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United States and Canada collaborate on the North American Profile of International Standard on Geographic Information Metadata (INCITS 453-2009)

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.

For more information, contact:


Lynn Barra
INCITS/Information Technology Industry Council
1101 K Street NW Suite 610
Washington DC 20005
T: 202-626-5739
E: lbarra@itic.org
W: www.INCITS.org