Overview
ISO 19109:2015 - Geographic information - Rules for application schema defines rules and principles for creating, documenting and integrating application schemas for geographic information. It guides the conceptual modelling of features and their properties from a defined universe of discourse, the transition from conceptual concepts to data types, and the integration of standardized schemas from other ISO geographic information standards. The standard prescribes modelling best practices without mandating a single conceptual schema language or specific software implementations.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Conceptual modelling of features: Principles for identifying feature types, attributes and relationships derived from a universe of discourse.
- General Feature Model (GFM): A framework for structuring feature types, properties, associations, inheritance and identifiers.
- Application schema definition: Rules for packaging, documenting and identifying application schemas suitable for data interchange.
- Use of conceptual schema language (e.g., UML): Guidance on expressing application schemas in a modelling language while not requiring one particular language.
- Transition to data types: Principles for mapping concepts in the conceptual model to implementation data types.
- Integration with other ISO geographic schemas: Rules to incorporate standardized spatial, temporal, quality, coverage and observation schemas.
- Spatial and temporal modelling rules: Guidance for spatial attributes, geometric aggregates, temporal attributes and temporal associations.
- Coverages, observations and code-lists: Rules for representing coverages, observations and controlled vocabularies (code-lists, lexicons).
- Conformance, profiling and documentation: Conformance classes, profiling standard schemas and documenting application schema intent and constraints.
Out of scope (explicitly excluded)
- Mandating a single conceptual schema language or any particular application schema
- Representation of feature types in feature catalogues or metadata representation
- Rules for mapping between application schemas, software implementation, programming or system design
Applications and who uses it
ISO 19109 is used to:
- Design interoperable GIS application schemas for data exchange and interoperability
- Ensure consistent modelling of feature types, spatial/temporal attributes and associations
- Create domain-specific profiles of standard ISO schemas for municipal, utilities, environmental and cadastral data
Typical users:
- GIS data architects and modelers
- Standards bodies and national mapping agencies
- Data stewards, system integrators and vendors producing schema documentation and UML models
- Organizations preparing data for cross-agency or international exchange
Related standards
ISO 19109 is part of the ISO geographic information family and is intended to work with other ISO 191xx standards covering spatial referencing, metadata, quality, coverages and observations - enabling coherent, standards-based application schemas for geospatial data interoperability.
