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The national spatial data infrastructure In the united states: Standards, Metadata, Clearinghouse, and Data Access


Goal Two:
Develop common solutions for discovery, access, and use of geospatial data in response to the needs of diverse communities.

Objectives
  • Continue to develop a seamless National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse.
  • Support the evolution of common means to describe geospatial data sets.
  • Support the development of tools that allow for easy exchange of applications, information, and results.
  • Research, develop, and implement architectures and technologies that enable data sharing.
Goal Three
Use community-based approaches to develop and maintain common collections of geospatial data for sound decision-making.

Objectives
  • Continue to develop the National Geospatial Data Framework.
  • Provide additional geospatial data that citizens, governments, and industry need.
  • Promote common classification systems, content standards, data models, and other common models to facilitate data development, sharing, and use.
  • Provide mechanisms and incentives to incorporate multi-resolution data from many organizations into the NSDI.
Goal Four:
Build relationships among organizations to support the continuing development of the NSDI.

Objectives
  • Develop a process that allows stakeholder groups to define logical and complementary roles in support of the NSDI.
  • Build a network of organizations linked through commitment to common interests within the context of the NSDI.
  • Remove regulatory and administrative barriers to agreement formation.
  • Find new resources for data production, integration, and maintenance.
  • Identify and support the personal, institutional, and economic behaviors; technologies; policies and legal frameworks that promote the development of the NSDI.
  • Participate with the international geospatial data information community in the development of a global geospatial data infrastructure.
The major successes of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure to promote data sharing have been an active standards program, standardised documentation of spatial data, and development of the National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse. The major part of this paper will cover these topics, which are interrelated, and Federal data access policy in the United States.

Standards
The Federal Geographic Data Committee initiated a program to develop data standards to promote sharing of data among Federal agencies and other segments of the geospatial data community in the United States [4]. The FGDC standards process is modeled after the standards processes used by ISO and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). It has five major stages
  • Proposal stage
  • Project stage
  • Draft stage
  • Review stage
  • Endorsement stage
Since 1995, sixteen data standards have completed all stages of the FGDC standards process and have been endorsed by the FGDC. The first standard endorsed by the FGDC was the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata for documenting spatial data. This standard will be discussed more at length in the next section of this paper. Other standards endorsed include the Spatial Data Transfer Standard and its profiles and data content and classification standards for spatial data themes such as soils, wetlands, and vegetation, and for utilities.

OMB Circular A-119 calls for Federal agencies to use voluntary consensus standards in lieu of government-specific activities [5]. In this context, “consensus” is characterized by general agreement, but not necessarily unanimity. These standards are developed and endorsed through an open process that provides due process for criticism and redress. Standards developed through ISO and ANSI-accredited standards development organisations meet these criteria. The FGDC and individual Federal agencies support voluntary consensus activities as members of the ANSI-accredited National Committee for Information Technology Standards Technical Committee L1 on Geographic Information Systems. Many FGDC members are also nominated U.S. technical experts to ISO Technical Committee 211, Geographic information/Geomatics [6], which is developing standards on topics such as spatial referencing, quality evaluation and reporting, metadata, and imagery and gridded data.

Metadata
EO 12906 called for Federal agencies to document all new data by January 1995 and to develop a schedule for documenting previously acquired spatial data by April 1995. This documentation is referred to as Metadata [7], or “data about data.” Metadata may be used to
  • Organise and maintain an organization’s investment in data
  • Provide information to data catalogues and clearinghouses
  • Provide information to aid data transfer.
Metadata is documented using the aforementioned FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata. It has undergone revision since its endorsement by the FGDC in 1995, and the FGDC endorsed Version 2.0 in 1998. Version 2.0 provides guidelines to geospatial data communities to restrict domains and conditionalities of existing Metadata elements and to develop new Metadata elements for their communities’ needs for documentation. Theme-specific metadata that builds on the FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata, Version 2.0, are referred to as profiles.

Various communities are using the FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata, Version 2.0 as the basis for developing theme-specific profiles. In 1999, the FGDC endorsed the Biological Data Profile of the Metadata standard, which contains additional metadata elements for taxonomic classifications and for documentation of laboratory studies. The Shoreline Data Profile is pending endorsement, while Metadata Extensions for Remote Sensing Swath Data is pending public review.

The FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata was the basis for developing ISO 19115, Geographic information/Geomatics – Metadata, which has been recently submitted for registration as a Draft International Standard. The FGDC is implementing a strategy to convert existing Metadata formatted according to the FGDC standard to Metadata that complies with ISO 19115, when ISO 19115 is adopted as an International Standard (currently projected for July 2001).

Metadata is divided into ten sections. Seven sections (see Figure 1) document different aspects about the data set. Only two sections – Section 1, Identification Information, and Section 7, Metadata Reference Information – are absolutely mandatory for data documentation. However, it behooves data producers to document their spatial data sets as completely as possible to maintain the value of their spatial data assets. Section 6, Distribution information, may provide a URL to spatial data set itself, if it is available via the Internet.


FGDC Metadata Structure

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