Overview of SDI Standards

SDI Standards

Why they are needed, how they are created and how to work with them

WELCOME!

With the following slides and interactive material you will be able to take part in the journey to discover Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) its components and benefits through the observation of multiple examples and exercises.

You can navigate through the course by pressing the navigation arrows at the bottom of each slide or using your arrow keys on your keyboard. You can move horizontally (← →) for viewing each theme and vertically (↑↓) to view extra recommended information

SDI Standards

#	Content
1	What are standards?
2	Why Standards are needed?
3	Who creates standards?
4	Standardisation Process
5	Where to find geospatial standards?
6	ISO 19100 Series

#	Content
7	ISO 19100 Infrastructure
8	Standards for Data
9	SDI and Geospatial Standards
10	Standards for services
11	Where to find standards
12	Additional Documentation

What are standards?

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 and services are fit for their purpose (ISO, 2019)

What are standards?

… usually in the form of documents

They are implementation neutral

E.g. Adapter for the electricity net should work for any device

E.g. Any software should be able to use or implement standards

The interesting thing about Standards is that there are so many to chose from …

Why Standards are needed?

Standardization:

Lets stakeholders communicate and understand each other

Makes it easier to integrate new information

Facilitates the reuse of existing information

Avoids errors due to misinterpretation

Makes software development more efficient, promotes reuse of software components

Allows communication between distributed services

Who creates standards? A high-level classification – the landscape

Basic ICT standards and other cross-discipline standards

Generic geospatial standards

Domain related geospatial standards

W3C, OASIS, IETF, IEEE,ISO/IEC JTC1, OMG, etc.

ISO/TC 211,

OGC,

but also others …

Many, like IHO, DGIWG, WMO, ICAO, but also OGC and ISO/TC 211

ISO/TC 211

38 Participating Members, 31 Observing Members

Open Geospatial consortium OGC

Not-for-profit, international voluntary consensus standards organization; leading development of geospatial standards
Founded in 1994 520+ members and growing 50+ standards Thousands of implementations Broad user community implementation worldwide Alliances and collaborative activities with ISO and many other SDO’s

W3C Contributions

HTML

HTTP

PNG

SOAP/XMLP

SVG

URI/URL

XHTML

XLink

XML

XML Query

XML Schema

XPath

XPointer

XSL and XSLT

CSS

DOM

The standardisation process

Define requirements
Create, discuss, approve, publish (after many iterations)
Adaption by the user community
Implementation in products and processes
Monitor the impact

Standardisation process

Adaption is only a decision; implementation is the real uptake

Edges between the process steps are fuzzy, e.g. OGC testbeds, pilots: implement to support the development

The process is continuous:
- new standards built on top of existing
- standards are revised
- standards become obselete

Stages of a standard during the process

Where to find geospatial standards?

ISO
https://www.iso.org/home.html
The online browsing platform allows to previous some parts of the standard.
https://www.iso.org/obp/ui

Where to find geospatial standards?

OGC
https://www.opengeospatial.org/
Under menu standards. Not only standards, also supporting documents etc.

ISO 19100 series

Some concepts (valid for all ISO standards):

Mandatory (M): has to be present

Conditional (C): has to be present in certain conditions

Optional (O): may choose to include.

ISO 19100 series

Requirements:

Shall: it is required to; it is necessary
Shall not: it is not allowed/permitted to, do not

Recommendation

Should: it is recommended that
Should not: it is not recommended that; ought not to

Permission

May: is allowed to
Need not: is not requited to

ISO 19100 series

Scope of the ISO 19100 series(from ISO 19101):

The focus of this family of standards is to:

define the basic semantics and structure of geographic information for data management and data interchange purposes
define geographic information service components and their behavior for data processing purposes.

ISO 19100 Infrastructure

ISO 19100 – reference model

Defines the scope of work in ISO/TC211 and resulting 19000 series of standards

The reference model identifies all components involved and defines how they fit together

Integration of geographic information with information technology

Domain reference model

How are the different items connect

Application schema
Dataset
- Feature
- Spatial object
- Position
Metadata
Services

Notes for slide 23 The framework for the ISO 19100 series of geographic information standards including this International
Standard. The framework and reference model cover the more general aspects of the ISO 19100 series of standards. The reference model identifies all components involved and defines how they fit together. It relates the different aspects of the ISO 19100 series of standards together and provides a common basis for communication.
 Geographic information services define the encoding of information in transfer formats and the methodology for presentation of geographic information that is based on cartography and the old traditions of standardized visualisations. This area also includes the field of satellite positioning; together with the formats and interfaces necessary to utilize modern navigational satellite systems.
 Data administration is concerned with the description of quality principles and quality evaluation procedures for geographic information datasets. Data administration also includes the description of the data itself, or metadata, together with feature catalogues. This area also covers the spatial referencing of geographical objects — either directly through coordinates, or more indirectly by use of, for instance, area codes like postal or zip codes, addresses, etc.
 Data models and operators are concerned with the underlying geometry of the globe and how geographic features and their spatial characteristics may be modelled. This area defines important spatial characteristics and how these are related to each other.
 Profiles and functional standards consider the technique of profiling. Profiling consists of putting together “packages/subsets” of the total set of standards to fit individual application areas or users. This supports rapid implementation and penetration in the user environments due to the comprehensiveness of the total set of standards. Equally important is the task of “absorbing” existing de facto standards from the commercial sector and harmonizing them with profiles of the emerging ISO standards.

23

Application schema

ISO 19101 also gives conceptual model for Reference system, spatial object type etc.

ISO 19103 conceptual schema language

ISO 19103: UML will be used as conceptual schema language

Also tells how, with which contraints etc.

ISO 19104: Terminology

Example:

19105 Conformance and testing

Conformance

What are the conditions you have to meet to comply with this standard

Testing

How can that conformance be tested

Abstract test suite (ATS):

Set of related abstract test cases specifying all the requirements to be satisfied for conformance

ATS is implemented in an Executable test suite (ETS)

19105 Conformance and testing

Every standard of the 19105 series has a conformance defined, and it contains in annex een abstract test suite for that standard.

Conformity testing

Validation by testing

19106 Profiles

The standard itself defines a profile as:

Profile
Set of one or more base standards or subsets of base standards, and, where applicable, the identification of chosen clauses, classes, options and parameters of those base standards, that are necessary for accomplishing a particular function

Note:
A profile is derived from base standards so that by definition, conformance to a profile is conformance to the base standards from which it is derived.

By profiling standards are adapted to a specific application

19106 Profiles

2 types of profiles:

When a profile is established as a pure subset of the ISO geographic information standards, possibly together with other ISO standards

class 2 allows profiles to include extensions within the context permitted in the base standard and permits the profiling of non-ISO geographic information standards as parts of profiles.

19106: Why profiling?

Makes the standards “flexible”, adaptable to a requirement

Exercise

Recognize the items from the metadata infrastructure standards in any other ISO 19100 standard.

What is the scope, which other standards are normatively referenced, see how UML is used, what are the different tests in the abstract test suite

Standards for Data

Data standards

Data should be standardized according to an agreed data model (schema)

Series of interconnected standards:

ISO 19101 – Reference model

ISO/TS 19103 - Conceptual schema language

ISO 19107 – Spatial schema

ISO 19108 – Temporal schema

ISO 19109 – Rules for application schema

ISO 19110 - Feature cataloguing methodology

ISO 19117 - Portrayal

ISO 19118 – Encoding

ISO 19157 - Quality

Data standards

DATA SPECIFICATION

Synonym to data product specification

Detailed description of a data set or data set series together with additional information that will enable it to be created, supplied to and used by another party

[ISO 19131]

Example product specs:

ISO 19152: 2012 - LADM

ISO 19160-1/6: 2009 - Addressing

From specification to application

Relevant:

ISO 19107

ISO 19108

ISO 19109

Data standards

Application schema

Defines the model

Data harmonization

Getting your data in the reference (standard) model
Data transformations might be necessary (ETL)

SDI and Geospatial Standards

OGC

36 core implementation standards

21 abstract specifications

ISO/TC 211

51 international standards and technical specifications

CEN/TC 287

adopted more than 40 ISO standards

(Figures 2015)

Standards for services

But also additional OGC standards

Service standards

Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

Remote procedure calls (RPC)

A Client sends a request message to a known remote server to execute a specified procedure with supplied parameters
The remote server sends a response to the client

OGC:

CSW - Catalogues

WMS, WMTS - Maps

WFS, WCS - Download

WPS – Processing

SOS, SPS - Sensors

Standards for metadata

ISO 19119 sets the metadata elements for services

Metadata standards

Relevant standards:

ISO 19115: 2003

ISO 19139: 2007 (encoding)

ISO 19115-1: 2014 (fundamentals)

ISO 19115-2: 2019 (extension)

ISO 19115-3: 2016 (XML)

Metadata elements:

Some are mandatory

Multiplicity

Some use code lists

Note 1:

Metadata standard is enforced by a tool:

Separate editor or within a GIS

Note 2:

Other metadata standards exist:

Dublin Core

DCAT, DCAT-AP and GeoDCAT-AP

Metadata standards

Where to find standards

ISO

https://www.iso.org/home.html

The online browing platform allows to previous some parts of the standard.

https://www.iso.org/obp/ui

OGC

https://www.opengeospatial.org/

under menu standards. Not only standards, also supporting documents etc.

W3C (not geospatial, but XML etc)

https://www.w3.org/standards/

Additional documentation

Standards guide by ISO/TC 211

https://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/raw-attachment/ticket/189/ISO%20TC%20211%20-%20Standards%20Guide.pdf

ISO online browsing platform

https://www.iso.org/obp/ui

ISO document on how to write standards (can be useful when reading them)

https://www.iso.org/files/live/sites/isoorg/files/archive/pdf/en/how-to-write-standards.pdf

OGC Guide to the role of Geospatial standards

https://www.opengeospatial.org/unggim

Reference list

Bartha, G., & Kocsis, S. (2011). Standardization of geographic data: The european inspire directive. European Journal of Geography, 2(2), 79-89.

Ma, X. (2017). Linked Geoscience Data in practice: Where W3C standards meet domain knowledge, data visualization and OGC standards. Earth Science Informatics, 10(4), 429–441. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-017-0304-8

Nativi, S. (2010). The implementation of international geospatial standards for earth and space sciences. International Journal of Digital Earth, 3(sup1), 2–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538941003764412