2003 National Report for Japan

 

 

Recent activities relating to spatial metadata standards in Japan

 

Kazuhiko AKENO

Head of Information Access Division

Geographical Survey Institute

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, JAPAN

 

In Japan, Japanese Metadata Profile (JMP) is used for registering a metadata with a clearinghouse.  JMP1.1a was developed based on the 1st Committee Draft (CD) of ISO19115 under a joint research project between GSI and private companies.  Central government adopted JMP1.1a for its metadata preparation.  Then revising the JMP1.1a was frozen during CD and DIS stage in ISO/TC211.  JMP2.0 was developed on this May based on ISO 19115 issued on this March. JMP2.0 is composed of core metadata and some elements such as keywords, distribution information and so on that are necessary for clearinghouse activities.  All existing metadata will covert JMP1.1a into JMP2.0 in this summer using tools developed by GSI.

GSI has operated the Japanese clearinghouse gateway under the Japanese language environment since 2000.  JMP is adopted as the Metadata form, and Z39.50 as the retrieval protocol.

Now there are eighteen clearinghouse nodes.

  – Thirteen nodes by eight central government ministries.

  – Four nodes by private companies.

  – Three nodes by research institutes including universities.

The node number of the central government is increasing under the Action Program.  Regarding the basic surveys by local governments, Japan has a system of gathering the abstract information of public survey to avoid duplicate survey based on Survey Act.  GSI is the organization responsible for gathering the abstract information of public survey.  GSI can easily convert the abstract information into metadata.  These metadata are registered and distributed through a public survey clearinghouse node.  One special clearinghouse is by National Spatial Data Infrastructure Promoting Association (NSDIPA). Many private companies register metadata in the clearinghouse. It is a single node but covers many private companies. Through the clearinghouse gateway by GSI, the government metadata and private companies’ metadata can be retrieved.

The URL of this clearinghouse gateway is http://zgate.gsi.go.jp/, in Japanese.

© Copyright, ICA Standards Commission, 2003