The conceptual schema in geospatial data standard design with application to GroundWaterML2

The explosive growth of geospatial data has stimulated the development of many standards aimed at decreasing data heterogeneity and enhancing data use. Well-established design methods for geospatial data standards typically involve the creation of two schemas for data structure, designated here as logical and physical, but this can lead to conceptual inconsistencies and modelling inefficiencies. In this paper we describe a design method that overcomes these issues by incorporating an additional schema – the conceptual schema – and demonstrate its application to the design of GroundWaterML₂ (GWML₂), a new international standard for groundwater data. Results include not only a new data standard, robustly constructed and tested, but also an enhanced method for geospatial data standard design.