Petr Rapant

VSB – TU of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15

708 33 Ostrava – Poruba, Czech Republic

tel: +420 69 732 5470

fax: + 420 69 691 8589

e-mail: petr.rapant@vsb.cz

There are three main bodies dealing with standardization in a field of geoinformatics in the Czech Republic:

Czech Standards Institute
Office for Public Information Systems
Czech Association for Geoinformation.

Ad 1, The Czech Standard Institute (CSNI) was established in 1 of January 1993 as an official body keeping care about creation of national standards, their harmonization with international standards and possibly adoption of international standards to the system of Czech national standards [1]. CSNI has established Technical Standardisation Committee no. 122 Geographic Information / Geomatics in 16 of November 1996. This committee has started with translation and adoption of CEN TC 287 standards to the system of Czech national standards immediately. All these standards have been translated up to the end of year 2000. This committee deals with translation of ISO TC 211 standards to the Czech language and their adoption to the system of Czech national standards.

By the way, Slovak Republic has decided not to translate CEN TC 287 standards to the Slovak language but use Czech version of these standards immediately. Both Czech and Slovak official standardization bodies have signed relevant agreement.

Ad 2, The Office for Public Information Systems (OPIS) is a public administration body established by the Act on Public Information Systems (No. 365/2000 Coll.) [2].

Office for Public Information Systems is the major coordinator for public administration information systems building and development in the Czech Republic, covering also regions and communities. Publishing standards for public administration information systems and testing of ability to meet those standards are major instruments for execution of OPIS competency.

Office for Public Information Systems is charged with preparation of strategic papers on information society, e-commerce, information systems security etc. The Office acts as a major contact institution for European Commission in the area of various issues regarding information society development.

OPIS publish series of standards. Part of them are devoted to the field of geoinformatics:

Standard for structure of transfer format for Digital Technical Map of Urban Areas
Standard for spatial identification
Standard for structure and transfer format of a metadata on geodata sets.

Other standards are under preparation.

Ad 3, The Czech Association of Geoinformation (CAGI) is a civil professional association of the citizens and legal persons (individual and corporate members) working in the sphere of geoinformation in the Czech Republic [3]. The mission of CAGI is to support the use of geoinformation for the benefit of the citizen and governance

One of the main objectives of CAGI is development of standards for GI community. It participates in activities of both CSNI and OPIS. GI standards of OPIS are usually developed by CAGI and published by OPIS and CAGI as common standards.

Until now CAGI has fully developed these standards:

Standard for structure of transfer format for Digital Technical Map of Urban Areas
Standard for structure and transfer format of a metadata on geodata sets.

Under development is

Standard for structure and transfer format of a metadata on geodata sets (second version) and
Standard for structure and transfer format of urban plans.

Standard for structure and transfer format of a metadata on geodata sets is based on published international standards and initiatives (Dublin Core, CEN). Next version will be accommodated also to ISO standards.

CAGI has developed and is running official state metainformation system MIDAS [4] (in cooperation with OPIS). There are more then 3200 data set descriptions in the MIDAS now.

References:

[1]: www.csni.cz

[2]: www.uvis.cz

[3]: www.cagi.cz

[4]: gis.vsb.cz/midas

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Czech 2002

Petr Rapant