ISO 19123:2005 defines a conceptual schema for the spatial characteristics of coverages. Coverages support mapping from a spatial, temporal or spatiotemporal domain to feature attribute values where feature attribute types are common to all geographic positions within the domain. A coverage domain consists of a collection of direct positions in a coordinate space that may be defined in terms of up to three spatial dimensions as well as a temporal dimension. Examples of coverages include rasters, triangulated irregular networks, point coverages and polygon coverages. Coverages are the prevailing data structures in a number of application areas, such as remote sensing, meteorology and mapping of bathymetry, elevation, soil and vegetation.

ISO 19123:2005 defines the relationship between the domain of a coverage and an associated attribute range. The characteristics of the spatial domain are defined whereas the characteristics of the attribute range are not part of ISO 19123:2005.