Hydrography

Standards Add

DIF (Directory Interchange Format) Edit

An early metadata initiative from the Earth sciences community, intended for the description of scientific data sets. It inlcudes elements focusing on instruments that capture data, temporal and spatial characteristics of the data, and projects with which the dataset is associated. It is defined as a W3C XML Schema.

Sponsored by the Global Change Master Directory, the DIF Writer's Guide Version 6 is from November 2010.

FGDC/CSDGM (Federal Geographic Data Committee Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata) Edit

A widely-used, but no longer current standard defining the information content for a set of digital geospatial data required by the US Federal Government.

CSDGM was sponsored by the US Federal Geographic Data Committee.  However, in September 2010 the FGDC endorsed ISO 19115 and began encouraging federal agencies to transition to ISO metadata.

ISO 19115 Edit

An internationally-adopted schema for describing geographic information and services. It provides information about the identification, the extent, the quality, the spatial and temporal schema, spatial reference, and distribution of digital geographic data.

Sponsored by the International Standards Organisation, the first edition of ISO 19115 was published in 2003. It has since been split into parts: ISO 19115-1:2014 contains the fundamentals of the standard; ISO 19115-2:2009 contains extensions for imagery and gridded data; and ISO/TS 19115-3:2016 provides an XML schema implementation for the fundamental concepts compatible with ISO/TS 19138:2007 (Geographic Metadata XML, or GMD).

Extensions Add

Cruise Summary Reports Edit

The National Oceanographic Data Centre's required format for reporting on cruises or field experiments at sea, formulated using tags from the ISO19115 metadata standard.

CSDGM Extensions for Remote Sensing Metadata Edit

An extension to the FGDC/CSDGM metadata standard providing a common terminology and set of definitions for documenting geospatial data obtained by remote sensing.

INSPIRE Metadata Regulation Edit

A profile of ISO 19115:2003, adopted in 2007 as the common metadata standard for the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE). The other profiles of ISO 19115 in use in European Member States have been made compliant with INSPIRE.

ISO 19115-2 - Imagery and gridded data Edit

An extension of ISO 19115 defining the schema required for describing imagery and gridded data.

Marine Community Profile Edit

A profile developed in accordance with ISO 19115 rules by the Australian Ocean Data Centre that supports the documentation and discovery of marine spatial datasets.

Shoreline Metadata Profile Edit

Providing the format and content for describing data sets related to shoreline and other coastal data sets, this profile complies with the FGDC/CSDGM standard.

Tools Add

ANZ-MEST (Metadata Entry and Search Tool) Edit

A GeoNetwork web application for metadata management and searching, with profiles available for two extensions of ISO 19115: ANZLIC and the Marine Community Profile.

OWSLib Edit

OWSLib is a Python package for client programming with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web service (hence OWS) interface standards, and their related content models

pycsw Edit

pycsw is an OGC CSW server implementation written in Python. Started in 2010 (more formally announced in 2011), pycsw allows for the publishing and discovery of geospatial metadata via numerous APIs (CSW 2/CSW 3, OpenSearch, OAI-PMH, SRU), providing a standards-based metadata and catalogue component of spatial data infrastructures. pycsw is Open Source, released under an MIT license, and runs on all major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)

pygeometa Edit

pygeometa is a Python package to generate metadata for geospatial datasets

SeaDataNet Software Edit

A suite of tools designed by SeaDataNet to facilitate the creation, editing, and conversion of ocean and marine data and metadata. Particular tools are available for preparing ISO 19115-conformant XML metadata files for the SeaDataNet directories.

Use Cases Add

BODC (British Oceanographic Data Centre Published Data Library) Edit

This national facility for looking after and distributing data concerning the marine environment requires that data sets use a well-documented format such as CF-compliant NetCDF and be accompanied by a Dublin Core record as well as discovery metadata in a recognised standard such as DIF or FGDC/CDGM.

Common Data Index Edit

A web service allowing users to access the availability and geographical spreading of marine data sets managed by the SeaDataNet data centres, using metadata based on the ISO 19115 content model.

Marine Geoscience Data System Edit

An online portal providing access to a number of NSF-supported marine geoscience projects, which has developed its own metadata requirements.

NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) Edit

The world's largest climate data archive, providing climatological services and data worldwide. It currently promotes the FGDC/CSDGM metadata standard for its datasets.