A survey of regional environmental data sources based on an ISO 19115 profile

Abstract

The discovery of existing environmental data and the collection of the related metadata based on a consistent and standard method is a priority. Yet a common problem faced by public and private organisations involved in environmental impact assessment in Italy, is the lack of information about existing environmental data, particularly at local and regional level. A survey of environmental data sources for the territory of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region has been carried out for the local Regional Authority with the purpose of discovering data sources relevant to environmental impact assessment with priority for geographic and non-geographic datasets. The analysis of the most common metadata standards used to describe environmental data has shown that the ISO 19115 standard is suitable for the description of environmental information resources. Some aspects that could improve the applicability of the ISO norm in the environmental domain are presented. A profile for discovery metadata was developed to allow a standard description of data sources that is applicable to geographic and non-geographic datasets and was implemented in an ISO compliant meta-database.