Geographic metadata

Geographic data formats & protocols are driven by internationally-recognized standards from both the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Standardization Organization (ISO). Hence, the CWP recommends the production and exchange of geo-referenced datasets based on these standards.

The following formats are recommended by the CWP

• Geographic Markup Language (GML), as the official standard format for geographic datasets
• endorsed by both OGC and ISO (ISO 19136:2007)
• GeoJSON, as alternative OGC standard format for geographic datasets
• Any other standard OGC data format approved by the Open Geospatial Consortium
• CSV (including for the geographic part the SRS definition, OGC WKT geographic coordinates representation – Refer CWP Handbook of Fishery Statistics sections on spatial reference systems and geographic coordinates including the coding system used, if applicable)

Note on the use of ESRI shapefiles: although it is recognized that the ESRI shapefile proprietary format is a widely used format, CWP promotes and encourages CWP parties to avoid using such proprietary format for data exchange, due to its limitations (eg length of field names, encoding issues).

CWP promotes and encourages CWP parties to foster FAIR (Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable) data principles to their geo-referenced datasets by enabling (as far as possible) standard data protocols such as the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) international standard protocol for exchanging geo-referenced data.

CWP also acknowledges the importance of not dissociating data from its metadata information. Hence it is recommended that geographic datasets (referenced shape files or geo-referenced detailed datasets) produced and exchanged should be properly described with metadata.

Geographic metadata formats & protocols

Geo-referenced data should be accompanied by geographic metadata that comply with internationally-recognized standards from both the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Standardization Organization (ISO).

The following metadata formats are recommended by the CWP:

• Dublin Core (Minimum metadata standard)
• ISO 19115/19139 (Geographic Metadata standard), endorsed by the Open Geospatial Consortium and the European INSPIRE Directive as the official metadata standard for geographic datasets.
• Ecological Metadata Language (EML): for emphasis on species identification (taxonomic coverage), such as species encounters

CWP promotes and encourages CWP parties to foster FAIR data principles for their geo-referenced datasets by enabling (as far as possible), standard metadata protocols such as the OGC Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) international standard protocol for exchanging geographic metadata.

CWP is developing a centralized catalog for sharing information about data and spatially referenced resources.