GeoRSS is a specification for encoding location as part of a Web feed. ''(Web feeds are used to describe feeds ("channels") of content, such as news articles, Audio blogs, video blogs and text
blog
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...
entries. These web feeds are rendered by programs such as aggregators and
web browser
A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
s.)'' The name "GeoRSS" is derived from RSS, the most known Web feed and syndication format.
In GeoRSS, location content consists of geographical points, lines, and polygons of interest and related feature descriptions. GeoRSS feeds are designed to be consumed by geographic software such as map generators. By building these encodings on a common information model, the GeoRSS collaboration is promoting interoperability and "upwards-compatibility" across encodings.
At this point, the GeoRSS collaboration has completed work on two primary encodings that are called GeoRSS
Geography Markup Language
The Geography Markup Language (GML) is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to express geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic ...
(GML) and GeoRSS Simple. GeoRSS-Simple is a very lightweight format that supports basic geometries (point, line, box, polygon) and covers the typical use cases when encoding locations. GeoRSS GML is a formal
Open Geospatial Consortium
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international voluntary consensus standards organization that develops and maintains international standards for geospatial content and location-based services, sensor web, Internet of Things, Geographi ...
(OGC) GML Application Profile, and supports a greater range of features than GeoRSS Simple, notably coordinate reference systems other than WGS84 latitude/longitude. There is also a
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
GeoRSS serialization, which is older and partly deprecated but still the most widely used.
GeoRSS can be used to extend both RSS 1.0 and 2.0, as well as
Atom
Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...
, the
IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...
's latest standard for feeds.
Examples
Here's a GeoRSS Simple example using Atom.
EarthquakesInternational earthquake observation labs2005-12-13T18:30:02ZDr. Thaddeus Remor[email protected]urn:uuid:60a76c80-d399-11d9-b93C-0003939e0af6M 3.2, Mona Passageurn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a2005-08-17T07:02:32ZWe just had a big one.45.256 -71.92
Here is a schema fragment for a GeoRSS GML encoding for RSS 2.0
http://maps.google.com
Cambridge NeighborhoodsOne guy's view of Cambridge, Massachusetts00000111c36421c1321d3Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:16:31 +0000Central SquareThe heart and soul of the "new" Cambridge. Depending on where you
stand, you can feel like you're in the 1970s or 2020.rajrsingh
+71.106216 42.366661
+71.105576 42.367104
+71.104378 42.367134
+71.103729 42.366249
+71.098793 42.363331
+71.101028 42.362541
+71.106865 42.366123
+71.106216 42.366661
Here is example of W3C geo GeoRSS
USGS M5+ EarthquakesReal-time, worldwide earthquake list for the past 7 days
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/
U.S. Geological SurveyThu, 27 Dec 2007 23:56:15 PSTFri, 28 Dec 2007 05:24:17 GMTM 5.3, northern Sumatra, IndonesiaDecember 28, 2007 05:24:17 GMT
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2007llai.php
5.531995.8972
*