FGDCThe North American Profile (NAP) of ISO 19115:2003 adapts the international geospatial metadata standard for use in the United States and Canada. Developed jointly by the US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and Canadian counterparts through the INCITS L1 standards committee, NAP constrains and extends the base ISO standard to meet North American requirements for documenting geographic information resources within the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).
Background
ISO 19115:2003 is the international standard for geospatial metadata, defining a comprehensive schema of over 400 metadata elements for describing geographic datasets and services. While the standard provides a thorough framework, its breadth and flexibility mean that implementations can vary significantly between countries and organizations, undermining interoperability.
The Federal Geographic Data Committee, a 32-member US government committee chaired by the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, coordinates the development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data on a national basis. The FGDC's role was originally determined by OMB Circular A-16 and OMB Circular A-119 and was subsequently codified in law through the Geospatial Data Act of 2018. The FGDC manages the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure, which has five components: data themes, metadata, the National Spatial Data Clearinghouse, technical standards, and partnerships.
The North American Profile was developed to establish a shared set of constraints, extensions, and guidance specific to US and Canadian geographic data programs. The effort was coordinated through INCITS Technical Committee L1 (Geographic Information), with participants from FGDC, the Canadian Inter-Agency Committee on Digital Information (IACDI), and other North American geospatial organizations. Version 1.0.1 was released for community review in early 2007, followed by version 1.1 in July 2007 after adjudication of review comments.
Purpose & Scope
NAP serves several functions as an application profile:
- Constraining the base standard -- identifying which ISO 19115 elements are mandatory, conditional, or optional in North American implementations
- Extending the standard -- adding elements or controlled vocabulary entries specific to North American requirements
- Clarifying ambiguities -- providing guidance on how to interpret and populate elements that may be unclear in the base standard
- Facilitating transition -- helping US agencies migrate from the earlier FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) to the ISO-based framework
The profile applies to metadata for geographic datasets, dataset series, and geographic services used by federal, state, provincial, and local government agencies in the US and Canada.
Technical Structure
NAP is defined as a conformance profile of ISO 19115:2003. It specifies:
- Mandatory core elements that must be populated for all North American geospatial metadata records
- Recommended controlled vocabularies for element values (e.g., topic categories, reference systems)
- Extensions for North American geographic and administrative concepts
- Mapping guidance from FGDC CSDGM elements to ISO 19115 NAP elements
The profile is documented in PDF format. Implementations typically use XML encoding based on ISO 19139, the XML schema implementation of ISO 19115.
Governance & Maintenance
NAP is maintained through the FGDC standards process, with formal development occurring under INCITS Technical Committee L1. The FGDC, housed within the US Department of the Interior, coordinates federal geospatial standards activities and shares geographic data, maps, and online services through the geodata.gov portal. Community review processes are used for major revisions, with comments from US and Canadian subject matter experts adjudicated by a joint editing committee.
Notable Implementations
NAP is used across North American government agencies for geospatial metadata:
- US federal agencies -- required by OMB Circular A-16 and the Geospatial Data Act of 2018 to document geospatial data holdings
- Canadian federal agencies -- used for metadata in the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure
- State and provincial governments -- adopted by many sub-federal jurisdictions
- National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) -- NAP metadata supports data discovery through the Geospatial Platform and Data.gov
- NSDI Clearinghouse Network -- metadata searchable through the FGDC-coordinated clearinghouse
Related Standards
- ISO 19115:2003 -- the base international standard that NAP profiles
- ISO 19139 -- the XML schema implementation commonly used to encode NAP metadata
- FGDC CSDGM -- the earlier US standard that NAP was designed to replace
- ISO 19115-1:2014 -- the updated version of ISO 19115, which may eventually supersede the 2003 base