| Metadata is ancillary documentation that helps describe the rationale, authorship, attribute descriptions, spatial reference, and other pertinent information about a geospatial data set, as recommended by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). It is commonly referred to as "data about data". Like most documentation, geospatial metadata has always been more of an afterthought when cartographic products are created and released. It is not unusual that researchers make use of data found on-line without a full understanding of accuracy or intent---simply because it is not made available. This can easily lead to the misuse of a data set. Metadata becomes more relevant as the volume of digital data increases and the availability of easy-to-use remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping applications increase. Data providers must do a better job at supplying good documentation for released products.;The goal for this thesis is to describe the benefits and shortcomings of using FGDC metadata, in general, as well as its specific use for the planetary domain and to generate open-source tools to help automate metadata creation. Two applications have been started that can help automate FGDC metadata creation for raster and vector data sets. The tools have been written using the Python programming language and utilize many existing open-source libraries (e.g. GDAL/OGR for reading image and vector formats). |
