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