Assisted Generation and Publication of Geospatial Metadata

Abstract

Today, the existence of metadata is one of the most important factors for the effective discovery of geospatial data published in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). However, due to the lack of efficient tools, integrated in the user?s daily workflow to assist users in generating metadata, little metadata is produced. This paper presents a mechanism for generating and publishing metadata with a Publication Service. This method is provided as a web service implemented with a standard-base interface, the Web Processing Service (WPS) specification to improve its interoperability with other SDI components. This paper extends previous research regarding the design of a Publication Service within the framework of the European Directive INSPIRE as a solution to assist users in publishing geospatial data and metadata automatically in order to improve, among others, SDI maintenance and usability.