Automating standards based metadata creation using free and open source GIS tools

The importance of understanding the quality of data used in any GIS operation should not be underestimated. Metadata (data about data) traditionally provides a description of this quality information, but it is frequently deemed as complex to create and maintain. Additionally, it is generally stored separately from the data leading to issues with updates to the data not being reflected in the metadata and to users not being aware that metadata exists. These issues have gained increasing importance as more and more non-specialists access GIS software and data – driven by Free Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Data, particularly in an academic context. This paper describes an approach to address these two issues – tightly coupling data and metadata and automating many elements of standardsbased metadata creation. The tools have been developed using the FOSS packages Quantum GIS and PostGIS