MRSAC GEOPORTAL

INTRODUCTION

Standards are documented agreements containing technical specifications or other precise criteria to be used consistently as rules, guidelines, or definitions of characteristics to ensure that materials, products, processes, or services are fit for their purposes - from ISO (International Organization for Standardization). Contrast with de facto standards, which have achieved recognition not through consensus, but through market dominance (ISO/TC 211 - 19115). Data 'reporting' answers the question -

WHO created the data?
WHAT is the content of the data?
WHEN was it created?
WHERE is it geographically?
HOW was the data developed?
WHY was the data developed?

OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the standard are to provide a common set of terminology and definitions for the documentation of digital geospatial data. The standard establishes the names of data elements and compound elements (groups of data elements) to be used for these purposes, the definitions of these compound elements and data elements, and information about the values that are to be provided for the data elements.

MAJOR USES

The major uses of metadata are :

to maintain an organization's internal investment in geospatial data,
to provide information about an organization's data holdings to data catalogues, clearinghouses, and brokerages, and
to provide information needed to process and interpret data to be received through a transfer from an external source.

METADATA ROLES

The information included in the standard was selected based on four roles that metadata play:

availability - data needed to determine the sets of data that exist for a geographic location.
fitness for use - data needed to determine if a set of data meets a specific need.
access - data needed to acquire an identified set of data.
transfer - data needed to process and use a set of data.

These roles form a continuum in which a user cascades through a pyramid of choices to determine what data are available, to evaluate the fitness of the data for use, to access the data, and to transfer and process the data. The exact order in which data elements are evaluated, and the relative importance of data elements, will not be the same for all users.