Development Of Spatial Data Infrastructure Research Articles

The Role of Institutional Mechanisms in Spatial Data Infrastructure Development that Supports Decision-making

Improved economic, social and environmental decision-making are principal objectives for investing in the development of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) at all political and administrative levels. Indeed, Resolution 7 of the recent 5th Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference in Cartagena, Colombia (GSDI, 2001) argued that the purpose of the GSDI is to improve the availability, accessibility, and applicability of spatial information for decisionmaking. While accepting the development of institutional mechanisms to support decisionmaking by promoting the availability and accessibility of spatial information as part of SDI institutional frameworks, many institutional mechanisms fall short of addressing the application of spatial data to decison-making. From an institutional perspective, the motivation for SDI implementation is the impracticality of a single organisation producing and maintaining the wide variety of data and models needed to inform many decisions, resulting in a need for sharin...

Fundamental partnerships driving spatial data infrastructure development within Australia

Recent models of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) are overly simplistic and fail to address the dynamic nature, complexity inter- and intra-jurisdictional nature, and the important role of partnerships. There is a need by governments and administrators to better understand the complex nature of SDIs to facilitate implementation of this form of infrastructure in an information society. This paper aims to build upon current SDI research at local, state and regional levels to better understand the complex and multidimensional nature at a national level, while building on the principles of Hierarchical Spatial Reasoning (HSR) theory. To date, little work has been undertaken on mapping these partnerships particularly at the national level within a country that is a federation of states. This paper will introduce the notion that better understanding of the partnerships that support SDI will enable administrators of spatial information to implement this type of infrastructure into the future. The paper will a...

Future directions for SDI development

Understanding the role of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) in the society is important to acceptance of the concept and its alignment with spatial industry objectives. Much has been done to describe and understand the components and operation of different aspects of SDIs and their integration into the spatial data community. However, what is often miss-understood is that the role SDI plays is by necessity greater than the sum of individual components of SDI and stakeholder groups.SDI is fundamentally about facilitation and coordination of the exchange and sharing of spatial data between stakeholders in the spatial data community. To this end, the authors propose that the roles of SDI have been pursued through two different approaches: product- and process-based. Both approaches have value, but contribute to the evolution, uptake and utilization of the SDI concept in different ways. They provide different frameworks for dealing with SDI mandates for the objectives of spatial data access and sharing.This paper reviews the nature and concept of SDI, including the components, which have helped to build the current understanding about the importance of an infrastructure to support the interactions of the spatial data community. Several examples of how SDIs have been described are offered to aid understanding of their complexity. The need for descriptions to represent the discrepancies between the role and deliverables of an SDI, and thus, contribute to a simpler, but dynamic, understanding of the complexity of the SDI concept, are postulated. The transition between the understanding of SDIs from product-based to process-based approaches is investigated, with a review of the positions taken by current SDI initiatives throughout the world. A model of how these approaches provide a framework to meet the mandates of the relevant jurisdictions is proposed, and factors contributing to the success of such positions in the future are discussed.

Spatial data infrastructures for cities in developing countries

Abstract The cities of the developing world face major problems in managing growth and their urban infrastructure. The experiences of cities in the developed world have usually proved inappropriate in developing countries and consequently new and innovative solutions are continually being explored for these cities. Geographic information systems and the underlying spatial data infrastructures appear to offer significant potential to assist in managing human settlements in developing countries. In examining the status of spatial data infrastructures in developing countries, the first part of the paper compares cities in developing countries to those in the developed world. It then highlights issues facing developing countries in establishing spatial data infrastructures to support efficient urban land management. The paper describes the Bangkok Land Information System as an example of a city attempting to use spatial information technologies to manage the urban environment. This case study, together with the experience of the authors, are used to describe generic issues involved in the development of spatial data infrastructures for cities in similar socio-economic conditions. The paper provides a technical and institutional framework for the development of spatial data infrastructures for cities in developing countries. The paper concludes by suggesting that simple, low cost, project oriented, easily maintained and user-friendly spatial information technologies have the best chance of success.

The scheme for the database building and updating of 1∶10 000 digital elevation models

The National Bureau of Surveying and Mapping of China has planned to speed up the development of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) in the coming few years. This SDI consists of four types of digital products, i. e., digital orthophotos, digital elevation models, digital line graphs and digital raster graphs. For the DEM, a scheme for the database building and updating of 1∶10 000 digital elevation models has been proposed and some experimental tests have also been accomplished. This paper describes the theoretical (and/or technical) background and reports some of the experimental results to support the scheme. Various aspects of the scheme such as accuracy, data sources, data sampling spatial resolution, terrain modeling, data organization, etc are discussed.