In early 2009, Energistics was invited to participate in an ad-hoc work group of industry organizations considering the formal development of guidelines and standards for the use of metadata.

This group grew out of an earlier working group in the ESRI Petroleum User Group (PUG) focused on GIS datasets, but the group set itself an objective to ultimately address all E&P data with geographic references. The work group joined the Energistics Asset & Data Managemen Special Interest Group (SIG) formally in September 2009.

work group objectives and development plan

The primary objective for the Work Group is to develop metadata profile specifications and usage guidelines for information (and physical) resources of interest to the Energy Industry.

The intent is for these specifications and guidelines to help improve operational efficiency within the industry through adoption of metadata standards and best practices to enable efficient cataloging, discovery, evaluation, and retrieval of information resources, regardless of whether those resources are hosted internally or externally to an organization.

The development plan follows Energistics' Standards Development Life Cycle and the primary deliverable will be the ISO Metadata Energy Industry Profile (EIP) v1.0.

As described in the September 2009 position paper, this profile will be based on existing ISO metadata standards and will leverage several key profiles also based on those standards. (See Reference Materials)

current status

The work group is currently in Stage 2 of the Energistics Standards Life Cycle and is compiling requirements for an Energy Industry Profile (EIP) that will be based on several existing metadata standards, most of them ISO specifications.

On January 29, the work group issued a Request for Comment (RFC) to subject experts in the community for input regarding metadata requirements. Supporting materials enabling two methods of input were developed to facilitate collection of the requested information:

Method 1: Two-part questionnaire and instructions (ZIP). The questionnaire requires no familiarity with the ISO standards on which the EIP will be based. The instructions include an overview of the initiative.
Method 2: Detailed feedback documentation (ZIP) including a spreadsheet that contains a compilation of attributes from the base ISO standards, and for each attribute, the opportunity to identify the obligation level and any recommendation for the domain values needed to enable efficient discovery and evaluation of as well as access to diverse information resources.

Responses are due: March 1, 2010

Please refer to Reference Materials for presentations and supporting documentation.

For more information about thiswork group, including inquiries about participation, comments, and questions, please contact Energistics.

related standards activities

Metadata Work Group activities reference ISO 19115 and related standards, which are managed through ISO TC 211. Energistics' interests in TC 211 also extend to the relationship with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), some of whose standards are being absorbed into ISO via TC 211.

Energistics is a Class-A Liaison for TC 211.