Abstract
Metadata descriptions are typically monolithic data structures and their denormalized, text-based nature yields shortcomings such as inconsistencies and heterogeneities. Moreover, fluidity of research environments, coupled with single-tenancy of metadata descriptions, impedes enforcing authority on the related datasets effectively. We propose a novel paradigm for metadata articulation, delegation, that helps solve the aforementioned issues. After elaborating on the requirements to this practice, we present two worked-out implementation examples in the domain of geospatial metadata and discuss its advantages with respect to key issues in this domain; namely, metadata consistency, interoperability, and mitigating semantic heterogeneity. The technique and the supporting software we present are equally applicable to any XML-based metadata schema and application domain.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Code availability
The software for reproducing the examples in Section “Implementation” is available on Sourceforge and GitHub.
Notes
Open Geospatial Consortium - Catalogue Service: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/cat
It should be noted that our methodology generalizes this approach to all metadata fields of any XML metadata schema.
Note that version 2.0 of the SensorML standard addresses this issue via the sensor type construct, where the sensor model is described in a separate document.
Iniatives, such as INSPIRE, represent institutional attempts at formalizing such diversity.
The Linked Open Data cloud: https://lod-cloud.net/
Federal Geographic Data Committee - Geospatial Metadata Tools: https://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/geospatial-metadata-tools
NASA ECHO Metadata Standard: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/standards/echo-metadata-standard
Directory Interchange Format (DIF): http://gcmd.nasa.gov/add/standards/
GeoServer: http://geoserver.org/
GeoNode: http://geonode.org/
The NetCDF Markup Language (NcML): http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/thredds/current/netcdf-java/ncml/
Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE): http://www.openarchives.org/ore/1.0/datamodel
CKAN - The open source data portal software: http://ckan.org/
SAXON XSLT and XQuery processor: http://saxon.sourceforge.net/
Minimization of attribute itemscope suggests that Microdata never had XML in its application scope. Moreover, the data models provided by schema.org provide serializations also in the RDFa and JSON-LD formats, suggesting that the repository already moved to a finer semantics.
INSPIRE theme register: https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/theme
EDI-NG client: https://github.com/SP7-Ritmare/EDI-NG_client
EDI-NG server: https://github.com/SP7-Ritmare/EDI-NG_server
Currently, the software is bundled with templates for a variety of metadata formats that can be further customized
Liftboy-python: https://github.com/IREA-CNR-MI/liftboy-python
The JSON format: https://www.json.org
JSON Schema: http://json-schema.org/
JSON Extended Structural Schemas: http://github.com/pkoppstein/JESS
Geoinformation Enabling ToolkIT (GET-IT): http://get-it.it/
References
Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (2007) ANZLIC Metadata Profile. http://www.anzlic.gov.au/resources/metadata
Berners-Lee T, Fielding R, Masinter L (1998) Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic syntax. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
Berners-Lee T, Fischetti M (1999) Weaving the web the original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor, 1st edn. Harper, San Francisco
Bizer C, Heath T, Berners-Lee T (2009) Linked Data - the story so far. International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems 5(3):1–22. https://doi.org/10.4018/jswis.2009081901
Botts M, Alexandre R (2007) OpenGIS sensor model language (SensorML) implementation specification. Technical report. [online] https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=55939
Capadisli S, Guy A, Verborgh R, Lange C, Auer S, Berners-Lee T (2017) Decentralised authoring, annotations and notifications for a read-write web with dokieli. Technical report. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60131-1_33
Chamberlin D, Florescu D, Robie J, Simeon J, Stefanescu M (2001) XQuery: A Query language for XML. Working draft, World Wide Web consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/
Compton M, Barnaghi P, Bermudez L, García-Castro R, Corcho O, Cox S, Graybeal J, Hauswirth M, Henson C, Herzog A, Huang V, Janowicz K, David Kelsey W, Phuoc DL, Lefort L, Leggieri M, Neuhaus H, Nikolov A, Page K, Passant A, Sheth A, Taylor K (2012) The SSN ontology of the W3C semantic sensor network incubator group. Web Semantics Science Services and Agents on the World Wide Web 17:25–32
Cox SJD, Simons B, Car N (2015) Some problems with standard geospatial metadata. In: Proceedings of the 8th Locate conference. https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=csiro:EP149934&dsid=DS2
DeRose SJ, Maler E, Orchard D, Walsh N (2010) XML linking language (XLink) Version 1.1. Technical report, 3. http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/REC-xlink11-20100506/
European Commission (2008) Commission Regulation (EC) No 1205/2008 of 3 December 2008 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards metadata. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/{EN}/{ALL}/?uri={CELEX}:32008r1205
European Commission (2008) Corrigendum to commission regulation (EC) No 1205/2008 of 3 December 2008 implementing directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the council as regards metadata (OJ L 326, 4.12.2008). http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32007L0002
European Commission (2007) Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the European community (INSPIRE). http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32007L0002
European Commission (2016) Technical guidance for the implementation of INSPIRE dataset and service metadata based on ISO/TS 19139:2007. http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/id/document/tg/metadata-iso19139
European Commission (2013) DCAT application profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP). https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/distribution/access_url/2020-06/e4823478-4458-4546-9a85-3609867ad089/DCAT_AP_2.0.1.pdf
European Commission (2015) GeoDCAT-AP: A geospatial extension for the DCAT application profile for data portals in Europe.https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/148281
Federal Geographic Data Committee (2007) North American profile of ISO 19115:2003, geographic information - Metadata. http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/projects/incits-l1-standards-projects/NAP-Metadata
Fugazza C, Pepe M, Oggioni A, Tagliolato P, Carrara P (2018) Raising semantics-awareness in geospatial metadata management. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 7(9). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi6110354. http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/7/9/370
Fugazza C, Pepe M, Oggioni A, Tagliolato P, Pavesi F, Carrara P (2016) Describing geospatial assets in the Web of Data: A metadata management scenario. ISPRS International Journal Geo-Information 5(12):229. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi5120229. https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/5/12/229
Fugazza C, Tagliolato P, Frigerio L, Carrara P (2017) Web-scale normalization of geospatial metadata based on semantics-aware data sources. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(11). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi6110354. http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/6/11/354
Goodchild MF, Fu P, Rich P (2007) Sharing geographic information: An assessment of the geospatial one-stop. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97(2):250–266. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2007.00534.x
Hartig O (2013) An overview on execution strategies for linked data queries. Datenbank-Spektrum 13:89–99. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13222-013-0122-1
ISO (2005) ISO 19119:2005 Geographic information – Services. Standard, International Organization for Standardization (TC 211). http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39890
ISO (2007) ISO 191136:2007 Geographic information – Geography Markup Language (GML). Standard, International Organization for Standardization (TC 211). http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=32554
ISO (2014) ISO 19115-1:2014 Geographic information – Metadata - part 1: Fundamentals. Standard, International Organization for Standardization (TC 211). http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=53798
Lassila O, Swick RR (1998) World Wide Web Consortium. Resource Description Framework (RDF) model and syntax specification. https://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/https://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/
Lo CP, Yeung AKW (2006) Concepts and Techniques of geographic information systems (2nd edn) (ph series in geographic information science). Prentice-Hall, inc Upper Saddle River NJ, USA
Moellering H, Aalders HJ, Crane A (2005) World Spatial Metadata Standards; Elsevier
Myung-Ja H (2012) Metadata with levels of description: New challenges to catalogers and metadata librarians. In: 78th IFLA general conference and assembly. https://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2012/80-han-en.pdf
Nogueras-Iso J, Muro-Medrano PR, Zarazaga-Soria FJ (2005) Geographic information metadata for Spatial Data Infrastructures: resources, interoperability and Information Retrieval. Springer, New York
Otto B, Cirullies J, Auer S, Wenzel S (2016) Industrial data space: Digital Souvereignity over data. Technical report. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.2673.0649
Pavesi F, Basoni A, Fugazza C, Menegon S, Oggioni A, Pepe M, Tagliolato P, Carrara P (2016) EDI – A Template-Driven Metadata Editor for Research Data. JORS Journal of Open Research Software 4(1):e40. https://doi.org/10.5334/jors.106/
Reed C, Botts M, Davidson J (2007) OGC®;; Sensor Web Enablement: overview and high level architecture. In: 2007 IEEE Autotestcon, pp 372–380
Santoro M, Mazzetti P, Nativi S, Fugazza C, Granell C, Díaz L (2012) Methodologies for augmented discovery of geospatial resources. In: Díaz L, Granell C, Huerta J (eds) Discovery of geospatial resources: methodologies, technologies, and emergent applications, chapter 9. IGI Global, pp 172–203. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-2038-4.ch020. http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/methodologies-augmented-discovery-geospatial-resources/70448
Shade S, Cox SJD (2010) Linked Data in SDI or How GML Is Not about Trees. In: Proceedings of the 13th AGILE Conference. http://agile.dsi.uminho.pt/pen/ShortPapers_PDF/73_DOC.pdf
Shekhar S, Xiong H, Zhou X (eds) (2017) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, New York
Simonis I., Malewski C. (2011) FL starfish fungus language for sensor description. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2012.739663https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2012.739663
Sorribas J (2014) Sensorml profiles and O&M data models adapted to specific marine observations data. Project deliverable, Sea Data Net II Pan-European infrastructure for ocean and marine data management - FP7 283607. https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00394/50509/51246.pdf
SPARQL Working Group (2013) SPARQL 1.1 Query Language. W3C Recommendation 21 March 2013, World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/
United States (2008) Essential metadata elements [electronic resource]: content standard for digital geospatial metadata (CSDGM). Federal Geographic Data Committee Reston, Va. https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn4403274
Tagliolato P, Fugazza C, Oggioni A, Carrara PD (2019) Semantic profiles for easing SensorML description: Review and proposal. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 8(8). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi8080340. https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/8/8/340
World Wide Web Consortium (2020) Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT). https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat/
XSL Working Group and the XML Linking Working Group (1999) XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0. W3C Recommendation 16 November 1999 (Status updated October 2016), World Wide Web Consortium. https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Cristiano Fugazza drafted the paper. The rest of the authors revised it.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interests
There are no conflicts of interest.
Additional information
Communicated by: H. Babaie
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fugazza, C., Tagliolato Acquaviva d’Aragona, P., Oggioni, A. et al. Decentralized geospatial metadata management. Earth Sci Inform 14, 1579–1596 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-020-00559-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-020-00559-1