Metadata in Geographic and Environmental Data Management

Metadata is used increasingly in geographic and environmental information systems to improve both the availability and the quality of the information delivered. The growing popularity of Internet-based data servers has accelerated this trend even further. In this chapter we give an overview of metadata schemes and implementations that are common in this domain. Case studies include the Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata of the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), and the Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS) of the European Environmental Agency. Another activity that we will discuss in somewhat greater detail concerns the UDK project, an international software engineering eeort to facilitate access to environmental data. The UDK (Environmental Data Catalogue) is a public meta information system and navigation tool that helps users to identify and retrieve environmental data from the government and other sources. In 1995, rst versions of the UDK were made available in Austria and Germany; several other European countries are currently evaluating the system. We will present the UDK data model, its implementation as a distributed information system, and its integration into the World Wide Web.