The North American Profile of ISO 19115:2003 Geographic information -- Metadata is intended to identify geospatial metadata that are needed for North American organizations to describe their geospatial data, including dataset and dataset series, and related Web services. It is based on ISO 19115:2003 Geographic information -- Metadata and ISO 19106:2004 Geographic information -- Profiles. It also includes service metadata from ISO 19119:2005 Geographic information -- Services and implementation perspectives from ISO/TS 19139:2007 Geographic information -- Metadata -- XML schema implementation. As outlined in ISO 19106:2004 Geographic Information -- Profiles, it satisfies conformance Class 1 since it defines a pure subset of ISO 19115:2003 Geographic information -- Metadata and ISO 19119:2005 Geographic information -- Services. Retained metadata elements have been selected to enhance discovery of geographic information within North America and to minimize authorized duplications. The extension of code lists is also intended to support to geographic information discovery. Annex A provides the adjustments made to the ISO 19115:2003 Geographic information --Metadata and ISO 19119:2005 Geographic information--Services UML models.

This profile intends to be an inclusive document addressing ISO 19115:2003 Geographic information -- Metadata and the accepted modifications. It is presented in a manner to support the consistent capture and use of geospatial metadata. As such, it includes best practices to guide data providers in capturing geospatial metadata. To that end, it supports interoperability of geospatial information as it provides a common framework for the description and representation of metadata. In addition, this profile provides a mechanism to support cultural and linguistic adaptability by enabling representation of free text in multiple languages and by introducing a metadata register describing metadata in multiple languages (e.g. English and French) compliant to ISO 19135:2005 Geographic information-- Procedures for item registration.

Note: Parts of ISO 19110:2005 Geographic information --Methodology for feature cataloguing and ISO/FDIS19111rev. Geographic information --Spatial referencing by coordinates are covered as needed.