Archiving of geodata
swisstopo and the Swiss Federal Archives developed a solution for the indefinite archiving of geodata in the form of the Ellipse project. The Ellipse project was completed at the end of 2016.

The Ellipse project
The Ellipse project developed a concept for archiving official geodata. The concept describes the fundamentals for archiving geodata along the process chain from production through to geodata management, conservation and archiving planning, acquisition (into the archive), preservation and use. The main emphasis here was the collaboration between the producers of geodata and the SFA. In accordance with the legislation governing geoinformation, these institutions are required to mutually secure the availability of geodata over the long term. A great deal of importance was attached to cooperation with cantons and specialist organisations within both the archiving and the geoinformation communities.
Goals of the project were:
- To develop an integrated solution for all official federal geodata
- To improve the long-term availability and archiving of federal geodata
- To allow geoinformation to be restored and interpreted from archived geodata at a later date
National activities
Based on the Ellipse concept, the cantons and municipalities have produced studies and concepts for the long-term availability and archiving of their geodata.
- Study on the long-term availability and archiving of geodata
The GIS work group of the Swiss Conference on Information Technology (SIK-GIS) has produced a study on the long-term availability and archiving of geodata for coordinated implementation at the federal, cantonal and municipal levels. The study was published in January 2015
- Concept for the historicisation, long-term availability and archiving of data in the official cadastral survey
The board of the conference of the cantonal cadastre services (CadastreSuisse) and the Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying (FDCS) have developed a concept for the historicisation, long-term availability and archiving of data in the official cadastral survey. This document was published in January 2015
International activities
The activities within the scope of the Ellipse project also attracted a great deal of interest throughout Europe, and have been presented at a variety of events.
Documents
-
Manual on the archiving of federal geodata
PDF, 28 page(s), 11 MB, English -
Geo-SIP and geo-dossier specification
PDF, 17 page(s), 1 MB, English -
Information sheet - specification for an archivable geoformat for image and graphic raster data
PDF, 6 page(s), 651 KB -
Ellipse project - concept for the archiving of official federal geodata
PDF, 104 page(s), 2 MB, English -
GI+100: long term preservation of digital geographic information - EuroSDR
PDF, 9 page(s), 252 KB
Links
- Conservation and archiving planning (CAP)
- SIK-GIS Study on long-term availability and archiving of geodata
- CadastreSuisse/V+D concept - Historicisation, long-term availability and archiving of data in the official cadastral survey
- Geo-categories
- EuroSDR archiving working group
- Archiving of geodata in the Federal Archives
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