Can I compare the two standards?

Although the FGDC and ISO 19115 content standards were developed at separate times and with different goals, the nature of geospatial metadata is such that certain terms or concepts used to describe the data are invariably used no matter what the content standard is.

As such, many metadata fields in the FGDC CSDGM may be considered to be similar or parallel to fields that have been identified for ISO 19115.

In anticipation of the full integration of ISO 19115 and to prepare metadata providers with an understanding of all the requirements of the standard, the FGDC has made available a “crosswalk”, or comparison, between the FGDC and ISO 19115 standards. The major differences between the two standards are as follows:

• ISO 19115 is an international consensus standard that has been ratified by the international geomatics community.
  
  
• The FGDC standard is an American standard that has been mandated for use by federal agencies in the US, but has also been adopted on an ad hoc basis by other geomatics communities.
  
  
• ISO 19115 supports multilingualism, as well as semantic interoperability through the extensive use of code lists and more stringent requirements for domain values.
  
  
• ISO 19115 supports hierarchical relationships and is better suited as an enterprise solution for metadata.

Click to view the crosswalk.

Click to view the FGDC/ISO harmonization activities.

What about services?

The CGDI is developing a recommended metadata profile to describe services. The ISO has developed a 19119 profile based on the IS0 19115 attribute set, which covers service metadata as well as data metadata.

Did you know? The Dublin Core (while not a CGDI-endorsed standard) is capable of interoperating with CGDI-endorsed metadata standards and acting as a discovery mechanism for geospatial resources. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is an open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. Dublin Core metadata is specifically intended to support general-purpose resource discovery. It consists of 16 metadata elements or fields, only one of which is a geographic element. Originally conceived for author-generated descriptions of web resources, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative now includes formal resource description communities such as museums, libraries, government agencies and commercial organizations. DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global workshops, conferences, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices.