The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) and its Subgroup on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are proud to announce the publication of INCITS 453-2009, the North American Profile (NAP) of ISO 19115: 2003, Geographic Information - Metadata. 

Through effort for collaboration, United States and Canadian scientific volunteers from the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards Technical Committee L1 (INCITS/L1) and the Canadian General Standards Board Committee on Geomatics (CGSB-COG) developed the geographic metadata content needed to tailor the International Standard ISO 19115 to meet the requirements of both countries.  Co-located working meetings were held in Canada and the U.S. over a three-year period, punctuated by public reviews of various versions of the Profile by the geospatial metadata community. This process was based on the usual approach taken for the development of other international metadata standards.

ISO 19115 is an International Standard that enables its users to locate, access, evaluate, deliver, and integrate geographic and geospatial datasets through the consistent use of metadata entities. The NAP is intended to consistently and effectively catalogue traditional geographic datasets and dataset series for both the United States and Canada, as well as services, clearinghouses, features within datasets, and even the attributes of features, if desired.

The NAP may be purchased at the ANSI eStandards Store (webstore.ansi.org).