Glossary

User-facing acronyms and terms used in this guide. The full SEC-IMS acronyms table (which also covers terms used internally by administrators and deployment operators) lives in the Information Management System Development Report (ET-IMSR-001).

Term	Definition
API	Application Programming Interface — the machine-readable URLs through which SEC-IMS publishes data.
Basemap	The background map (roads, terrain, place names) shown beneath SEC-IMS data layers in the map viewer.
BWI	British West Indies grid — a regional coordinate reference system sometimes used for Saint Lucia data.
COG	Cloud Optimised GeoTIFF — a raster format that supports efficient web-based access to subsets of the file.
CRS	Coordinate Reference System — the spatial reference that locates the data on the Earth’s surface (e.g. EPSG:4326).
CSW	Catalogue Service for the Web — the OGC 2.0.2 catalogue interface served by pycsw.
Custodian	The organisation or person responsible for a dataset’s accuracy and maintenance.
Deep link	A URL that opens the map viewer at a specific layer, zoom, and centre point.
Distribution	A way to obtain a dataset — a file download link or an API endpoint.
EPSG:4326	World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) — longitude/latitude on the standard Earth ellipsoid. The default CRS for SEC-IMS APIs.
GeoJSON	A JSON encoding of vector geographic features.
GeoPackage	An OGC-standard, single-file format for vector and raster data.
GeoTIFF	A georeferenced TIFF raster file.
Metadata	The descriptive information about a dataset (title, abstract, extent, custodian, lineage, etc.).
MetaSearch	A QGIS plugin for searching CSW catalogues.
OGC	Open Geospatial Consortium — the standards body whose APIs SEC-IMS implements.
OGC API – Coverages	The OGC API for raster data delivery.
OGC API – Features	The OGC API for vector data delivery (successor to WFS).
OGC API – Records	The OGC API for catalogue search (modern successor to CSW).
OGC API – Tiles	The OGC API for tile-based map delivery.
PMTiles	A single-file format for vector or raster map tiles, served over HTTP Range requests.
pycsw	The Python catalogue server that powers SEC-IMS metadata.
pygeoapi	The Python OGC API server that powers SEC-IMS data delivery.
Record	A single metadata entry in the SEC-IMS catalogue.
SEC-IMS	South East Coast Information Management System.
SLD	Styled Layer Descriptor — the OGC format SEC-IMS uses to define how each layer is drawn.
Token	A personal credential issued by an administrator that authenticates a registered contributor.
Vector tiles	Pre-cut tiles containing vector geometries (often encoded as MVT — Mapbox Vector Tile).
WFS	Web Feature Service — the older OGC standard for vector data delivery, superseded by OGC API – Features.
WGS 84	The World Geodetic System reference frame used by EPSG:4326.