The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) approved a new standard for the geological sciences. GeoSciML version 4.1 was officially adopted as a standard and "defines a model and encoding for geological features commonly described and portrayed in geological maps, cross sections, geological reports, and databases. This standard describes a logical model and GML/XML encoding rules for geological map data, geological time scales, boreholes, and metadata for laboratory analyses." 

 

GeoSciML was originally developed by the International Union of Geological Sciences Commission for the Management of Application of Geoscience Information and was previously in use by several international geoscience data transfer projects. Ratifying it as a standard will provide application developers confidence in creating products utilizing GeoSciML models.