1. ISO TC 211 Standard Development Activities Related to Earth Observations
A Liaison Report
from ISO TC211 to CEOS WGISS
Dr. Liping Di
ISO/TC 211 representative to CEOS WGISS
Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems (CSISS)
George Mason University

2. Contents ISO TC 211 organization;
ISO TC 211 Metadata standards and projects
ISO TC 211 Imagery and gridded data standards and projects.

3. ISO TC 211
ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization.
ISO Technical Committee 211 (TC 211) is responsible for setting international standards on geographic information/ geometics.
ISO TC 211 has set up liaison relationship with many related external organizations, including CEOS WGISS

4. Scope of ISO TC 211
Standardization in the field of digital geographic information.
TC 211 aims to establish a structured set of standards for information concerning objects or phenomena that are directly or indirectly associated with a location relative to the Earth.
These standards may specify, for geographic information, methods, tools and services for data management (including definition and description), acquiring, processing, analyzing, accessing, presenting and transferring such data in digital/electronic form between different users, systems and locations.
The work of TC 211 shall link to appropriate standards for information technology and data where possible, and provide a framework for the development of sector-specific applications using geographic data.

5. ISO TC 211 Organization TC 211 consists of Chairman and secretariat
Chairman: Olaf Østensen Statens kartverk Norwegian Mapping Authority
Secretariat:Bjørnhild Sæterøy Norsk Teknologisenter Norwegian Technology Centre (NTS)
36 Participating member countries(P-members)
30 Observing member contries (O-members)
17 Internal and 31 external liaisons
6 Working groups
2 Advisory groups
5 maintenance groups
Control body for the ISO geodetic registry network
ISO/TC 211 – OGC co-ordination group (TOCG)
ISO/TC 204 – TC 211 task force
ISO/TC ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 24 task force
Ad hoc group on GIS-BIM (Building Information Modeling)

6. Current Working Groups in ISO TC 211
Working group 1 Framework and reference model
Working group 4 Geospatial services
Working group 6 Imagery
Working group 7 Information communities
Working group 9 Information management
Working group 10 Ubiquitous public access

7. ISO Metadata Standards (1)
ISO 19115:2003- geographic information-metadata
Published in 2003
The base standard for geospatial metadata
Developed from FGDC metadata standard
ISO : Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for imagery and gridded data
Published in 2009
Provided Additional metadata element and structure for remote sensing imagery and derived grid products
Based on FGDC remote sensing metadata standard

8. ISO Metadata Standards (2)
ISO :2014 – Geographic Information-Metadata-Part 1: Fundamentals
Published in 2014
A revision of ISO 19115:2003, much improvement over 2003 version in many areas, especially in the description of contents in multi-dimensional data
Data quality part has been moved to ISO 19157
A replacement of ISO 19115:2003
No direct back compatibility with ISO 19115:2003 but can be mapped from ISO 19115:2003 to ISO :2014

9. ISO metadata standards (3)
ISO 19157:2013 – Geographic Information – Data Quality
Combined all data quality related metadata standards in ISO TC 211
ISO quality principles
ISO –quality evaluation procedures
ISO –data quality measures
The quality description part of ISO 19115
The content includes
defines components for describing data quality;
specifies components and content structure of a register for data quality measures;
describes general procedures for evaluating the quality of geographic data;
establishes principles for reporting data quality.

10. XML Schema Standards for ISO Metadata
ISO/TS 19139:2007
XML schema for ISO 19115:2003
ISO/TS :2012
XML schema for ISO :2009

11. On-going and near future work on metadata
ISO/TS (on going)
XML schema for ISO 19115:2014
ISO/TS (near future project)
XML schema for ISO 19157:2013
To be started in this year
Revision of ISO (near future project)
To be started in next year
CEOS WGISS can play a significant role on the revision.

12. Remote Sensing Imagery Standards
Published standards/specifications
ISO :2008 Geographic information - Reference model - Part 2: Imagery
ISO/TS 19129:2009 Geographic information - Imagery, gridded and coverage data framework
ISO/TS 19130:2010 Geographic information - Imagery sensor models for geopositioning
ISO/TS :2014 Geographic information -- Imagery sensor models for geopositioning -- Part 2: SAR, InSAR, Lidar and sonar

13. On-going and near future imagery standard projects
ISO Geographic information - Calibration and validation of remote sensing imagery sensors - Part 1: Optical sensors
To be published as TS in 2014
ISO Geographic information - Calibration and validation of remote sensing imagery sensors -- Part 2: Lidar
Project started in November 2013
ISO Geographic information - Content components and encoding rules for imagery and gridded data
Near Future
Remote Sensing Data Archiving Standard

14. ISO 19163 - Content components and encoding rules for imagery and gridded data
Define a data content model for each kind of remote sensing data
Define the rules for encoding the contents into a data file
Provide example of encoding the contents into commonly used formats
NetCDF
GeoTIFF
HDF
HDF-EOS
GMLCov
JPG2000

15. Invitation CEOS members are important users of ISO standards
The Inputs from CEOS are very important to ISO TC 211 standard development.
CEOS members can submit comments and inputs to the ISO standard project through
the CEOS WGISS liaisons to ISO TC 211 (Dr. Wyn Cudlip, Mr. Lorant Czaran), or
Its national body to ISO TC 211
CEOS WGISS can propose and lead an ISO TC 211 standard project.