Preface

About the Marine Community Profile (MCP)

This document provides information on the Marine Community Profile (hereafter MCP) of ISO19115.

The MCP was first devised by members of the Technical Committee of the Australian Oceanographic Data Centre Joint Facility (AODCJF) in 2006.

Versions 1.0 to 1.2 of the MCP were based on an XML implementation of ISO19115 devised by Scott Bainbridge at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Versions 1.3 (and higher - from 2007 onwards) are based on the XML implementation of ISO19115 set out in the ISO19139 standard.

In December 2008 the MCP Governance Committee agreed to add DataParameters to mcp:MD_DataIndentification and added Data Commons as a substitute for gmd:MD_Constraints. Craig Jones, in May 2010 added dataObject to gmd:MD_ScopeCode code list. Simon Pigot, in March 2013 made a number of version 2.0 changes: added mcp:taxonomicCoverage and mcp:dataParameter. Julian Atkinson, in January 2016 made updates to previous version 2.0 changes - mainly to the mcp:dataParameter element after the Nov 2015 MCP 2.0 ratification. Note MCP 2.0 is no longer a draft, but a ratified community standard.

One of the first implementations of the MCP using the GeoNetwork Opensource software was done as part of the Australian marine science data network (BlueNet) project which was funded by the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) of the Australian Government. Since then, the MCP usually implemented in GeoNetwork, is used by other members of the AODCJF, including:

The MCP is also used by:

MCP Governance Committee

Development of the MCP is done through the MCP Governance Committee. The terms of reference, current membership and minutes of previous meetings can all be found on the MCP Governance Committee wiki site (registration required). Note this wiki site, whilst still available, has been retired in favour of the AODN TAG MCP Working Group forum pages (at: https://sites.google.com/site/aodntag/working-groups/mcp).

How to read this document

To make the process of updating the MCP documentation easier, this document will not reproduce information from ISO19115 or ISO19139. Instead, references will be made to sections of these standards as required. The intention is that this document will be read with those standards. The specific versions of these standards to which this document will refer are:

  • AS/NZS ISO19115:2005, Australian/New Zealand Standard, Geographic Information-Metadata, 27th April 2005, Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand, ISBN - 0 7337 6653 6
  • ISO/TS 19139:2007(E), Geographic Information-Metadata-XML schema implementation, 15th April 2007, ISO

Unfortunately, these documents must be purchased - they are not freely available or open source! They can be purchased from various organisations that are licensed to sell these documents eg. SAI Global.

Documentation License

This documentation (unlike the ISO standards!) is released under a Creative Commons license with the following conditions.

You are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit) and to Remix (to adapt) the documentation under the following conditions:

  • Attribution. You must attribute this documentation to `Marine Community Profile Governance Committee.
  • Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

With the understanding that:

  • Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
  • Public Domain. Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.

Other Rights. In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:

  • Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;
  • The author’s moral rights;
  • Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.

Notice: For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.

You may obtain a copy of the License at Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

The document is written in reStructuredText format for consistency and portability. You can download the source reStructuredText for this documentation from the git repository at https://github.com/mcpgovernance/mcp-profile-docs.

Author and Reference Information

This documentation was written by the Marine Community Profile Governance Committee and other community members. The main references are:

  • the legacy MCP documentation at http://www.aodc.gov.au/files/MarineCommunityProfilev1.4.pdf (Note that that document does not describe version 1.4 of the MCP!)
  • AS/NZS ISO19115:2005, Australian/New Zealand Standard, Geographic Information-Metadata, 27th April 2005, Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand, ISBN - 0 7337 6653 6
  • ISO/TS 19139:2007(E), Geographic Information-Metadata-XML schema implementation, 15th April 2007, ISO
  • structural elements and ideas from the WMO Core Metadata Profile v1-2 Manual by Jeremy Tandy.

The basis for the reStructuredText based documentation used for this document is work done by the GeoServer project and the Sphinx framework.

If you have questions or enhancements, please contact the MCP governance committee members at https://sites.google.com/site/aodntag/working-groups/mcp.

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