No Clocks Vault

List - GIS Open Standards

8 min read

List - GIS Open Standards

Overview

Curated collection of tools and resources for GIS Open Standards.

GIS standards are recommended practices to facilitate developing, sharing, and using GIS data, GIS software, and GIS services.  When you look for GIS standards, you actually mean geospatial standards, where GIS is a part of. Geospatial standards concern the use of any geographic information.

Normally any standard is a technical document intended for use as a rule, guideline or definition for common and repeated use. They might include requirements and recommendations for products, systems, processes or services. They possibly describe measurements, test methods or establish common terminologies. A GIS standard is a technical document designed to use for operating with geospatial data.

Data Format Standards

GIS software and GIS services should have the ability to read and write various established data formats. GIS applications should use data format standards to store geospatial data in a common format. You should be able to transfer data from system to system via extract. You may need to transform and load tools for data validation, migration and distribution.

Metadata Standards

Metadata are data that provides information about other data. Metadata offer a simple way to understand geospatial data. Metadata standards give a structure for creating and organizing metadata such as consistent terminology for catalogs and global search.

Common geographic metadata standards are:

  • ISO 19115: It is a metadata standard whitch defines how to describe geographical information and associated services, including contents, spatial-temporal purchases, data quality, access and rights to use. It is preserved by the ISO/TC 211 committee.
  • CSDGM (Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata) defined by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). It is a widely-used, but no longer current standard specifying the information content for a set of digital geospatial data. In September 2010 the FGDC endorsed ISO 19115 and began to confirm federal agencies to transition to ISO metadata.

GIS Service Standards

Standards for GIS services are used to transfer (spatial) data smoothly via the web or provide remote access to (spatial) data stored on a web server. They enable users to interact with data, generally through simple web clients, on a live and real-time basis. This contains viewing maps, accessing and querying data, running analyses, and downloading (spatial) data.

OGC Standards

OGC APIs

Standards the build upon the legacy OGC Web Service Standards but define resource-centric APIs that take advantage of modern web development practices.

Services

Standards that implement XML Remote Procedure Calls using the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Data Models and Encodings - General

Standards that provide general rules to organize geospatial information, typically sent by a service provider or produced by an application.

Data Models and Encodings — Domain Specific

Standards that provide domain specific rules to organize geospatial information.

Publish-Subscribe, Syndication & Context

Standards for subscription management and other syndication purposes.

Sensors

Standards to accessing sensors that are connected to the Web or the Internet of Things (IoT).

Discovery

Standards for searching and finding geospatial resources.

Containers

Standards that specify rules for storing and retrieving geospatial information efficiently.

Abstract Specification

A reference model used in the development of OGC Standards.

International Standards Organization (ISO) Standards

ISO geospatial metadata standards have been developed as a suite of standards. The base Fundamental standard (ISO 19115-1) is the core of the suite. Fundamentals includes information common to most geospatial data resource types.

 Additional standards have been developed to:

  1. extend the Fundamental standard by adding content that must be used in conjunction with the Fundamental standard
  2. document related information that can be stand alone or associated with a Fundamental metadata record
  3. encode and validate a standardize XML metadata record

The suite approach enables metadata creators to select and apply only those standards relevant to their organization and data types. The suite also enables the one time documentation of information, e.g. Data Acquisition and Processing, Feature Catalogs, Data Quality Methods and Measures, etc., that may be applied to multiple geospatial resources and their associated metadata records.

Content (UML) and Encoding (XSD) Standards

ISO standards generally reference both a content standard and an XML encoding standard. Content standards use UML conceptual diagrams to illustrate the relations among metadata elements and a data dictionary to define the element conditionality, data type, and domains. Encoding standards specify the XML format and rules used to create and validate the output metadata records. The table below provides detailed information about the ISO geospatial standards publications and associations between content and encoding standards.

Note: ISO is currently shifting practices to develop encoding standards, when feasible, as an ‘Annex’ of the associated content standard.

Standards Publications & Details

Content and Description Standards (UML)

NameCodeYearNotes
Geographic Information – Metadata191152003- Replaced by 19115-1
- XML encoding specified by 19139
Geographic Information – Metadata – Part 1: Fundamentals19115-12015- Replaces 19115
- XML encoding specified by 19115-3 (in work)
Geographic Information – Metadata – Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data19115-22009- XML encoding specified by 19139-2
- Revision, ISO 19115-2 REV, in work (~11/2017)
- proposed rename to Extensions for Acquisition and Processing
Geographic Information – Methodology for Feature Cataloging19110/Amd.12011- XML encoding included as Annex E
- Revision in work (~9/2016)
Geographic Information – ServicesISO 191192016- Metadata model included in19115-1
- Encoding specified by OpenGIS® Catalogue Services Specification 2.0.2 - ISO Metadata Application Profile
Geographic Information – Data Quality191572013- Replaces ISO 19113, 19114, and 19138
- XML encoding specified by ISO 19157-2 (in work)
Geographic Information – Spatial Referencing By CoordinatesISO 191112007- XML encoding specified by ISO 19136

XML Metadata Record Implementation Schema Standards (XSD)

NameCodeYearNotes
Geographic information — Metadata — XML schema implementation191392007- XML record format and validation specification for 19115
Geographic information — Metadata — Part 3: XML schema implementation of metadata fundamentals19115-3in work
(~2016)		- XML record format and validation specification for 19115-1 Fundamentals
Geographic information — Metadata — XML schema implementation — Part 2: Extensions for imagery and gridded data19139-22012- XML record format and validation specification for 19115-2 Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data
Geographic information — Geography Markup Language (GML)191362007- XML record format and validation and validation (XSD) specification for 19111 Spatial Referencing By Coordinates
Geographic information — Data quality — Part 2: XML Schema Implementation19157-2in work
(~5/2016)		- Record format and validation and validation (XSD) specified by ISO 19157-2 (pending)
OpenGIS® Catalogue Services Specification 2.0.2 - ISO Metadata Application ProfileOGC 07-0452007- XML record format and validation and validation (XSD) specification for 19119 Services
- To be replaced by 19115-3 (in work)

Mapbox

Spatial Temporal Asset Catalogs

User Interface

OSGeo

Appendix

Created: 2025-12-23 | Modified: 2025-12-23

See Also

(c) No Clocks, LLC | 2025

Graph View

Backlinks