2001 Report for ISO

ISO 19115 Geographic Information – Metadata

Report to the ICA Commission on Spatial Transfer Standards

David M. Danko

July 2001

Progress: July 1999 – July 2001

 

Previously this standard was ISO 15046-15, however, ISO TC211 renumbered the entire suite of 20+ geographic standards, assigning each its own number within 19100-191xx.  Each standard is individually numbered rather than a part of one standard.

The TC211 standards are now based on a single UML object-oriented model.  By developing a comprehensive model for the entire suite of standards, with each standard using and responsible for the classes of information within their scope of work, the ISO 19100 suite of standards are integrated and harmonized.

Committee Draft 2.0:

ISO 19115 Committee Draft (CD) 2.0 was released in late November 1999 for official review by the ISO TC 211 member nations.  Although the actual metadata elements had not changed radically, CD 2.0 was quite different than the previous CD 1.0 in its presentation of the metadata.  CD 2.0 was based on a harmonized abstract UML model with an associated data-dictionary. The “levels of conformance” defined in CD1.0 were replaced with two application profiles – an “Essential Profile” and a “Comprehensive Profile.”  The ISO TC 211 Secretariat received 1422 comments on CD 2.0.  An Editing Committee was formed to deal with comments.  Norman Andersen, Lockheed Martin Corporation (US) was appointed Chairman, and David Danko, NIMA (US) was appointed editor, committee members were appointed from 13 nations. The Editing Committee met 5-9 March 2000 in Cape Town, South Africa. Many of the comments were resolved at the EC meeting, as well as general issues and guidance for addressing the remaining comments.  The remaining comments were adjudicated by the editor and reviewed by the EC via e-mail.   Although 1422 is a large number of comments they have not caused major changes to the standard.  A large number were editorial caused by the reconstruction of the document between CD1.0 and CD 2.0. Another large group of comments were a result of reviewers not understanding UML.

Committee Draft 3.0:

 

ISO 19115 CD 3.0 was released to the TC 211 nations for review 1 June 2000.  Nations were also asked to vote on the advancement of the documents to the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage.  CD 3.0 did not change drastically from CD 2.0.  Clause 6 (requirements) contained a more extensive textual description of the metadata classes than the previous draft.  Annexes A and B remained the primary definitional sections of the standard.  Annex A contained the UML model, which graphically defines the classes and their relationships. Annex B is the data-dictionary for the UML model and provides a formal definition for each metadata class (data dictionary entity) and class attribute (data-dictionary metadata element), as well as roll name definitions for all the class associations.  Because two profiles caused a naming conflict in the standard, one, the “Essential Application Profile” was dropped from CD 3.0.  It was replaced with a simple list of the “Recommended Core Metadata for Geographic Datasets”.   The Comprehensive Application Profile remained, and the standard contained an XML DTD based on the comprehensive profile.

The review and voting period for CD 3.0 ended 1 September 2000. 687 comments were received; as a result of the voting the document was allowed to proceed to DIS: Vote results – 21 YES, 1 no, 3 abstain, 8 not voting.  An Editing committee was held in Reston, VA, 11-15 Sept 2000 to address the comments. There were no major changes to the standard.  The XML DTD was moved to an informative annex.  A semi-automated process was used to derive the DTD in accordance the TC 211 encoding standard.  Improved raster/gridded and data quality UML models were developed as well as many other small but significant improvements.  Final Text of Committee Draft was released December 21, 2000.  Nations reviewed the final text to insure that the comments were properly addressed and were asked to provide objections if necessary.  No nations objected, however several comments were received.  The Project team/editing committee reconvened in Lisbon, March 4-6 2001 to address the comments.   Several nations questioned the maturity of two of the ISO TC 211 standards on which the metadata standard depends: ISO 19103, which defines the common data types used by ISO 19115 and ISO 19118 Encoding, which defines the Encoding method used to produce the ISO 19115 DTD. Because of the scheduling of these two standards it was decided to delay the release of the next version of the metadata until they could be finalized.

Schedule:

 

Date	Action
1 June 2000	CD 3.0 released by ISO TC 211 Secretariat for national review
1 September 2000	National comments received and collated
11-15 September 2000	CD 3.0 Editing Committee meeting
21 December 2000	Final text for DIS released for review
4-6 March 2001	Comments reviewed
July 2001	Draft International Standard (DIS)
November 2001	Final Draft International Standard (FDIS)
January 2002	International Standard (IS)

© Copyright, ICA Standards Commission, 2001