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Part 1: Standardization of geo-information
Standards in practice
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As of the 15th of May 2007 the European directive called INSPIRE will be in force. Its purpose is to come to a ‘infrastructure for geographic information in
Various countries have been working towards a national geo-information infrastructure (NGII) for some years. An important aspect of creating a NGII is the adoption of various agreements between suppliers and users of geographic information. The items of these agreements are concerning the organization, but furthermore (technical) standards play a large role.
Standardization trajectory within the CEN (source: www.cen.eu)
This series of articles will discuss certain geo-information related standards. What does the standard describe, what is it for and what is the impact on every day processes. This article serves as an introduction and will discuss the various types of standards en the development of international standards.
Standards
One way to difference between standards is based on the area of application. When considering the information infrastructure we can distinguish between three important types of standards:
- Technical standards
- Semantic standards
- Guidelines and directives
Technical Standards
These standards focus on the technical aspects of data exchange and storage. They define how an exchange format such as GML should be defined or how services between two systems are to be built. This type of standard is usually defined on an (inter)national level by organizations such as ISO and CEN. But INSPIRE is also involved in the development of this type of standards.
Semantic Standards
This type of standards describes the meaning of the information or a part thereof. Therefore they are not concerned with the how of the exchange but more with the what. Semantic standards are usually developed by a certain sector or domain and only valid within that domain. Semantic standards that cross domains are usually framework standards developed on an (inter) national level.
Guidelines and Directives
A guideline or directive is usually a set of agreements on how to define certain processes. For example a guideline on how to perform certain measurements. If such a guideline becomes normative for an entire industry it is usually standardized on an (inter)national level. Otherwise the guideline is more of a ‘best practice’.
Open or Closed
Except for the area of application we can distinguish standards by the method used to define them. On that bases there are open and closed standards. An open standard should conform to the following [EIF]:
- The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.);
- The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee;
- Intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is irrevocably made available on a royalty-free basis;
- There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
Based on this definition all standards developed and / or maintained by a company are usually closed since they are not maintained by a non-profit organisation.
(Inter)national Standardisation Organisations
Considering geographic oriented standards the most important international standardisation organisations are:
· Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC); a consortium between various large software vendors and users.
· International standardisation organisation (ISO)
· European standardisation organisation (CEN)
Many geographic oriented standards have been primarily developed by the OGC and from there, through the ISO, been adopted as international standard. Such a standard can then be adopted by the CEN or national standardisation bodies (NSB). But a standard can also be developed by a NSB and from there through either CEN or ISO be adopted as an European of international standard.
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Sector Specific Standards
Apart from (inter)national organisations there are a number of organizations that operate within a certain domain, usually within a certain country. Within the
Standardisation Process
One of the major differences between an open and a closed standard lies in the decision making. With an open standard everybody should be allowed to take part in the standardization process. This leads to a standardisation process that is fairly complicated and takes several years to complete. Within ISO the following process steps are distinguished:
1. Proposal
2. Preparation
3. Commission
4. Enquiry
5. Approval
6. Publication
During development of the standard a relativley small number of specialists form a working group under the guidance of a so-called technical commission (TC – ISO: TC211; CEN: TC487). Draft standards developed by the working group are checked by the TC and, during the final stages of the development, also with the national standardization bodies (NSB).
During enquiry the draft standard is publicised for comment. Based upon the nature of the comments the draft standard is either changed according to the comments and then re-send for additional comment or is not viable as an international standard. It can then be publicised, as guideline is deemed important enough.
The resulting ISO standard is not mandatory or put into law, but those whishing to do business on a worldwide basis would be foolish not to adapt it since it provides easier access to new markets. Whenever an ISO standard is adapted by CEN or the CEN develops a specific standard the situation changes however. European NSB’s must adopt a CEN standard and must also de-activate all conflicting national standards. Since national standards are usually referred to in legislation this can have a serious impact on the industry of that country if a conflicting standard was in operation before the publication of the CEN standard.
INSPIRE logo (source: www.ec-gis.org)
INSPIRE
INSPIRE logo (source: www.ec-gis.org)
Inspire is concerned with the exchange of environmental related geographic information from European governments. The idea is to create a central European Information Infrastructure wherein national geo-informatie sources are coupled to each other within a central infrastructure. It is therefore only concerned with the environmental information being exchanged between government layers and not with the information used within an organization for it’s own processes.
INSPIRE defines which information should be made available against which restrictions. The first category of data, including orthoimagery, needs to be made available via INSPIRE in 2010.
Standardization and INSPIRE
INSPIRE not only defines which information, but also the method by which it should be made available, or which standards should be used. For this purpose INSPIRE operates independently from CEN although in close cooperation. INSPIRE has three important drafting teams writing the so-called implementing rules:
- Metadata
- Data specifications harmonization
- Network specifications
At the moment the draft implementing rules for Metadata have been published. These draft implementing rules are directly based on the ISO standard 19115. It is expected that the definitive implanting rules are published later this year.
The data specifications harmonization team is concerned with the semantic standardization whereas the network specifications team is defining the implementing rules for the technical standardization of the infrastructure.
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