Geographic Information Metadata for Spatial Data Infrastructures: Resources, Interoperability and Information Retrieval

ISBN-13: 9783540244646 / Angielski / Twarda / 2005 / 263 str.

Javier Nogueras-ISO; F. Javier Zarazaga-Soria; Pedro R. Muro-Medrano

Opis

Geographic information (or geo-spatial data) is information which describes phenomena associated directly or indirectly with a location in respect to the Earth surface. Today, there are large amounts of geographic data availalbe which have been gathered (for decades) with different purposes by different institutions and companies. For instance, geographic information is vital for decision-making and resource management in diverse areas (natural resources, facilities, catastrophes, economy...), and at different levels (local, regional, national or even global).Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) provide the framework for the optimization of the creation, maintenance and distribution of geographic information inside each public administration and across different ones. Given the increasing importance of geographic information, governments start considering SDIs as basic infrastructures for the development of a country. SDIs are becoming as relevant as classical infrastructures such as utilities (water, electricity, gas), transport or telecommunication infrastructures. SDIs are a multidisciplinary domain which combine the background and knowledge from very different disciplines. for the distribution of digital resources, and SDIs should benefit from this experience.Metadata play a fundamental role in both DLs and SDIs. Commonly defined as structured data about data or data which describes attributes of a resource or, more simply, information about data, it is an essential requirement for locating and evaluating available data. Therefore, this book focuses on the study of different metadata aspects, which contribute to a more efficient use of DLs and SDIs. The three main issues addressed are: the management of nested collections of resources, the interoperability between metadata schemas, and the integration of information retrieval techniques to the discovery services of geographic data catalogs (contributing in this way to avoid metadata content heterogeneity).

Recenzje

From the reviews:

"The book focuses on technologies and methodologies that can provide better utilization of metadata within spatial data infrastructures. ... The concepts exposed, in addition to the examples and a thorough corpus of additional bibliographic references, will bring readers to a better understanding of the design and management of future geospatial data infrastructures. This is an excellent book, which I recommend reading." (Alessandro Berni, ACM Computing Reviews, Vol. 49 (5), 2008)

Spis treści

Spatial Data Infrastructures and related concepts.- A metadata infrastructure for the management of nested collections.- Interoperability between metadata standards.- The use of disambiguated thesauri to improve information retrieval.- Integrating the concepts within the components of a Spatial Data Infrastructure.- Conclusions and future work.