The development of remote-sensing related standards at FGDC, OGC, and ISO TC 211

Geospatial data, information, knowledge, and services are important resources in an information society. Making such resources easily accessible and useful with all kinds of applications is one of the major functions of geospatial data and information systems. In order to share geospatial resources in the society, those systems have to be interoperable. The key for the success of distributed interoperable geospatial system is the standards. Remote sensing is one of important sources for geospatial data and information. Therefore, many standard setting organizations are working on the development of remote-sensing related standards. This paper describes the development of remote-sensing related standards at U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), the Open GIS Consortium (OGC), and the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 211 (TC 211). The paper introduces the individual remote sensing standards developed or being developed by those organizations. It also discusses the relationship among those standards and how to use the standards in the development of interoperable, standard-compliant geospatial data and information system for remote sensing.