United States and Canada collaborate to publish regional profile of ISO 19115

Washington, DC, — July 20, 2009 — The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) and its Subgroup on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are proud to announce the publication of INCITS 453-2009, the North American Profile (NAP) of ISO 19115: 2003, Geographic Information – Metadata.

Through effort for collaboration, U.S. and Canadian scientific volunteers from the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards Technical Committee L1 (INCITS/L1) and the Canadian General Standards Board Committee on Geomatics (CGSB-COG) developed the geographic metadata content needed to tailor the International Standard ISO 19115 to meet the requirements of both countries.

Co-located working meetings were held in Canada and the U.S. over a three-year period, punctuated by public reviews of various versions of the Profile by the geospatial metadata community. This process was based on the usual approach taken for the development of other international metadata standards.

ISO 19115 is an International Standard that enables its users to locate, access, evaluate, deliver, and integrate geographic and geospatial datasets through the consistent use of metadata entities. The NAP is intended to consistently and effectively catalogue traditional geographic datasets and dataset series for both the United States and Canada, as well as services, clearinghouses, features within datasets, and even the attributes of features, if desired.

As an ANSI-accredited standards developer, INCITS develops voluntary consensus standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in a manner that is open and balanced. INCITS also serves as the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to ISO/IEC JTC 1 and ISO Technical Committee (TC) 211, Geographic information/Geomatics INCITS assigns its TAG responsibilities to its Technical Committees: subgroup L1, focuses on Geographic Information Systems and is delegated TAG responsibility for the ISO TC 211 area of work, the international committee responsible for the ISO 19115 standard.

The CGSB is a federal government organization accredited by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) that offers client-centered, comprehensive standards development and conformity assessment services in support of the economic, regulatory, procurement, health, safety, and environmental interests of Canadian stakeholders — government, industry and consumers. The CGSB-COG is the technical committee responsible for the development and maintenance of unique National Standards in the area of geomatics, and is the SCC designated delegate to ISO TC 211.

Links

• ANSI eStandards Store ( webstore.ansi.org) for purchase of NAP-Metadata.

Contact:

Lynn Barra
INCITS/Information Technology Industry Council
1101 K Street NW Suite 610
Washington DC 20005
Tel.:202-626-5739
E-mail: Email Contact
Web: www.INCITS.org