Support for United Nations activities |
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UN-GGIMISO/TC 211 together with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), supports the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM). |
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One output of this is the “Standards Guide” to help countries implement the UN’s Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) using open standards. Divided into sections on direction setting, understanding needs, planning for change, taking action, ongoing management, and achieving outcomes, the guide provides detailed insights on the standards and good practices necessary to establish and maintain geospatial information management systems that are compatible and interoperable with other systems within and across organizations. The guide also underscores the importance of standards in facilitating the application of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles. The separate “companion document” which accompanied previous editions of the guide now appears as an annex. The ISO Geodetic Registry is scoped to support the UN Global Geodetic Reference Framework. The three SDOs report to the UN-GGIM annual meetings and participate in the discussions there. You can see meeting reports at UNSD — UN-GGIM. |
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UN Global Geodetic Reference Framework (GGRF)The GGRF depends on several ISO/TC 211 standards (ISO 19111 Geographic information — Referencing by coordinates, ISO 19127 Geographic information — Geodetic register, and ISO 19161-1 Geographic information — Geodetic references — Part 1: International terrestrial reference system (ITRS)) and is supported by the ISO Geodetic Register. The United Nations Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence (UN GGCE) exists “to assist Member States and geodetic organizations to coordinate and collaborate to sustain, enhance, access and utilise an accurate, accessible and sustainable GGRF to support science, society and global development.” UN GGCE recognises ISO/TC 211 as a partner due to our “valuable contribution to the global geodesy supply chain" |
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UN-GGIM Fundamental Data ThemesIn 2019, UN-GGIM published “The Global Fundamental Geospatial Data Themes” giving information about 14 themes considered fundamental to strengthening a country’s geospatial information infrastructure. Most of the themes list relevant existing standards, including:
Almost all the themes list relevant INSPIRE Data Specifications which are build on ISO 19109 and ISO 19103. |
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Work with UN Food and Agriculture OrganizationWe work closely with FAO in the area of land cover and land use classification. This includes the current projects to revise ISO 19144 Classification systems and AG 13 Land Cover and Land Use Advisory Group, which is chaired by an expert from FAO. |
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Work with UN Universal Postal UnionWe work closely with UPU in the area of addressing, particularly ISO 19160 Addressing, of which Part 4 International postal address components and template language which is based on UPU S42, Version 8, and for which the UPU manages a collection of nationally agreed templates. |
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Support for UN Sustainable Development Goals |
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A subset of ISO/TC 211 standards are often used together to create a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) which is Tier 2 Integrated Geospatial Information infrastructure as described in the UNGGIM Standards Guide. These standards are: • Tier 1: ISO 19115 Metadata, used in conjunction with a web portal and OGC Catalogue services *more recent SDIs are adopting ISO 19168 Geospatial API for Features, with its associated JSON encoding. Our standards all build on ISO 19101 Reference model, and the data models build on ISO 19103 Conceptual schema language, ISO 19107 Spatial schema, and ISO 19111 Referencing by coordinates. So those four standards could be said to support all the SDGs. For example, the Esri solution used by the One UN Geospatial Situation Room and offered to UN member states through the SDG Data Alliance uses all the standards described for an SDI, plus:
SDG Data Alliance DataHubs are used by an increasing number of countries to plan and monitor their SDGs. The open standards enable data to be imported from and published to a variety of other systems. Open Source implementations of most of the standards are also available. |
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For each of our standards we indicate the Sustainable Development Goals which the standard can be used to support and/or measure; for example, see ISO 19144-1. We have been collecting user stories which demonstrate our standards supporting specific goals, for example: |
| Goal | Target | Country | Statement | Evidence |
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1.5 | USA | The USA benefited from having a functioning, comprehensive delivery, retail, and address management infrastructure in place at the time of hurricane Katrina's landfall | ISO/DIS 19160-2 B.2.5 Example 4 |
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2.1 | Korea | In the Republic of Korea, one needs an address to get food and meals through delivery services, which was done more often than before during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. | ISO/DIS 19160-2 B.2.4 Example 6 |
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4.1 | South Africa | standardized addressing has allowed increased school registration | South Africa - The South African Address Story (iso.org) |
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6.3 | Sudan | The Sudanese Electricity Distribution Company (SEDC) has identified every household and organization in Sudan as a user of electricity. 80 % of households have an electricity meter identifier and can be located as electricity delivery points | ISO/DIS 19160-2 B.2.4 Example 10 |
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8.10 | South Africa | In South Africa, one needs to provide proof of residential address in order to open a bank account or to access any other financial service, as specified in the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA). | ISO/DIS 19160-2 B.2.6 Example 1 |
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11.1 11.3 11.a |
Austria | BRISE (Digital Twin for planning) | PlanningTwin |
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11.5 | Austria | Reducing the risk of damage from flooding | 03_ISO-Standards_SynerGIS.pdf |
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11.6 | Austria | Air quality | Austria - Air Quality Data in Near-Real-Time (iso.org) |
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11.6 | Austria | Air quality: increasing use of bikes in Vienna | Citybike Standorte Wien - Datensätze - data.gv.at |
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15.3.1 | UNCCD | The ISO 19144-2 Land Cover Meta Language (LCML) standard aids the translation of classifications between data products e.g. CORINE and LCCS can be compared using LCML. If providing a ready to use product, it should conform to the LCML standard. | UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Good Practice Guidance for SDG 15.3.1 recommends using ISO 19144-2 LCML |
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16.7 | South Africa | Increased voter registration | South Africa - The South African Address Story (iso.org) |
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In the table below, we list relevant standards for each SDG, not repeating the broadly applicable ones mentioned above. This committee contributes with over 100 standards supporting the following Sustainable Development Goals: |
