Building a North American Spatial Data Infrastructure

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper addresses the state of spatial data infrastructures within North America in late 1997. After providing some background underlying the philosophy and development of the SDI concept, the authors discuss effects of technology, institutions, and standardization that confront the cohesive implementation of a common infrastructure today. The paper concludes with a comparative framework and specific examples of elements and initiatives defining respective spatial data infrastructure initiatives in the United States and Canada. Introduction Over the last three decades, governments and industry in countries around the world have invested tens of billions of dollars in the development of independent land systems designed largely to serve specific communities (forestry, land records management) within a local and regional framework. During the next decade the focus will increasingly shift to the challenges associated with integrating these systems together into--in each case--a national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI). This infrastructure will have the potential to act as an highway which links together environmental, socio-economic, and institutional databases (the horizontal highway) and provides for movement of from the local to national levels and, eventually, to the global community (the vertical highway). Proponents of the infrastructure concept often envision a data infrastructure as being analogous to networks of national highways (Branscomb 1982) or electric power grids in countries around the world. The highway metaphor conveys the notion of new or heightened connections to different locations. Further, as with electric power grids, the physical location of the source is usually less important to the end user than the continuing availability, reliability, and cost of the itself (Anderson 1990). These two metaphors have been widely employed over the past five years in defining and promoting a shared vision of the development of strategic networks and databases. Especially since 1990, a third metaphor--the information marketplace--has attracted the imagination and support of the business community (Coleman and McLaughlin 1998). The proposed development of national spatial data infrastructures has received considerable attention from institutional suppliers, the private sector, and user communities in developed countries around the world. Evolving from earlier data-sharing and program coordination efforts, the term NSDI has come to encompass the sources, systems, network linkages, standards, and institutional issues involved in delivering spatially related from many different sources to the widest possible group of potential users. The development of common frames of reference, technology, and related standards is crucial to the evolution of a data infrastructure that can support interoperability across provinces, states, and countries. This paper outlines the current state of corresponding spatial data infrastructure initiatives in North America and the issues affecting their implementation. From Integrated Mapping to Spatial Data Infrastructure The data-sharing paradigms underpinning the development of geo-spatial networks today are not new. In the 1960s, proponents of integrated mapping practices advocated the registration, overlay, interpretation and analysis of different layers or disparate themes of spatially related data sets to the practical solution of problems in land-use planning and inventory (McHarg 1969). Through the 1970s, the multipurpose cadastre concept launched major topographic and cadastral base-mapping megaprograms to support land administration at the local, state, and federal levels across North America, Australasia, and in emerging nations (McLaughlin 1975). By the early 1980s, the notion of information as a corporate resource (Diebold 1979) emerged, and the resources management movement encouraged individual organizations to implement enterprise approaches to the collection, management, and sharing of designated hard-copy and computer-based data holdings of corporate-wide interest. …