What is the ISO 5087 series?

ISO 5087 is a multi-part standard series focusing on the specification of a city data model to support interoperability. The standards can be divided into three levels: the first, lowest level defines the concepts that are foundational to representing any data; the second, middle level defines concepts that are common to all cities and their services, but not specific to any one service; the third, top-level provides definitions for service domain-specific concepts that may be used by other services across the city. This third level continues to develop and evolve as new parts of the standard (corresponding to different services domains) are defined.

A common data model enables city software applications to share information, plan, coordinate, and execute city tasks, and support decision-making within and across city services. This requires a clear understanding of the terms commonly shared across city services, as well as how they relate to one another.

This requirement goes beyond syntactic integration (e.g. common data types and protocols), it requires semantic integration: a consistent, shared understanding of the meaning of information.

Compliance with the ISO 5087 series ensures semantic integration between city services - both within and across different municipalities. In addition, it enables the use of semantic solutions including the creation of knowledge graphs and decision support systems. There are currently three versions of the specification, formalized in JSON, SQL (as a database schema) RDF/XML, and in OWL.