevent damages. In the public domain, this is the case of the data entering the legal decisionmaking process. This all requests for legal instruments to enforce the specific standards on the part of those who originate / procure the data. Thus, the state can develop the environment for intragovernmental standardisation and transfer of GIS data relevant for planning and subsequent decision-making. Outside the public domain, data producers are not subjected to the standardisation imposed by law. However, their standards may be driven by demand, discipline and technology. As such, the standards will be part of a company strategy to retain its market share and to guarantee to their clients the continuity of their products use.

International Journal of …, 2000

… NIEeS Workshop on Activating Metadata, July …, 2005

Survey Review, 2004

Many organizations and groups are active in the field of standardisation. The "official" standards are published by the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO). Through the work of its Technical Committee 211 (ISO/TC 211) the ISO has taken the leading position in the standardisation of geographic information. The ISO/TC 211 has created a complete suite of standards for vector-based GIS which integrates all major developments in this field. The ISO-numbers for the geographic information standards are between 19101 and 19199 presently ending with 19140. The reference model, the spatial and temporal schema, the referencing by coordinates, the portrayal, the encoding and the metadata are typical titles of the individual standards. These standards have been completed in Phase 1 since 1994. Phase 2 focuses on imagery, gridded data and coverages. Those standards will be the most important development of the ISO/TC 211 in the coming years. Typical standardisation projects of Phase 2 are the reference model for imagery, the sensor and data model for imagery and gridded data, the encoding for imagery, and the metadata for imagery. The sensor and data models contain a comprehensive approach towards the classical and the new sensors of photogrammetry and remote sensing such as the photogrammetric camera, line sensors, and film scanners. Most of the ISO 19100 standards contain abstract solutions. Standards on the implementation level have been defined by other organizations such as the Open GISConsortium. In many cases the implemented solutions are well established existing formats or environments. However, many recent implementation developments are strongly influenced by the ISO works including the use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), web-based services, and location-based services.

Journal of The Brazilian Computer Society, 2009

The quest for interoperability is one of the main driving forces behind international organizations such as OGC and W3C. In parallel, a trend in systems design and development is to break down GIS functionalities into modules that can be composed in an ad hoc manner. This component-driven approach increases flexibility and extensibility. For scientists whose research involves geospatial analysis, however, such initiatives mean more than interoperability and flexibility. These efforts are progressively shielding these users from having to deal with problems such as data representation formats, communication protocols or pre-processing algorithms. Once scientists are allowed to abstract from lower level concerns, they can shift their focus to the design and implementation of the computational models they are interested in. This paper analyzes how interoperability and componentization efforts have this underestimated impact on the design and development perspective. This discussion is illustrated by the description of the design and implementation of WebMAPS, a geospatial information system to support agricultural planning and monitoring. By taking advantage of new results in the above areas, the experience with WebMAPS presents a road map to leverage system design and development by the seamless composition of distributed data sources and processing solutions.

The Annals of Regional Science, 1999

2011

1999

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 2019

Geographic information metadata provides a detailed description of geographic information resources. Well before digital data emerged, metadata were shown in the margins of paper maps to inform the reader of the name of the map, the scale, the orientation of the magnetic North, the projection used, the coordinate systems, the legend, and so on. Metadata were used to communicate practical information for the proper use of maps. When geographic information entered the digital era with geographic information systems, metadata was also collected digitally to describe datasets and the dataset collections for various purposes. Initially, metadata were collected and saved in digital files by data producers for their own specific needs. The sharing of geographic datasets that required producers to provide metadata with the dataset to guide proper use of the dataset—map scale, data sources, extent, datum, coordinate reference system, etc. Because of issues with sharing and no common understa...