What is the EDCS ?
- The EDCS provides mechanisms to unambiguously specify objects used to model environmental concepts.
- The EDCS supports the encoding and communication of qualitative and quantitative information associated with natural and artificial environments.
- The EDCS specifies a collection of nine dictionaries of environmental concepts, as well as:
- Guidelines for expanding these dictionaries through registration,
- Conventions for applying the encodings in information processing applications,
- A functional interface to convert between numeric values given in different units of measure and scales, and
- Organizational Schema and Groups to aid in searching specific dictionaries.
- An EDCS Dictionary Entry for a given environmental concept minimally includes:
- A Definition which is a precise statement of the nature, properties, scope or essential qualities of a concept embodied in the entry.
- A Label which is a compact and human-readable designator that is used to denote a concept; this is represented as a character string.
- A Code which is a compact, and not necessarily human-readable, designator that is used to denote a concept; this is represented as an integer.
- A Reference type and Reference which specifies �ties� to concepts in other standards, specifications, dictionaries or other documents.
- The EDCS Registration process includes guidelines that delineate the requirements for adding and deprecating EDCS Dictionary entries.