Thinking Outside the Disciplinary Box in Coping with Dilemmas in Geoinformation Management for Public Policy

Abstract

AbstractNotwithstanding optimistic rhetoric about integrating geospatial data from different sources and supporting good governance, much of the literature on geoinformation management is limited to a technical orientation with a positivist paradigm. Complex geoinformation management, like public policy, must go beyond these boundaries. The article calls attention to the underexposed role of dilemmas in geoinformation management and how to cope with them. It uses lessons from the development of ‘integrated surveys’ at the former International Training Centre for Aerial Survey (ITC) in The Netherlands as an early and practical case of managing geoinformation for public policy some 40 years ago. These lessons are apparently also relevant to modern digital geoinformation management, as in SDI. Focus on public policy requires not only integration of geospatial data from different sources but also integration of geoinformation into complex decision‐making processes. This complexity probably creates dilemmas because of mutually incompatible perspectives between different actors on what is to be managed. Geoinformation management for public policy therefore requires the ability to find, over and over again, a common ground between and beyond incompatible perspectives. The article proposes a ‘transdisciplinary’ framing of geoinformation management to support the required thinking outside the box.