In order to facilitate the provision and exchange of information amongst Institutions within the Fisheries sector and beyond, FIGIS contributes to the development or promotion of Metadata standard protocols for the exchange of information based on XML standards. Various information domains are concerned including semi-structured information (FIMES), statistics (SDMX) and code lists (FLOD).

RTMS

The  Reference Tables Management System is the FIGIS operational system for the maintenance and dissemination of standard terms, concepts and classifications, many of which authored by the Coordinating Working Party on Fisheries Statistics (CWP) or Fishery Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS).

FIMES

To manage fisheries global information in a systematic and cost-effective way, a metadata level (a topic tree) has been built within the FIGIS framework for each relevant information domain, providing a standard semantic template for the discovery, query and display of Web page structured content. The Fisheries Metadata Element Set (FiMES) describes this meta level which is based on XML language.

FLOD

The Fisheries Linked Open Data (FLOD) stems from a rising trend initiative known as Linked Open Data. It is dedicated to create a dense network of relationships among the entities of the Fishery domains, and to programmatically serve them to semantic and traditional application environments.
It started with the objective to identify and interlink equivalent codes from different code lists in use by FIGIS, in order to consolidate the information referenced by each different code, and then expanded to include external data source such as NAFO, EU, and ICCAT.
Developed as one of the D4Science II project activities, currently the FLOD network includes entities and relationships from the the domains of Marine Species, Water Areas, Land Areas, Exclusive Economic Zones. It serves software applications in the domain of statistics, and GIS.
The FLOD content is exposed via either SPARQL endpoints (suitable for semantic applications), or via JAVA API to be embedded in consumers' application code. The future work for FLOD includes the definition of guidelines to connect external interlinked data sources, to advance the current status of existing information systems by developing semantic services in response to their requirements, and to integrate FLOD in a corporate linked data network under discussion in FAO.

SDMX

Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX) is an initiative to foster standards for the exchange of statistical information. The metadata of a dataset is in SDMX described in a Data Structure Definition (DSD). Code lists like the ASFIS species list or the FAO Major Area code lists are formalized in SDMX Code lists through the DSD and rely upon the RTMS. FIGIS has set up its SDMX Registry and Repository.

In this Registry you find as well the official SDMX code lists CL_PRODUCTION_AREA and the ASFIS species list CL_SPECIES. Both are used in the Catch DSD, developed together with Eurostat (the catch DSD is not yet published in the FIGIS SDMX Registry).

Spatial information, standards for the development: FIGIS actively contributes to the work of the UN Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG), a UN network where most of the useful layers for FIGIS are being developed according to agreed specifications and standards (spatial PAIA web-site).