Technical Committee 211 of the International Standards Organization (ISO) has defined a series of standards for geographic metadata and services. Many of these standards are closely related to and compatible with OGC Standards. These standards are currently being adopted across the NASA Earth Science community and by many partners in the U.S. and around the world.

ISO 19115 is the primary metadata standard in the ISO TC211 Collection. The objective of ISO 19115 is to provide a structure for describing digital geographic data. It defines metadata elements, provides a schema (ISO 19139) and establishes a common set of metadata terminology, definitions, and extension procedures. It provides information about the identification, the extent, the quality, the spatial and temporal schema, spatial reference, and distribution of digital geographic data.

ISO 19115 defines:

Metadata information (MD_Metadata)

The MD_Metadata package defines the schema for describing the complete metadata about a resource (DS_Resource) and metadata about the metadata itself.

Identification information (MD_Identification)

Identification information supports the provision of information to uniquely identify a resource. MD_Identification can be specified as MD_DataIdentification or SV_ServiceIdentification and is an aggregate of eight classes of metadata which aid in resource identification.

Constraint information (MD_Constraints)

This package supports the provision of metadata concerning the legal and security constraints placed on resources. It consists of MD_Constraints which can be specified as MD_LegalConstraints and/or MD_SecurityConstraints.

Data Quality (DQ_DataQuality)

For more detailed information, see the page on ISO 19157.

Lineage information (LI_Lineage)

This package supports the provision of metadata concerning the sources and production processes used in producing a resource. The DQ_DataQuality class is defined in ISO 19157. LI_Lineage is defined in 19157 while LE_Lineage is defined in 19115-2.

Maintenance information (MD_MaintenanceInformation)  

This package supports the provision of metadata related to the scope and frequency of maintenance for a resource.

Spatial representation information (MD_SpatialRepresentation)

This package supports the provision of metadata identifying the spatial primitives used by a resource; the mechanisms used to model real world phenomena in a digital information system. It consists of the MD_SpatialRepresentation which can be specified as either MD_VectorSpatialRepresentation or MD_GridSpatialRepresentation which can be further specified as MD_Georectified or MD_Georeferencable.

Reference system information (MD_ReferenceSystem)

This package supports the metadata identifying the spatial and temporal reference system(s) used by a resource.

Content information (MD_ContentInformation)

This package supports the provision of metadata identifying the content of a resource by: citing the feature catalog used to define the content (MD_FeatureCatalogueDescription); incorporating the feature catalogue (MD_FeatureCatalogue – defined in ISO 19110); or describing the content of a coverage resource (MD_CoverageDescription) which also may be specified as MD_ImageDescription.

Portrayal catalogue information (MD_PortrayalCatalogueReference)

The portrayal catalogue describes how the resource can be rendered for human visualisation.

Distribution information (MD_Distribution)

This package supports the provision of metadata about the distributor of, and options for obtaining, a resource.

Metadata extension information (MD_MetadataExtensionInformation)

This package supports the provision of information about user specified metadata extensions.

Application schema information (MD_ApplicationSchemaInformation)

This package supports the provision of metadata describing the application schema used to define and expose the structure of a resource.

Service metadata information

The a combination of documentation packages used to describe metadata or data services. The structure of service metadata includes three major classes: a section of basic service metadata (SV_ServiceIdentification class) that provides a general description of the service and two sections that describe the operations (SV_OperationMetadata) and data (MD_DataIdentification) available from a particular service. 

Extent information (EX_Extent)

The datatype in this package is an aggregate of the metadata elements that describe the spatial and temporal extent of resources, objects, events, or phenomena. The EX_Extent class contains information about the geographic (EX_GeographicExtent), temporal (EX_TemporalExtent) and the vertical (EX_VerticalExtent) extent of something.

Citation and responsible party information (CI_Citation and CI_ResponsibleParty) classes

This package provides a standardized method for citing a resource, as well as information about the party responsible for a resource. Citations use CI_Citation and cite the party responsible by aggregating CI_ResponsiblePartyInfo.