DATA AND METADATA
A NEW CONCEPT IN ARCHIVING ARCHITECTURAL DATA
Elena ALBERY (*), Fulvio RINAUDO (*)
(*) D1GET - Politecnico di Torino
C.so Duca degli Abruzzi, 24, 10129 - Torino
tel. ++39115647700-5647659, fax ++39115647699
e-mail: dorice@polito.it, rinaudo@polito.it
ISPRS Commission VI, Working Group 3
KEYWORDS: GIS, Metadata, data surveys.
ABSTRACT
Geographic information systems can be considered reliable instruments for archiving primary data and survey results
for the documentation of architectural goods.
The knowledge of metric data alone does not allow a correct use of the stored data when origin, availability, quality and
other peculiar features are not clearly specified. All this information is named “metadata”.
The metadata structure, which is suitable for all geographic data, is defined within a European standard, proposed by
CEN/TC 287.
An example of archiving metric data of an industrial area in the city of Turin, using a metadata structure, is proposed
in this paper.
1. INTRODUCTION
The present work proposes a method for archiving
primary metric data using a metadata structure and the
verification of the adaptability of the CEN/TC 287
guidelines for an architectural documentation. Data and
metadata have a structure that is:
compatible with any Land Information
implementable in any software environment (MGE,
Arc View, etc.)
accessible to different users
Accessibility to the primary data means making such data
available to users who were not involved in their
acquisition. A user who wishes to have complete access
to such data and therefore use it in the correct way,
requires to know the nature of this data (acquisition
method, metric contents etc.) and the availability (where
they are actually memorised and how to find them). For
example, the possibility of seeing a pair of stereoscopic
images does not permit the photogrammetric use if the
type of camera used is not known (metric, semimetric or
even non metric), or any possible calibration data or even
the possible presence of point co-ordinates known in a
determined reference system.
The set of information that permits the primary data to be
used is defined as “metadata”. It is possible to state that
data cannot be used if it is not fitted to metadata.
Meta-information and the organisation of this inside an
archive therefore becomes a fundamental point without
which the acquisition alone of the primary data might be
completely useless. For any user to gain access to the
data it is necessary to use univocal guidelines and a
scheme for the reading of such meta information.
The present work has used, as a documentation scheme
for primary data, the scheme which was proposed in the
guidelines elaborated by the European Committee for the
standardisation of geographic information (CEN/TC
287), set up to describe geographic banks and their
characteristics, and considered, by the authors, as being
valid and easily adaptable to the documentation of the
architectural data.
2. METADATA
Metadata are the documentation of the data. Access to
metadata permits one to know who has given the data,
what the metric quality is and other useful information
for a correct use of the data.
Metadata give a global vision of data features. They
permit one to select suitable data for the applications and
permit a full use of the metric and descriptive data.
CEN/TC 287 are international standards; one of these
standards concerns metadata. The metadata guidelines on
a archiving experimentation for architectural
photogrammetry has been used in this paper.
The CEN guidelines classifies the metadata into nine
sections and, for each metadata element, the guidelines
