Bringing GEOSS services into practice

GEOSS has been created as an international voluntary effort that connects geospatial and Earth Observation and information infrastructures, acting as a gateway between producers of environmental data and end users. The aim of GEOSS is to enhance the relevance of Earth observations and to offer public access to comprehensive, near-real time data, information and analyses of the environment. This manual aims at providing a critical analysis of the rationale for interoperability, data sharing and standards, exemplifying these concepts via a set of open source software to publish and share data and metadata through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), using OGC web services & ISO standards.