An Introduction to GeoRSS: A Standards Based Approach for Geo-enabling RSS feeds

This document describes GeoRSS: Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. GeoRSS is simple proposal for geo-enabling, or tagging, "really simple syndication" (RSS) feeds with location information. GeoRSS proposes a standardized way in which location is encoded with enough simplicity and descriptive power to satisfy most needs to describe the location of Web content. GeoRSS may not work for every use, but it should serve as an easy-to-use geotagging encoding that is brief and simple with useful defaults but extensible and upwardly-compatible with more sophisticated encoding standards such as the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) GML (Geography Markup Language). Currently, there are two GeoRSS serializations: GeoRSS GML and GeoRSS Simple. GeoRSS GML is a formal GML Profile, and supports a greater range of features than GeoRSS Simple, notably coordinate reference systems other than WGS84 latitude/longitude. GeoRSS is designed for use with Atom 1.0, RSS 2.0 and RSS 1.0, although it can be used just as easily in non-RSS XML encodings. GeoRSS Simple has greater brevity, but also has limited extensibility.