Lunar Web Registry Service Under OpenGIS Specifications

Abstract

With the enormous amount of geographic data on the moon in existence, and more being generated daily with newer satellites such as LRO, as well as digitization projects for older film records, there is an increasing need for standardization of data. The Open Geospatial Consortium has created a set of universal standards for geospatial data, but until now the lunar geospatial community has lacked a registry of coordinate systems akin to the EPSG registry for earth. The project goal was to instantiate and populate a lunar planetary registry under OpenGIS standards. Tests of freeware OGC compatible registry packages were conducted including the Dutch government’s eXcat software, Buddata’s XML registry software, and geonetwork software. ISO standards relevant to the encoding and serving of geospatial metadata were studied in order to ensure the metadata is properly formatted. After analysis of existing projects and standards, it became apparent however that the EPSG Registry is itself the standard for a web registry service, and no generalized format is well agreed upon. Work on a registry based upon reverse engineering of EPSG had barely begun before the fellowship came to an end. Future projects should attempt to reverse engineer or otherwise replicate the EPSG Registry directly, rather than building from standards up. If completed, such a service would simplify data conversion and interoperability, as different data points in different projections and coordinate systems could be brought together more easily.

Publication
SURF Report