Definition
ISO 19115 "Geographic Information - Metadata" from ISO/TC 211, the current "best practice" standard for geospatial metadata, does not in fact provide a definition of geospatial (or geographic) metadata; however, uses the following wording in its "scope" section:
"This International Standard provides information about the identification, the extent, the quality, the spatial and temporal schema, spatial reference, and distribution of digital geographic data."
A little further, it is stated: "Though this International Standard is applicable to digital data, its principles can be extended to many other forms of geographic data such as maps, charts, and textual documents as well as non-geographic data."
The U.S. FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) describes (geospatial) metadata as follows:
"A metadata record is a file of information, usually presented as an XML document, which captures the basic characteristics of a data or information resource. It represents the who, what, when, where, why and how of the resource. Geospatial metadata are used to document geographic digital resources such as Geographic Information System (GIS) files, geospatial databases, and earth imagery. A geospatial metadata record includes core library catalog elements such as Title, Abstract, and Publication Data; geographic elements such as Geographic Extent and Projection Information; and database elements such as Attribute Label Definitions and Attribute Domain Values."
Read more about this topic: Geospatial Metadata
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The physicians say, they are not materialists; but they are:MSpirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!—But the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence. What notions do they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One definition of man is “an intelligence served by organs.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)