scope:

This document defines a conceptual schema for coverages. A coverage is a mapping from a spatial, temporal or spatiotemporal domain to attribute values sharing the same attribute type. A coverage domain consists of a collection of direct positions in a coordinate space that can be defined in terms of spatial and/or temporal dimensions, as well as non-spatiotemporal (in ISO 19111:2019, "parametric") dimensions. Examples of coverages include point clouds, grids, meshes, triangulated irregular networks, and polygon sets. Coverages are the prevailing data structures in a number of application areas, such as remote sensing, meteorology and mapping of depth, elevation, soil and vegetation. This document defines the coverage concept including the relationship between the domain of a coverage and its associated attribute range. This document defines the characteristics of the domain. The characteristics of the attribute range are not defined in this document, but are defined in implementation standards. Consequently, the standardization target of this document consists of implementation standards, not concrete implementations themselves.