Interoperability, Standards, and Metadata

David M. Danko, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.

5/02/2008
(Original Publish Date: 10/13/2006)

Interoperability has helped humans advance to our position in the world today. Interoperability becomes more complex and important as the world becomes more integrated. There are many types of interoperability two important types are technical and semantic. The need for interoperability for GIS increases as GIS moves into mainstream information technology (IT) applications and with the increased use of web services’ loosely couple networks. There are many factors that are required to make interoperability happen; two major factors are standards and metadata. Standards, criteria which document agreement between a provider and a consumer, enable both technical and semantic interoperability. ISO TC 211 and OGC are developing standards and specifications in the field of geographic information. Metadata has always played an important role in cartography; for centuries it has provided users with an understanding of maps. Metadata is equally important as we have moved into the digital environment. Because digital data is an imperfect representation of the real world, and with the proliferation of data from an ever-widening array of sources and producers, we need knowledge provided by metadata to understand, control and manage geographic information. Metadata adhering to the international standards will allow global networks to operate, provide a common global understanding of geographic data, and promote global interoperability.