Die Küste, 81 (2014), 29-43
38
distributed infrastructure nodes can thus be used in other connections, which also rely on
these standards.
In order to speed up response times in die Web portal, the distributed metadata is
harvested at die central node using the CS-W interfaces. The services provided are cur-
rendy available free of charge and diere are no plans to introduce a billing system.
3 Metadata and spatial data from the German coastal zone
The implementation of the European Water Framework Directive adopted by the EURO
PEAN Parliament and Council (2000) calls for novel information management in the
member states and for automated workflows to meet reporting requirements. LehfeldT
and Reimers (2004) point out die importance of standardized metadata for these obliga
tions, which help to discover and share relevant and timely information from distributed
data sources. The Water Information System for Europe WISE maintains a Web portal,
water.europa.eu, presenting die current status and activities within diis thematic network.
Cross-boundary information exchange becomes an important issue when considering
catchment areas, for example. Apart from producing seamless geographic data, there may
be diverse vertical reference systems in place, and different units or measurement meth
ods may be applied. These must be documented so as to be able to harmonize available
data with transformation algoridims for an integrated view and analysis.
Already in 2003, die NOKIS group (LehfeldT and Heidmann 2003) agreed on a
metadata profile for die coastal zone, which addresses these issues in much detail. The
selected metadata elements put equal emphasis on horizontal information flow between
the actors involved in collecting data and creating data products for public information
and vertical information flow between eitiier hierarchical or cascading information
systems (see Fig. 2).
The agreed Coastal Zone Metadata Profile meets all requirements of existing German
information systems (German Environmental Information Portal, ivww.portalu.de,
Federal Spatial Data Portal, ivww.geoportal.de). Therefore, once an information resource
such as a dataset, a map, an image, etc. has been documented with this profile it can be
discovered by these national portals and by die MDI-E portal, in particular. Witiiout
further editing its metadata are valid in multiple environments and, most importantly,
they comply ivitii the European INSPIRE.
3.1 Metadata elements
The International Standard Organization (2003) published the IS019115
Metadata Standard which provides some 300 metadata elements grouped into 13 catego
ries of information about a resource. These address the essential questions of “what,
where, when, who and how” for documentation of geographic information. The full
standard is a generic approach for describing resources. User communities are encour
aged to select tiiose elements necessary for their specific purposes and reduce the volume
of information to a manageable amount.
However, tiiere is a Recommended Core, which is mandatory in order to ensure
communication between different applications. This minimum set of metadata is a key
stone for interdepartmental information exchange and intersectoral views implemented in
