Geospatial content Standards for digital data build upon centuries of work in map making and cartography. Since 1994, two organizations have been the primary drivers of these Standards: the Open Geospatial Consortium and ISO / TC 211 Geographic Information / Geomatics. This topic first defines the landscape of Standards development and its objectives. The authority of the Standards bodies is also explained. Finally, geospatial content Standards are divided into five categories, with examples provided for each: (1) feature data; (2) 3D geometry and streaming; (3) rasters and coverages; (4) datacubes, and (5) metadata.
Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is the infrastructure that facilitates the discovery, access, management, distribution, reuse, and preservation of digital geospatial resources. These resources may include maps, data, geospatial services, and tools. As cyberinfrastructures, SDIs are similar to other infrastructures, such as water supplies and transportation networks, since they play fundamental roles in many aspects of the society. These roles have become even more significant in today’s big data age, when a large volume of geospatial data and Web services are available. From a technological perspective, SDIs mainly consist of data, hardware, and software. However, a truly functional SDI also needs the efforts of people, supports from organizations, government policies, data and software standards, and many others. In this chapter, we will present the concepts and values of SDIs, as well as a brief history of SDI development in the U.S. We will also discuss the components of a typical SDI, and will specifically focus on three key components: geoportals, metadata, and search functions. Examples of the existing SDI implementations will also be discussed.