World Spatial Metadata Standards : Pergamon : 9780080439495 : 0080439497 : 08 Nov 2005 : This book represents years of work by the ICA Spatial Data Standards Commission during the 1995-2003 ICA cycles. It consists of an Introduction and six Regional Summary chapters that describe the spatial metadata activities happening in Europe, North America, Asia/Pacific, Latin America, Africa/Middle East, and the ISO community. These chapters provide the broader context and description of the milieu in which these standards operate, so that the reader can more easily understand the scientific and technical framework from whence a particular standard has emerged. The third section is a complete listing of all of the three levels of scientific and technical characteristics, and their meaning by the inclusion of a set of definitions for metadata terms used in the book. The fourth section, and by far the largest, contains 22 chapters that assess each of the major national and international spatial m