This British Standard is an adoption of an ISO standard. You can access the ISO version here.
ISO 19117 specifies a conceptual schema for describing symbols, portrayal functions that map geospatial features to symbols, and the collection of symbols and portrayal functions into portrayal catalogues. This conceptual schema can be used in the design of portrayal systems. ISO 19117 allows feature data to be separate from portrayal data, permitting data to be portrayed in a dataset independent manner.
Note: ISO 19117 is not applicable to the following:
ISO 19117 on geographic information is useful for:
Geographic information refers to occurrences that are either implicitly or explicitly linked to a location on the Earth.
ISO 19117 establishes a conceptual framework for the depiction of data, including symbols and functions. For the purposes of depicting features on maps and other display mediums, depiction functions link features to symbols. This schema defines the structure and interrelationships between features, depiction functions, and symbols using classes, attributes, associations, and operations. ISO 19117 separates the data's content from how it's represented, allowing the data to be presented in a way that's not dependent on the dataset.
Overall, ISO 19117 can be used to expand the concept of portrayal rules to include more generic portrayal functions, include symbol definitions (including parameterized symbols), include both portrayal functions and symbols in portrayal catalogues, and define a core portrayal schema with extensions for specialised cases.