ASTM E2468-05 - Standard Practice for Metadata to Support Archived Data Management Systems

This Fact Sheet was written on March 22, 2006. The status of the standard at the time was: Published in January 2006.

This Fact Sheet was last verified on October 07, 2009

Overview

Intelligent transportation systems are being deployed across the country to manage traffic, transit, traveler information, emergency, commercial vehicle administration, and fleet/freight management systems. Each of these systems collect a variety of data to support their primary operational missions. These data collections can also be used to support secondary longer-term activities such as planning for future operations, resource scheduling, capital improvement planning, off-line analysis and research, satisfying reporting requirements, and many uses perhaps not yet envisioned. An Archived Data Management System (ADMS) collects, archives, manages, and distributes data generated from Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) sources for use in transportation administration, policy evaluation, safety, planning, performance monitoring, program assessment, operations, and research applications. The usefulness of these archives is dependent on knowing where the data came from, the quality of the data and the manner in which it was collected and processed. This standard, ASTM E2468-05 - Standard Practice for Metadata to Support Archived Data Management Systems, establishes the metadata elements that will promote the quality and usefulness of transportation data archives. Metadata is essentially "data about data" and is used to understand the content, quality, source/history, organization, availability, and other characteristics of the data.

What are these standards for?

This standard, ASTM E2468-05 - Standard Practice for Metadata to Support Archived Data Management Systems, establishes the recommended metadata framework for archived data management systems and provide additional commentary and examples to assist ADMS developers and users. Using metadata to organize the flood of information that could potentially be archived from ITS systems helps users understand which data applies to them and whether it is appropriate for their particular application or analysis.

Who uses them?

This standard, ASTM E2468-05 - Standard Practice for Metadata to Support Archived Data Management Systems, should be used by prospective ADMS designers/developers and database managers to avoid the process of developing their own metadata. Other users might include those that are collecting or evaluating ITS and non-ITS data and want to know what metadata should be assigned to their data in order to improve its use by an ADMS.

How are they used?

This standard, ASTM E2468-05 - Standard Practice for Metadata to Support Archived Data Management Systems, is organized into a hierarchy of metadata elements and compound elements (composed of other elements and compound elements) with each containing a name, definition, a description of the values that can be assigned to the metadata, and a short (8 characters or less) name to support eXtensible Markup Language (XML) tags. The standard supports the definition of applicable production rules that explain how compound elements are to be constructed. Throughout the standard, usage notes supplement the definitions with commentary as to how the metadata element might be used within the context of ITS. ADMS database designers and managers should utilize this standard when developing an ITS data archive. Operators and deployers of ITS systems should refer to this standard to see what metadata they will need to generate on their end as they provide data to an ADMS. This standard is general in nature and could also be used for other archives beyond ITS-related data.

Scope

This standard, ASTM E2468-05 - Standard Practice for Metadata to Support Archived Data Management Systems, applies to ITS and non-ITS data stored in archived data management systems. It includes metadata to describe the structure of the archive itself as well as the conditions under which the data was originally collected and processed. This standard is arranged into the following sections:

1. Identification Information
2. Data Quality Information
3. Spatial Data Organization information
4. Spatial Reference Information
5. Entity and Attribute Information
6. Distribution Information
7. Reference Information

Related documents

The following ITS standards are related and should be considered when using this standard:

• ASTM E2665-08 - Standard Specifications for Archiving ITS-Generated Traffic Monitoring Data
• ASTM E2259-03a - Standard Guide for Archiving and Retrieving ITS-Generated Data

The following set of standards and documents, while not part of the ITS standards, should also be considered when using this standard:

• https://www.astm.org/e0867-06r20.html
• https://www.fgdc.gov/standards/projects/FGDC-standards-projects/metadata/base-metadata/index_html

How to obtain Standards

• https://www.astm.org/ Phone: 610-832-9585
  

ASTM International 610-832-9585 https://www.astm.org/