Environmental Data Coding Specification (EDCS)

Introduction

This International Standard establishes concepts to ensure that environmental information is:

  1. unambiguously defined,
  2. flexibly denoted and encoded, and
  3. easily bound in exchange formats and to programming languages.

This International Standard was developed to fulfil the following requirements:

  1. flexibility and extensibility: accommodating growth by registration;
  2. information: define what objects are (classifications), what the states of objects are (attributes), and how values of state are characterized (data types, units of measure, and unit scales);
  3. use international standard units: adopt the International System of Units;
  4. interoperate with existing domain-specific approaches: build on the experience gained by other organizations, including IHO, WMO, and DGIWG, in developing information coding systems;
  5. organization: structure for efficient access;
  6. orthogonality: separate the concepts of type and state of environmental objects;
  7. rigor: provide unambiguous and clearly defined concepts;
  8. separate units of measure from attributes: relate units of measure to attributes through unit equivalence classes; and
  9. unification: define a comprehensive set of general principles and specific concepts that allows environmental information to be shared among different communities.