A national standard for the exchange of digital geo-referenced information

Abstract

Geographically referenced (geo-referenced) information consists of all information that refers to the man-environment system and that can be localized in space and time. The basic entity of geo-referenced information is the feature, which has spatial and non-spatial attributes. To distribute geo-referenced information effectively, one needs an efficient mechanism that will exchange the data without losing, reducing or altering the information. To satisfy this requirement, an exchange standard must, amongst other facilities, provide a means for recording information on data quality, for retaining all topological information and for classifying the features and their attributes present in the data. In addition, an exchange standard must be flexible, easy to use, complete and unambiguous. This document is the final version of a proposed South African national standard for the exchange of digital geo-referenced information. The authors constitute a project team funded by the National Programme for Remote Sensing, under the auspices of the CSIR. There are a number of organizations in South Africa with computerized cartographic and geographical information systems and many more on the verge of acquiring such systems. To be effective. these systems need large volumes of geo-referenced information in a digital form.