Access to other types of resources

Summary

“It is recommended to the INSPIRE, GEOSS and GMES technical teams that they consider the requirements to set up and provide standardized access to other types of geographic resources, through standardized ebRIM extension packages.

It is also recommended to consider the use of the OASIS RegRep standard and/or the OGC RegRep profile currently being developed for the registry services used to manage these resources.”

Classification

Category Catalogue and Metadata
Identifier REC-CAT-005
Type of recommended activity Further Investigation about the subject
Organisations addressed INSPIRE, GEOSS and GMES technical teams

Additional information

Context Resources to be considered include:
  • Feature catalogues;
  • Application schemas;
  • Geodetic codes and parameters
  • Portrayal information
  • Feature concept dictionaries, thesauri, glossaries and other registers of terms
  • Data quality measures
  • Ontologies
  • Code lists
  • Object identifier namespaces
  • Units
  • Data specifications
  • Encoding schemas
Rationale

Access to metadata on geospatial data and services is rather well organized in the three initiatives. However, other fundamental resources need to be accessed as well from the metadata, even at the discovery level, e.g. codelist definitions, CRS definitions, thesauri etc... INSPIRE foresees to establish registers of codelists, CRS, etc. and this step should be taken as well in the other initiatives in a coherent manner.

Different interoperability levels can be distinguished:

  • Level 0: The user needs to go to the specification in order to find out about reference items' definitions (e.g. a CRS definition);
  • Level 1: Each initiative sets up registers of geographic information items accessible online, from which the users and systems can fetch the definitions of the items.
  • Level 2: Registers are accessible (level 1) and managed using standard-based registry services.
  • Level 3: An online "translation" service, based for instance on ontologies, matches items between the initiatives' registries, allowing the users and systems of a specific community to access the information in his own reference frame.
Level 0 is what is currently implemented. It is recommended to INSPIRE, GEOSS and GMES to now target level 1. The focus of this activity should be on standardizing the metadata elements describing the content of the resources. This item is really the interoperability issue, whereas standardizing the lifecycle management metadata elements should be dealt with as a second step, because, while it is an important issue, it is not crucial for interoperability.
Dependencies None
Further background information
  • Technology Watch Report - Catalogue and Metadata [PDF]
  • Comparative analysis report (version 2) [PDF]
  • Comparative Analysis Report (version 2) - Annex Recommendations [PDF]
Main discussion points None
Roadmap There is a need for coordination and best practises for the management and accesability of resources.
 

[Logo] FP7GIGAS is a Support Action partly funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project runs from June 2008 to May 2010.