There may be provided a method of decoding a received set of encoded data representing information that has been compressed, wherein the encoded data set is divided into a hierarchy of subsets, the method comprising: decoding at least one first subset to derive a respective set of attribute metadata elements; separately decoding a plurality of second subsets comprising data elements, wherein each second subset describes a region of the information that has been compressed; and, reconstructing the information that has been compressed from the data elements, wherein the region of the information that has been compressed is identified from the attribute metadata elements.