REDUCING THE EFFORT IN THE PREPARATION OF METADATA: USE OF FREE SOFTWARE TO DOCUMENT SPATIAL DATA IN THE MGB PROFILE

Abstract

The settlement of the National Infrastructure for Spatial Data (Infraestrutura Nacional de Dados Espaciais - INDE) is an initiative to help organizing the generation, storage, access, sharing, dissemination and use of geographic data about the Brazilian territory. Now-a-days, there are several initiatives of implementation and management of Spatial Data Infrastructures. However, only a few organizations are really documenting the metadata in their geospatial databases. This is mainly due to the fact that the process of documenting data is time consuming and complex, requiring training on the part of data producers. This paper discusses an alternative process for the extraction and documentation of metadata using free open software to increase efficiency and providing incentive to the generation of metadata for the data produced in Brazil. We performed the customization of the MGB profile using CatMDEdit software for viewing and editing the metadata in this profile. This tool was also used to extract and document metadata from files in shapefile format and to edit metadata fields after extraction. The file generated in XML was imported and converted to an MGB profile contained in the application Geonetwork. Results show that it is possible to extract information contained in the data and easily and quickly generate metadata in MGB profile, if the activity is well planned and supported by model files (templates).