NOAA Fisheries GIS

Best Practices/Standards/Protocols

Data Access and Interoperability

Fisheries is actively involved in the NOAA GIS Committee's Enterprise GIS IT Architecture Working Group, which is exploring the development of an enterprise-wide geospatial data framework that will allow us to support and foster GIS across the organization. This is not an effort to centralize data in one place, but rather it will unify the agency's data resources using established national and international data and metadata standards.

GIS systems will be centered on interoperability standards, such as:

OGC Web Mapping Services (WMS) - image preview and display;
OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) - XML-based data streams for vector data sets;
OGC Web Coverage Services (WCS) - for access and delivery of raster products; and
OpenDAP - to provide a linkage to many non-traditional data products generated across NOAAs observations and modeling community using netCDF

Data Development Practices

"Best Practices for Reporting Location and Time Related Data", Developed through the NW Environmental Data Network (NED)
"Best Practices for Data Dictionary Definitions and Usage", Developed through the NW Environmental Data Network (NED)
"Check List for Organizing Field Collection and Management of Data", Prepared by S. Toshach & J. Paulus through the Pacific NW Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) & the NW Environmental Data Network (NED)
"Marine Managed Areas: Best Practices for Boundary Making"

Metadata

Geospatial data should be documented using the FGDC 's Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata.

There are different flavors of the FGDC Content Standard, called profiles, which may be more appropriate for your particular data set:

Biological data should be documented with the National Biological Information Infrastructure's ( NBII ) Content Standard for Biological Information, which is based on the FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata.