The chapter focuses on geospatial data infrastructure. The mass of data needed for public policy planning could come from various sources. The chapter discusses the participatory approaches for the realization of open and interoperable systems and presents the geospatial data infrastructure approach to address this issue: core data sets, standards, institutional and legal arrangements, technology and capacity building. The environment in which the system is designed impacts the technological solution: legal and institutional framework, compliance with standards, availability of human resources, sustainability in terms of financial resources. The chapter examines experiences at the international level to draw best practices for implementing national and thematic GDI.
TopMain Focus Of The Chapter
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 different approaches: product-based and process-based. Both approaches have value, but contribute to the evolution, uptake and utilisation 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.
Relationships among SDI, geographic information systems (GIS), information infrastructure (II), and information and communication technologies (ICT) are evident from their cross-reference in literature and practice, we lack a thorough understanding of the nature of these relationships. Like its more general counterparts—information infrastructures, SDIs are neither created from void nor completely designed. Rather, the process of “building” is replaced by “cultivation” of social and technical installed base to gradually incorporate diverse actors in a networked environment. The cultivation approach gives sufficient flexibility to accommodate local circumstances and practices.
Effectiveness of SDI depends on ICT, II and GIS; effectiveness of GIS is determined by both ICT and SDI. Rather than treating them in isolation, the effective use of each element can, in fact, be enhanced when we apply a more holistic and interactive approach that draws on their complementarities and interdependences.