ABSTRACTS

Parallel Session 1.1
National Experiences: Europe/USA
Moderator: Heinz Brueggemann, Cologne District Government, Bonn, Germany

Spatial Data Infrastructure at the SMA in Slovenia (246)
Irena Azman, Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia, Tomaz Petek, Republic of Slovenia

The Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia (SMA) is a body within the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning. The scope of the activities of the SMA includes the assignments of the national land survey service, which include the creation, administration and updating of databases in the field of the basic geodetic system, real estate, state border, spatial units and house numbers, and in the field of the topographic and cartographic system. The SMA is responsible for providing reference spatial data, which enable the referencing, and linking of other phenomena and objects into space as well as their displaying and understanding. Spatial data are an important component of decision and policy making in a number of fields. They are also important in connection with other data to which they contribute a spatial element, thus creating high added-value data.
The SMA information system comprises the production system, which primarily obtains and processes data, and the distribution system, which distributes valid spatial data either directly into other information systems or to end users through e-services. The establishment of the distribution system was dictated by the user demands for up-to-date, high quality, standardized and quickly accessible geodetic data. The distribution system thus enables a quick and secure access to interoperable data from various spatial databases. The distribution system represents SMA's spatial data infrastructure. It is the foundation for the functioning of the e-services, which use the SMA spatial data; additionally, it enables the exporting of data into other information systems. Data exporting is thus possible through online services i.e. e-services and in special cases also through previously agreed upon and designated interfaces.
The Land Cadastre organisation in Slovenia would like to provide state of the art services to the real property and land information market within the e-government framework by co-operating in the building of national and European Spatial Data Infrastructures. In those fields we saw some new services and new opportunities. There are some new combinations of services/products/data on land market related with real estate valuation activities.
The spatial data distribution system comprises all the elements specified by the INSPIRE directive (metadata, spatial databases and services, online services and technologies, agreements on co-use, access and use, and in part updating and monitoring mechanisms, processes and procedures). As the system for providing basic reference spatial data, it represents the backbone for the future development of the spatial data infrastructure in the country.
In addition to the description of the implementing of the spatial data infrastructure at SMA and the SMA's experiences with providing data to users this article will also provide a comparison of the SMA infrastructure elements (data, metadata, services, data access portal, pricing policy an the agreements on the use of data) with the provisions of the INSPIRE directive. It will also assess which elements of SDI are going to need to be changed or created to ensure an interoperable European infrastructure. In the article the activities, related to legal transposition of the directive INSPIRE into Slovene legislation will be described.

Data and Services Availability in Spanish NSDI (161)
Antonio Rodríguez, Instituto Geográfico Nacional Spain, Paloma Abad, José Ángel Alonso, Alejandra Sánchez, Carlos González, Spain

National Spanish Data Infrastructure (IDEE), with a national Geoportal opened in 2004, is built upon the contribution of a wide community of actors from academia, public and private sector, growing and cooperating for more than five years. At present, it can be considered a mature and consistent collective project, supported mainly by the National and Regional Spanish governments, with more than 50 nodes publishing more than 300 Web services and 3,000 layers of data available covering all themes in INSPIRE Annexes I and II.
From our point of view, we are in the middle of a big conceptual revolution from a data-centric model of GI management based on GIS's, as isolated, centric and self-sufficient systems, to a new services-centric model based on SDIs, as open, flexible, distributed and collective projects. In this new paradigm, the stress is put on the set of public, free and open services available as very basic components allowing building added-value services, applications, geoportals and web pages based on them. NMAs play an essential role providing very basic and fundamental services publishing reference and guaranteed data to be used as a consistent basis for all kind of thematic applications.
In this scenario, we think that the most sensible approach for users and developers having information requirements is to use and exploit firstly the set of available standard geoservices using light clients. If this kind of solutions is not enough, next step must be to use thick clients accessing to geoservices to try to get the answers needed and, just in case this way of work would not satisfactory too, to use download geoservices (free or via licensing) to get the data and exploit them in the classic GIS approach.
In this communication, data and geoservices availability in Spanish NSDI is summarised, paying special attention to two main aspects:
- The available tools to find and discover geographic data as well as geoservices: metadata catalogues describing data and services; directories of Web services and some strategies to give publicity to the available services.
- The new data policy of IGN Spain, the main and reference geographic data provider stakeholder in Spain.
A recently approved legal framework (FOM 956/2008, March 31st), defines a set of very basic data, the named National Reference Geographic Equipment, to be freely exploited with the only condition of mentioning the IGN's authorship. The rest of data and services IGN produces are also free for non-commercial purposes. We are trying to promote this data policy among Spanish public data producers and services providers.
Regarding data and services sharing among public authorities in Spain, a Royal Decree (RD 1545/2007, November 23th) defines a framework to do it just offering to public authorities producing data the possibility of joining the National Cartographic System by means of a generic collaboration agreement.

Creating Synergy Between INSPIRE and E-Government in Denmark (103)
Ulla Kronborg Mazzoli, National Survey and Cadastre, Denmark

Denmark has implemented Inspire in the Danish legislation in a way that links it to the ongoing e-Government initiative. The main goal is to associate the two parallel developments, in order to view the infrastructure for spatial information as an 'add on' to the e-government infrastructure and thus create synergy. It is a challenge to secure conformity and harmony between the e-government and the INSPIRE infrastructures. There are possibilities for synergy, but there is a risk for conflict due to the differences in the organisational set-up and two somewhat different architecture approaches.
The Danish e-government project is based on the idea that the responsibility for the implementation of e-Government is at the decentralized level, that consensus between stakeholders is more efficient than legislation. The set up is based on collaboration and consensus within a framework addressing common guide lines and solutions to general problems of legal, technical, and organizational nature - the "OIO framework".
That differs somewhat from the Inspire legislative set up with mandatory specifications and implementation rules concerning the development of a spatial infrastructure.
In order to convert a latent conflict into synergy a series of initiatives has been launched in Denmark with the purpose of viewing Inspire as an enabler for the e-Government development.

The Swedish National Geodata Strategy and the Geodata Project (86)
Ewa Rannestig, Lantmäteriet - The Swedish Mapping, Cadastre and Land Registration Authority, Ulf Sandgren, Sweden

The Swedish Government and Parliament has given Lantmäteriet - the Swedish Mapping, Cadastre and Land Registration Authority - a role as coordinator of the national geodata infrastructure. The responsibility comprises coordination of production, cooperation, dissemination and research and development. The responsibility also includes coordination of the implementation of EC directives related to geodata, such as Inspire. The Swedish Government has also established a Geodata Advisory Board supporting Lantmäteriet in its coordination role.
Furthermore, a National Geodata Strategy has been developed covering all strategic issues related to the handling of geodata in Sweden. Lantmäteriet is responsible to work out this strategy in close cooperation with the Geodata Advisory Board and other stakeholders.
The basic aim of the National Geodata Strategy is to build up a national infrastructure for geodata and encourage increased co-operation within the geodata sector. The strategy should provide guidelines for all involved parties in Sweden. It should be the platform for creating the infrastructure and for participation in the European and international collaboration in this field. The implementation of the EC directive Inspire is an important part of the strategy. A Geodata Project has been established. During a period of three years the project will create a business model and technical infrastructure for how geodata and services will be made available for Swedish society and Europe.

The U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee Story (471)
Ivan DeLoatch, Director FGDC, Douglas Nebert, USA

Since its inception in the early 1990s, the US NSDI has developed as an environment to share the development and use of geospatial data and services across government, private, and public sectors. Within the context of the federal government, a Geospatial Line of Business has been created to incorporate geospatial capabilities into government planning, operations, and acquisition to co-invest in common resources to support mission requirements of multiple agencies. To formalize the relationship between the non-federal and federal participants in the NSDI, a federal advisory group (National Geospatial Advisory Committee - NGAC) was formed in 2008 to provide advice to federal programs on geospatial activities of common interest. This presentation will describe the anticipated outcomes of the Line of Business and the NGAC in realizing a requirements-driven NSDI.

Data and Services Availability in Spanish NSDI (161)
Antonio Rodriguez, Paloma Abad, Jose Angel Alonso, Alejandra Sanchez, Carlos Gonzalez, Sebastian Mas, Esther Diez, Carolina Soteres, and Hugo Potti, Instituto Geografico Nacional Spain, Spain

National Spanish Data Infrastructure (IDEE), with a national Geoportal opened in 2004, is built upon the contribution of a wide community of actors from academia, public and private sector, growing and cooperating for more than five years. At present, it can be considered a mature and consistent collective project, supported mainly by the National and Regional Spanish governments, with more than 50 nodes publishing more than 300 Web services and 3,000 layers of data available covering all themes in INSPIRE Annexes I and II.
From our point of view, we are in the middle of a big conceptual revolution from a data-centric model of GI management based on GIS?s, as isolated, centric and self-sufficient systems, to a new services-centric model based on SDIs, as open, flexible, distributed and collective projects. In this new paradigm, the stress is put on the set of public, free and open services available as very basic components allowing building added-value services, applications, geoportals and web pages based on them. NMAs play an essential role providing very basic and fundamental services publishing reference and guaranteed data to be used as a consistent basis for all kind of thematic applications.
In this scenario, we think that the most sensible approach for users and developers having information requirements is to use and exploit firstly the set of available standard geoservices using light clients. If this kind of solutions is not enough, next step must be to use thick clients accessing to geoservices to try to get the answers needed and, just in case this way of work would not satisfactory too, to use download geoservices (free or via licensing) to get the data and exploit them in the classic GIS approach.
In this communication, data and geoservices availability in Spanish NSDI is summarised, paying special attention to two main aspects:
- The available tools to find and discover geographic data as well as geoservices: metadata catalogues describing data and services; directories of Web services and some strategies to give publicity to the available services.
- The new data policy of IGN Spain, the main and reference geographic data provider stakeholder in Spain.
A recently approved legal framework (FOM 956/2008, March 31st), defines a set of very basic data, the named National Reference Geographic Equipment, to be freely exploited with the only condition of mentioning the IGN?s authorship. The rest of data and services IGN produces are also free for non-commercial purposes. We are trying to promote this data policy among Spanish public data producers and services providers.
Regarding data and services sharing among public authorities in Spain, a Royal Decree (RD 1545/2007, November 23th) defines a framework to do it just offering to public authorities producing data the possibility of joining the National Cartographic System by means of a generic collaboration agreement.

Parallel Session 1.2
SDI Assessment Programs and Models
Moderator: Jaap Zevenbergen, Delft University of Technology and ITC, The Netherlands

Developing a Practical Assessment Approach for SDI Based on the Multi-View SDI Assessment Framework (133)
Lukasz Grus, Wageningen University, Arnold K. Bregt, Watse Castelein,The Netherlands; Joep Crompvoets, Belgium; Abbas Rajabifard, Australia

In 2008, the Dutch government approved the GIDEON document as a policy aiming at the implementation of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) in the Netherlands. The execution of GIDEON should take place by pursuing seven implementation strategies which lead to the achievement of the GIDEON goals. GIDEON also expresses the need to monitor the progress of implementing its strategies and realization of its goals. Currently, the work has been started on monitoring the GIDEON implementation strategies. However, there is still a lack of knowledge and methods to monitor GIDEON goals realization. The challenge is to come up with an approach to assess to what extent these goals are achieved.
As a response to the challenge of assessing the GIDEON goals, this paper explores the possibility of using the Multi-view SDI assessment framework (Grus et al., 2007). This paper presents and discusses the method that applies the Multi-view SDI assessment framework, its indicators and measurement methods to create a GIDEON assessment approach. The method of creating a GIDEON assessment approach consists of several procedural steps: formulating specific GIDEON objectives, organizing a one-day workshop involving focus group of specific stakeholders responsible for creation and execution of NSDI, asking the workshop participants to select from a long list those indicators that best measure the achievement of each GIDEON goals. The key step of GIDEON approach is a one-day workshop. The workshop participants represented all organizations that cooperated and/or created GIDEON. The workshop consisted of two parts: first part explained the context of a challenge of assessing GIDEON, second part included participants activity to select and come to the consensus on the list of indicators that would best measure GIDEON goals realization. Additionally, the participants were asked to evaluate and express feedback on the usefulness of the method of creating GIDEON assessment approach.
The results show that several indicators that relate to specific SDI goals could be selected by a significant number of workshop participants. The indicators that have been selected are not the final ones yet, but provide a guideline and form a base of what has to be measured when assessing GIDEON goals. Involving the representatives of all parties committed to GIDEON into the process of GIDEON assessment approach creation will strengthen its robustness and acceptance. The results of the feedback form filled by each participant show that the presented method is useful or very useful to create GIDEON assessment approach. Additionally, some of the participants provided already their own indicators which are very specific for Dutch SDI monitoring.
The method presented in this research, assuming that SDI goals are defined and the organizations that participate in SDI creation are known, can be applied in any other country to develop country-specific and practical SDI assessment approach.

An Integrated Framework for the Implementation and Continuous Improvement of Spatial Data Infrastructures (193)
Ara Toomanian, Lund University, Sweden; Ali Mansourian, Iran

Development and usage of proper frameworks for implementation, evaluation and continuous improvement of SDIs is currently an important research area. The present paper addresses some techniques and methodologies from business management literature that can be used for such an aim. It first reviews Six Sigma, ABC (Activity Based Costing), BSC (Balanced Scorecard) and TQM (Total Quality Management) and then proposes an integrated framework, based on the mentioned techniques, for implementation and continuous improvement of SDIs.

Analyzing Organizational Structures and SDI Performance (306)
Ezra Dessers, K.U.Leuven, Belgium; Paul Hendriks, The Netherlands; Joep Crompvoets, Geert Van Hootegem, Belgium

Although SDI researchers widely agree that organizational aspects are of fundamental importance to setup a successful SDI, this awareness has not yet lead to much substantial research on the subject. SDI scholars seem to experience difficulties in covering the organizational issues, and often advocate a more intensive contribution by organization experts. This paper applies organizational theory concepts to interpret SDI development issues, and is divided into four parts.
The first part deals with a review of SDI-literature, in order to show that many organizations still have problems with SDI adoption and integration in their workflows.
The second part surveys and evaluates the treatment of organizational aspects in SDI literature. Most approaches seem to be rather organization-neutral, in the sense that the SDI is designed and developed with little attention for the characteristics of the organizations involved. Some recent publications recognize the importance of organizational setups. However, they tend to be either very generalized, or very focussed on fragmented issues like the quality of leadership or the importance of raising awareness. Occasionally, organizational culture receives a more profound attention.
In the third part organization theory is introduced to demonstrate that the structural dimension of organizations is fundamental to understand, analyse, and respond to the needs and problems of these organizations. This structural dimension could be described using the division of labour concept. In general, a distinction can be made between, on the one hand, organisational structures that combine strong functional specialization with bureaucratic control structures and, on the other hand, organizational structures that are network-based and process-oriented. In addition, a growing number of business processes runs through a chain of multiple organizations. Apart from the make or buy question, different forms of inter-organizational arrangements appear, which structures can also be described using the division of labour concept. These arrangements can either be structured in a more hierarchical fashion, or in a more collaborative, networked way. This paper demonstrates that this structural dimension, both at the organizational and the inter-organizational level, is almost completely missing in SDI literature.
However, the structural dimension in particular is relevant for SDI performance, as is presented in part four. The suitability of a specific structure depends on the objectives and demands that have to be attained. The general evolution in the public sector and in the economic environment confronts organizations with growing demands for flexibility. In addition, information use and exchange becomes more important in modern society, as the emergence of SDI-initiatives shows, which also raises the need for flexibility. Bureaucratic and functionally divided (inter-) organizational forms are expected to have problems handling these demands, while process-oriented, network-based (inter-) organizational forms are supposed to perform better.
This paper ends with the formulation of the hypothesis that SDI performance will be influenced by (inter-)organizational structures, and their mutual compatibility with specific SDI-initiatives. This hypothesis will be tested in a series of case studies in 2009, which will be performed in the context of SPATIALIST, a multi-disciplinary research project on SDI and public sector innovation in Flanders (Belgium).

Organizational and Cultural Assessment of SDIs: the Introduction of a New Model (52)
Anouk Huisman, NIROV, Bastiaan van Loenen, The Netherlands

In a geographic information infrastructure (GII) several development stages may be identified each with unique characteristics. In a first attempt to model SDI development from an organizational perspective, Kok and Van Loenen (2005) developed an SDI maturity matrix, which was further developed in Van Loenen (2006). Although the model has been subject of study of several Master students (De Graaf 2006, Visser 2008, Kurvers 2007, Eelderink 2006) and has been successfully applied in several case studies, it is still in its early development stages. This paper will further develop the model by including the cultural dimension as presented by Hofstede (1980). The paper draws on the research accomplished by and presented in Huisman van Zijp (2008).
Through combination of the SDI theory of the product-based model, which focuses on data exchange, and the process-based model, which focuses on the networking qualities of an SDI, a new classification can be made: the hybrid model. This hybrid model consists of the components social system, data and technology. This paper will focus on the social system of an SDI.
The characteristics of the social system strongly influence the approach for developing the SDI (Rajabifard et al. 2001). The social system consists of all the structural and cultural characteristics of an organization. These characteristics can be displayed in a SDI maturity matrix. This matrix is based on a model by Kok en van Loenen (2005) combined with the 4D model by Hofstede (1980). This combined maturity matrix will be presented.
The SDI theory was used to analyze the SDI of Natuurmonumenten (Naturemonuments). The phase of the social system was assessed with help of the combined maturity matrix. Natuurmonumenten can be classified in between the phases Exchange and Standardization and Intermediary of the grow matrix. Especially the components Vision and Communication need to be developed further.

Evaluation of Stakeholders Perception of Nigeria NSDI using Technological Frame Theory (154)
Olukunle Ogundele, Regional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys (RECTAS), Ganiyu Agbaje, Nigeria

The theory of technological frames is useful in analyzing and understanding diverse meanings and expectations attached by different stakeholder groups around information and communication technologies (ICTs) sought to be introduced in organizations or an information system (IS) that combine multiple organization together such as NSDI (Puri, 2006).
It is very important to acknowledge the perception of stakeholders in institutionalizing NSDI as this will provide an insight into what both providers and users of geo-information (GI) know and deduce from the concept of SDI. However, this is a social aspect of SDI research which attracted little attention from researchers (Georgiadou and Harvey, 2007). The concept of measuring the perception of stakeholders in IS, one of such is the Technological Frame which has not been widely used in studying NSDI. Technological frame is useful in analyze the meanings, assumptions, and expectations espoused by different stakeholders in context of the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) (Puri, 2006).
In this paper, an attempt was made to analyse stakeholders' interest, knowledge and value for NSDI in Nigeria using technological frame theory. This is to identify their perception as one of the factors to be considered in NSDI implementation in Nigeria. This paper will serve as confirmatory for earlier researches and also create a keyhole view into the situation of NSDI development and acceptance in Nigeria. More importantly, findings from this research is a helpful information that is appropriate for National Research and Development Agency (NARSDA) which is the custodian of NSDI in Nigeria in managing collaboration amongst stakeholders and setting coordination strategies.
Moreso, this paper will provide useful information for other African countries in similar stage of NSDI development as well as those that are just contemplating implementing it.


Parallel Session 1.3
Land Administration
Moderator: Stig Enemark, President, International Federation of Surveyors (FIG)

The Establishment of the Cadastral Parcel as a Core Element in the European SDI - Lessons Learned and View Towards Inspiring Applications (74)
Amalia Velasco Martín-Varés, Spanish Directorate General for Cadastre, Spain; Martin Salzmann, The Netherlands

In May 2009 the European SDI (ESDI) will be in place through the implementation of the INSPIRE-directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community). The cadastral parcel is one of its core elements. The parcel provides the ESDI with a unique large-scale basis. Establishing the parcel as a core element in the ESDI has not been a trivial task.
The parcel has always been the spatial core element in national land administration systems. Regulations concerning its use are governed by laws and rules in over 30 jurisdictions.
Making the parcel a core element in an SDI presented the cadastre and land registry organisations with a challenge, having traditionally been focused primarily on land administration.
At the same time the cadastral parcel provides numerous opportunities for linking and using environmental, agricultural, planning and cadastral information. Having a available the cadastral parcel as a geographical object boosts the operational potentialities of the ESDI at large scales.
This paper gives an overview of the evolution of the cadastral from its traditional role in the legal domain to being a uniformly defined spatial object throughout Europe. We give insight how the process has resulted in the INSPIRE data specifications. Essential in this process was the willingness and conviction of the numerous national agencies that is was necessary to consider the parcel as a common spatial object; the insight that a parcel in land administration and in an ESDI are closely related but serve different purposes and the resulting focus on the use of the parcel as a locator. The INSPIRE-directive has given this process a tremendous boost.
We consider implementation issues (define what can be achieved in the foreseeable future instead of the maximum solution) and modelling issues.
Moreover we will focus on the potential use of the cadastral parcel in the ESDI. During its development a review of potential uses was executed, the INSPIRE-process has been driven by use-cases and also related directives (like the soil- and flood-directive) are sometimes already explicitely based on the assumption that the parcel is part of the SDI (e.g. its use for registering contaminated soil). In future it also provides the basis for a possible harmonization of European cadastres and (agricultural) subsidies on land use.
We think that this process can be exemplary for many other harmonization processes in SDI's worldwide. 27 member states in the European Union have been able to reach agreement in a field that always has been seen primarily as national interest, but in the end has many other international benefits.

Land Administration as a Cornerstone in the Global Spatial Information Infrastructure (148)
Peter van Oosterom, TU Delft, Arco Groothedde, Christiaan Lemmen, Paul van der Molen, Harry Uitermark, The Netherlands

In [1] it was argued that an effective (spatial) information infrastructure (SII) can be achieved by the use of authentic registers (or 'key registers') to store key data that is available for integration and multiple use. This was illustrated with an example from The Netherlands, were it became clear that the SII is part of a larger Information Infrastructure (II) with also non-spatial key registers (containing data on persons, companies, etc.).
In this contribution we will further extend this approach from a national Information Infrastructure to an international Information Infrastructure. Land administration (LA) is considered to be a cornerstone, that is, a indispensable part of the (S)II - besides foundations such as reference system(s).
International standardization of relevant concepts as addresses and as the domain of LA are a condition for development and implementation. The development of the Land Administration Domain Model (ISO 19152 - a third working draft is available in this moment - December 2008) will be worked out to demonstrate the relevance of domain standards in relation to international information infrastructures.
Different examples will be used in this context; from UN-HABITAT, UN-FAO, and the US Department of State (about Afghanistan post-war recovery), all institutions with a high interest in the LADM. And, of course there will be attention to the European perspective: INSPIRE cadastral parcels (geometry) and EULIS (administrative/legal).
The relation between land use, land use change and forestry with respect to carbon storage and emission reduction is worked out: land tenure and land management have an eminent role in relation to (possible solutions for) climatological change. The paper also refers to the evolving voluntary retail market of carbon credits. To promote carbon sequestration and emission reduction, land policy and associated land instruments like market regulation, land use planning, land taxation and land reform should include climate proof goals. This requires international Information Infrastrucures including land rights and land holders.
Some important implementation issues will be discussed; e.g. how top manage the different levels of accuracy for LA applications and for small scale applications; integration of 3D Cadastre's and marine Cadastre's, integration spatial-administrative, 'map-matching' between countries, a high degree of up-to-date-ness, global access to LA data, integration with surveys (sources) and resulting into cadastral index maps.
Throughout the paper the concept of 'Land Administration levels of maturity' will be used and illustrated with examples. The following four phases of maturity are identified: 1. standards, 2. connectivity, 3. integration, 4. network (the difference between ad. 3 and ad. 4 is the fact that in ad. 4 different key-players with relevant information sets work together in a networked approach cross sector). When moving towards the higher phases, with higher value and efficiency, none of the previous phases can be omitted, as the sub sequent phase builds on the previous phase. The step towards phase 4 means an important mindshift. It will place the spatial information infrastructure in the context of current relevant social themes. E.g. Public safety, environmental issues, spatial planning. Within these themes many different players, information sets, sectors must work together to face the social challenges.. It should be noted that the levels of maturity also apply to other (information) sectors than just the land administration.
[1] Arco Groothedde, Christiaan Lemmen, Paul van der Molen and Peter van Oosterom. A Standardized Land Administration Domain Model as Part of the (Spatial) Information Infrastructure. In: P. van Oosterom and S. Zlatanova (Eds.); Creating Spatial Information Infrastructures, Towards the Spatial Semantic Web, CRC Press, 2008, pp. 129-150

The RRR Toolbox: A Conceptual Model for Improving Spatial Data Management in SDIs (200)
Rohan Bennett, The University of Melbourne, Abbas Rajabifard, Australia

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) aim to link people with spatial services and data. Increasingly, SDI initiatives are focusing on a particular type of data: large-scale people relevant data. Examples include the ownership parcel layer and built environment information. To improve the management of these essential SDI layers, consideration of land parcels and their administration is needed. In particular, the complex array of rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRRs) applying to land needs to be understood. Moreover, the contemporary models of RRRs management must also be understood. To this end, this paper introduces the RRR Toolbox, a holistic framework for creating and managing land interests. The nature and design of RRRs are discussed along with their problematic management. This leads to a description of the development and components of the RRR Toolbox. The dualism of RRRs, being both spatial and land based, makes the RRR Toolbox highly applicable to SDI. Indeed, seven of the models eight components are found to be relevant in the SDI context.

Land Administration: Managing Rights, Restrictions, and Responsibilities in Land (470)
Stig Enemark, President, International Federation of Surveyors, FIG and Professor in Land Management, Aalborg University, Denmark

All countries have to deal with the management of land. They have to deal with the four functions of land tenure, land value, land use, and land development in some way or another. National capacity may be advanced and combine the activities in one conceptual framework supported by sophisticated ICT models. More likely, capacity will involve very fragmented and basically analogue approaches. Different countries will also put varying emphasis on each of the four functions, depending on their cultural basis and level of economic development.
Today the accepted theoretical framework for all land administration systems is delivery of sustainable development - the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental development, together with the fourth requirement of good governance. Land Administration Systems are the basis for conceptualizing rights, restrictions and responsibilities related to people, policies and places.
Property rights are normally concerned with ownership and tenure whereas restrictions usually control use and activities on land. Responsibilities relate more to a social, ethical commitment or attitude to environmental sustainability and good husbandry.
The paper provides an overall understanding of the concept of land administration systems for dealing with rights, restrictions, and responsibilities in future spatially enabled government.
Finally the paper presents the role of FIG - the International Federation of Surveyors - with regard to building the capacity in this area and responding to the global agenda.

Issues of Creating SDI for the Cadastre in Russia (144)
Natalia Vandysheva, FCC Zemlya, Vladimir Tikhonov, Russian Federation; Marcel Reuvers, The Netherlands

According to the Directive of the Russian Federation (RF) Government of 21.08.2006, the "Concept of the creation and development of spatial data infrastructure of the Russian Federation" has been adopted. In this paper this RF Directive of 21.08.2006 is compared with the INSPIRE Directive. The INSPIRE experiences are shared with the Russian approach of the last few years. We will discuss the SDI-developments for the coming years.


Parallel Session 1.4
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services
Moderator: Douglas D. Nebert, Clearinghouse Coordinator, Federal Geographic Data Commmittee, USA

Development of a Service Oriented Architecture Framework for National Geographic Information System in Taiwan (61)
Chih-Hong Sun, Taiwan Geographic Information Center, Fui-Yu Kuo, Min-Fun Lien

Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is currently being set up with regions, countries, and across national borders to facilitate management and access to geospatial information. GIServices include GIS data services and geoprocessing services which are the main components of SDI to provide remote, standard, and reusable geospatial data and function services. The information, metadata or input/output data description, would all be recorded in catalogue services for users to discover suitable GIServices. This paper introduces the current effort in Taiwan government to develop a service oriented architecture framework for National Geographic Information System (NGIS). The NGIS is the system of geographic information systems for the whole nation that serves as a comprehensive repository of the geospatial data pertaining to all the government agencies of the nation. It integrates different types of digital geographic information to establish the spatial data infrastructure for information sharing. From the information technology perspective, NGIS serves as a multipurpose geographic information system, whose scope includes the entire nation. The nation's government agencies, professionals and researchers involved in spatial analysis can retrieve, store, analyze, and perform multifarious tasks using the digital spatial data available over the network. Therefore, the establishment of the NGIS is an indispensable infrastructure establishment for a country like Taiwan, which is moving towards the objective of 'Digital Taiwan'.

Testing of Web Map Services (330)
Jiri Horak, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Jiri Ardielli, Czech Republic

Network services represent a key part of INSPIRE. They shall be available to the public and accessible via the Internet. The paper proposes a way how to test and measure the availability of network view services (namely WMS) for end users. Map servers of two main providers of Czech spatial network services according INSPIRE (CENIA, Czech Environmental Information Agency, and COSMC, Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre) has been tested using scalability and performance testing (load tests). Scalability and performance testing (load tests) helps to understand how the system will handle the load caused by many concurent users. Any provider is able to test a latency of application, but for end user it is important to measure the overall latency (a measurement of the time it takes application to finish processing a request) and also other characteristics like concurency (measurement of the influence when more the one user operates web-application), availability (a measurement of the time a web-enabled application is avaliable to take request) and performance (average of the amount of time that passes between failures).
The results also enable to describe stress capabilities which mean to find the breakpoint of a site/web-based application performance against the maximum user load.
The avalaibility, latency, web transactions, performance (including number of failures) and concurency were measured during one month of repeated accesses using same scenarios and different number of concurrent virtual users. Better performance and benchmaring were obtained from testing of COSMC map services, where the latency is bellow 1 s, the overall performance is stable and not depending on the number of virtual users (for the given maximum number).

An Analysis of Technology Choices for Data Grids in a Spatial Data Infrastructure (99)
Serena Coetzee, University of Pretoria, Judith Bishop, South Africa

The concept of grid computing has permeated all areas of distributed computing, changing the way in which distributed systems are designed, developed and implemented. Data grids enable the sharing of data in a virtual organization and are typically implemented for data federation in data-intensive environments. So far, they have been applied to traditional data (text, image, sound). We present a scenario that describes for the first time how data grids can be applied to enable the sharing of address data in a spatial data infrastructure (SDI). Consolidating spatial data from distributed heterogeneous sources into a single centralized dataset requires, amongst others, a considerable human coordination effort. A data grid consolidates data directly from the distributed sources, thereby eliminating the effort. We present a reference model called Compartimos (Spanish for 'we share'), that is based on the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) but is customized for sharing address data in an SDI, and we analyze existing technologies, such as the Globus Toolkit, ISO 19100 standards and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web service implementation specifications, for Compartimos. This paper advances the mutual understanding between data grids and SDIs and sheds light on a future technological solution that could overcome some of the data sharing impediments that are experienced in SDIs today. Finally, results from the analysis and future directions for research are discussed.

Towards a Grid-Enabled SDI: Matching the Paradigms of OGC Web Services and Grid Computing (174)
Alexander Padberg, University of Bonn, Kiehle Christian, Germany

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) have been widely adopted within the last years to provide access to spatial data and offer components to visualize maps based on distributed data. The implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications adds a layer of abstraction and interoperability to share and use data and spatial information among different communities. Integration of OGC-compliant interfaces into commercial off the shelf geospatial software is an indicator for the maturity of the standards beyond scientific scope. Whereas the usage of distributed data inside local Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is widely adopted, the distributed processing of data is not yet a common task. The recently defined Web Processing Service (WPS) specification strives to distribute geoprocessing functionality among the web.
The paradigm of Grid computing has evolved parallel to distributed spatial information systems. The according standardization organization, the Open Grid Forum (OGF), is responsible for the development of specifications for Grid computing in general. A memorandum of understanding between the OGC and the OGF has been signed in 2007 and should foster the information interchange as well as the development of specifications for spatial applications on the Grid. This way the geographic community is enabled to benefit from the superior storage and computing capacities of Grid infrastructures.
The process of actually matching these two technological approaches leads to several conceptual and technical challenges, since both
specification baselines differ significantly. The current paper examines the conceptual differences between the paradigms of OGC Web Services and Grid computing and provides an integration approach to overcome the gaps between SDIs and Grid infrastructures. Using the example of a grid-enabled WPS the steps needed to utilize the computing power of the Grid from an OGC context are explained. Furthermore an outlook on the potential of other grid-enabled OGC Web Services will be given together with an analysis on the challenges that arise during their implementations.

INSPIRE: Challenges and Solutions for Data and Service Providers (178)
Christian Elfers, con terra GmbH, Clemens Portele, Germany

Interoperable and harmonised geospatial information is one of the core pillars of INSPIRE, with the overall goal to provide a more effective way of accessing and using geospatial information. Data specifications are being developed for the spatial data themes addresses, administrative units, cadastral parcels, geographic names, hydrography, protected sites, and transport networks as well as rules for coordinate reference and geographical grid systems. These data specifications are based on a common Generic Conceptual Model which in turn is based on the ISO 19100 series and the interoperability requirements stated in the INSPIRE Directive.
Beside the interoperability of geospatial information from different data sources in Europe, the interoperable access to this information is crucial for bringing the European INSPIRE infrastructure into life. This is achieved through so called INSPIRE Network Services with an emphasis on the core service types for accessing data: View and Download Services. Both Network Service types are based on the relevant well-known OGC standards, namely Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS), but amend them with additional capabilities to address requirements from the INSPIRE Directive. These include a SOAP binding, multilingual support, and security.
The INSPIRE Directive does not require that new data is captured, instead it aims at making the existing data available - in an interoperable way by applying the INSPIRE data specifications and through INSPIRE Network Services. The necessary tasks typically will have to be carried out by data and service providers responsible for the maintenance and provision of the corresponding datasets. The management of the existing source datasets has already been established - usually with a substantial investment to set up applications and information systems as well as for the required organisational structures and business processes. Thus, the opening-up of the datasets for INSPIRE requires an approach that protects the previous investments and establishes the necessary additional processes in a sustainable way. This poses significant challenges from an organisational, technical and financial perspective. Data and service providers will be confronted with the question: how can the existing data be provided in an INSPIRE conformant way whilst keeping the existing infrastructure - on which the current users and their business processes depend and rely upon?
This paper describes a solution pattern and applicable software technologies to address these challenges. Using real-world examples, e.g. from the testing of the INSPIRE Annex I data specifications, it illustrates how the process of getting ready for INSPIRE can be much more painless.


Parallel Session 1.5
GSDI Retrospective: Progress to Date
Moderator: John McLaughlin, President, University of New Brunswick

Speakers and participants in the very earliest GSDI global meetings in Bonn Germany in 1996 and other early GSDI conferences are being invited to provide short responses to the following three questions: (1) As envisioned in the mid 1990's, what were the primary objectives to be achieved through the global development of spatial data infrastructure? (2) To what extent have those original visions been achieved, fallen short, or been exceeded? (3) Based on successes and mistakes from the past as well as emerging trends and knowledge advancements, what core principles or directions would you now urge for consideration by those continuing to advance and develop SDI? After the panelists each address a question, comments will be solicited from the audience on the same question. Among those attending or speaking at early conferences and invited to sit on this 2009 panel include John McLaughlin (moderator), Michael Brand, Peter Holland, Al Stevens and Henry Tom.


Parallel Session 1.6
Environment, Health and INSPIRE
Moderator: Paul Smits, JRC, European Commission

The European Commission adopted in 2003 a European Union Strategy on Environment and Health, with the overall aim to reduce diseases caused by environmental factors in Europe. This was followed up by the European Environment and Health Action Plan 2004-2010 which proposes an Integrated Information System on Environment and Health. Activities for the development of this system are linked to work on INSPIRE.
Since Dr. John Snow's first analytic use of spatial information for the 1854 cholera outbreak in Soho, London, geographic information has systematically been used for surveillance, networking and modelling of health-related information. The aim of this session is to highlight some of the recent activities in this area at national and European levels.
Among presentations in this session will include:
- Innovations for Environmental Monitoring and Health; Systems with Synergies for Policies and Research presented by Andreas N. Skouloudis, JRC, European Commission
- Human Biomonitoring and Environmental Health Impact Assessment: Spatial Implications presented by Roel Smolders, Environmental Risks and Health Department, VITO, Belgium
- GIS related activities applied to communicable diseases at the EU level presented by Tommi Asikainen, Scientific Advice Unit in the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control


Parallel Session 1.7 (Diamond Room 1)
Geo-Information Models: State of Play and Future Developments
Moderator: Martin Peersmann, GBKN Large scale base map of The Netherlands

In 2005 a base model for geographic information in the Netherlands was published (NEN3610). The model consists of a modeling framework (based on the ISO19100 series) and a collection of base classes. In the following years many organizations have built their models in conformance to this base model (IMRO, TOP10NL, IMTOP, ...). The implementation of the base model strongly enhances the operational aspect of a successful National Geographic Register and related services. Moreover the base model approach has prepared the Netherlands for implementation of a similar approach followed in the INSPIRE data specifications. Based on the experiences and national and international developments we are renewing the base model, this will be finished in 2009.
In this session we share our experiences with the base model of the last few years and give an overview of our proposed changes. The change proposals come from the following three main sources:
- The organizations that used NEN3610 for modeling were asked for change proposals.
- All current models were compared to see whether there were more opportunities for harmonization.
- NEN3610 was compared with Inspire to see how NEN3610 could be harmonized with Inspire.
The propose changed include the following:
- The introduction of design patterns as a way to harmonize data models.
- How to handle the fact that all organizations have a different way of looking at the world and hence splitting the same world into different classes.
- Integration of semenatic decisions and implementation decisions in one model.
In this session we will discuss how base models can be of benefit for the INSPIRE project and vice versa. Speakers in this session will include Wilko Quak, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, Paul Janssen, Geonovum, The Netherlands and Marcel Reuvers, Geonovum, The Netherlands


Parallel Session 1.8
Natural Disasters
Moderator:

Recent local and transnational disasters have demonstrated to the European Commission and the Member States of the European Union the paramount importance of efficient risk management. The prevention and response to such natural disasters request more and more to pool efforts and competencies from different thematic sectors and technical disciplines of the individual EU Member States towards a common action. Harmonisation and integration of geospatial data products is essential in this context. The aim of this session is to illustrate the need for INSPIRE in the context of systems for the prediction and mitigation of natural disasters
Among presentations to be included in this session include A Comprehensive System for Monitoring Forest Fires at the European Level: The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) presented by Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, JRC, European Commission, PREMFIRE as an example of a National Implementation of an OGC and INSPIRE based product for Forest Fire Combat Management presented by João Romana, The Pan-European Flood Early Warning System (EFAS) and the Need for INSPIRE presented by Ad de Roo, JRC, European Commission and Cross border flood hazard maps for Luxembourg and Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany) – Experiences from the TIMIS flood project and I.A. Leiss, Ernst Basler + Partner AG, M. Wagner, Ministére des Travaux Publics Luxembourg, R. Schernikau, Ministerium für Umwelt, Forsten und Verbraucherschutz Rheinland-Pfalz, J. Elsener Metz Ernst Basler + Partner AG, Zollikon, Switzerland


Parallel Session 1.9
Mash-Up the SDI
Moderators/Speakers: Peter ter Haar, Director of Products, Ordnance Survey, Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist, Google, UK

This session called 'Mash-up the SDI' refers to the gap between 1) the fast-moving, ever dynamic voluntary geographic information made available through mash-up technology (e.g. content combined with Google Maps) and 2) the slower-moving but not less dynamic geographic information provided by government and government-related institutions. For this last group Mash-up technology can be an outcome, as shown by Ordnance Survey, Great-Britain's national mapping agency. The agency launched a free service this January that allows users to build mash-ups of Ordnance Survey mapping. Available from soureforge.net, the service allows Ordnance Survey data licensees to build commercial applications for the Web. This session is hosted by two key players in both approaches: Peter ter Haar (Ordnance Survey) and Ed Parsons (Google). The session will draw on best practices, defines challenges and brings about actions to be able to Mash-up the SDI. Topics to be covered include mash-up technology, mash-up examples in commercial, voluntary and governmental environments and building bridges between government and business.


Parallel Session 1.10
GSDI Legal and Socioeconomic Roundtable
Moderator: Roger Longhorn and Kate Lance

This roundtable is being hosted and organized by the GSDI Legal and Socieconomic Committee to review legal, ethical, economic, societal and policy topics of interest to the SDI community, solicit input from the community on these issues, and to engage GSDI 11 attendees on a continuing basis in developing and achieving a work plan related to these issues. Among items on the proposed work plan might include development of workshops, teaching materials (written, videos, etc.) and scholarly publications. All interested parties are invited to join the committee and contribute to achieving work plan tasks to be itemized at this meeting.


Parallel Session 2.1
National SDI Experiences: Euro-Asia
Moderator: Bastiaan van Loenen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Between INSPIRE and SEIS Initiatives: The First Steps Toward An Interoperable Environmental Information System (284)
Claudio Maricchiolo, ISPRA - Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Michele Munafò, Giuseppina Turco, Emanuela Sarzotti, Italy

The Italian Environmental Information and Monitoring System (SINA) is a nationwide cooperating network among the main environmental institutions involved in data collection and management processes. Since 2001, the network has involved all the environmental authorities from local to national level to ensure mandatory environmental data provisions and reporting as expected by European directives. Resembling the EEA/EIOnet model, SINAnet is composed of a National Focal Point (NFP) and several Regional Focal Points (RFPs) that collect environmental data about its own spatial envelope and provide them in a shared model.
Taking into account Inspire IRs, defining rules and standards to improve spatial information accessibility and sharing, and SEIS, that will demand accurate environmental information quickly and easily available, SINAnet starts to assess the impact of these initiatives over his systems.
In particular an experimental activity is implemented by Piedmont Regional Focal Point with Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), as NFP, to share environmental data and metadata present in each their own Catalogues through interoperable services.
This activity aims to evaluate how much effort is required to assure environmental data and metadata sharing, using Inspire compliant national and regional spatial data infrastructures, also assessing the SDI adaptability to the environmental issues.

The Role of User Organizations in the Implementation of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (212)
Jaana Mäkelä, Helsinki University of Technology, Riitta Vaniala, Finland

This article studies the implementation of a national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) from a systemic perspective. According to the Finnish research a NSDI enables great benefits to public organizations that utilize geoinformation both in planning and decision making, and want to make daily operational processes more efficient. But even if the benefits are so obvious, several factors in an organization prevent the benefits to come true in a full extent. We want to emphasize the influence of individual organizations' spatial data maturities on the success of NSDI.
Our methodological approach to this subject is inspected from two points of view. Firstly, we study the realization of geoinformation benefits in an organization from two different perspectives: competence management and internal communication. Secondly, we introduce the concept of system intelligence. The system intelligence approach stems from a deep belief in the human potential. In this paper, we want to extend the technically oriented viewpoint on SDI. We believe that installation of NSDI will generate maximum benefits only when both technical and human components of SDI are merged in a positive way.
As a result, we introduce a general model in which knowledge of the benefits of geoinformation will be enhanced by the means of competence management and internal communication. The model covers the entire organization from the strategic level down to the operational level. Some methods are also recommended in order to transfer geoinformation knowledge to the users, professionals, managers and heads of departments and to share geoinformation competence between them.
This article is an opening towards a comprehensive perspective on NSDI. The contribution of this text is to deliberate the subject and provoke discussion to promote the usage of geoinformation. We believe that at the national level, the right way to get the best benefits from NSDI implementation is to support at the same time the development of organizational SDIs, and that people are in the key role of this development.

Applications of Spatial Data Infrastructure in Disaster Management (237)
Hadis Samadi Alinia, University of Tehran, Mahmoud Reza Delavar, Iran

Iran is a highly vulnerable country to natural disasters especially earthquake. Tehran, capital of Iran has several known and unknown active faults hence huge earthquake will permeates human settlement there. However, more than the disaster it is the inefficient and inadequate infrastructure in the aftermath of earthquake cause huge loss of life and property.
Case studies of recent disasters in Iran, suggest some shortcomings like inadequate coordination and ineffective disaster management. In recent years, funds and resources for relief work have not been properly used. Also, there have been several reports showing how the introduction of non-essential or un-needed items can actually impede relief efforts by clogging in-country logistics and distribution channels.
This paper focuses on the use of spatial data infrastructure and Geospatial information system (GIS) to achieve better outcomes from spatial decision-making for site selection of rescue centers in the city.
The usage of the spatial system provides the advantages of emphasis on the areas or locations which need more attention.
Among the successful models, in this paper multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) based on a location model is used.
There are still, however, substantial problems with availability of, and accessibility to reliable, up-to-date, and accurate data. The need such data is significant if one is to successfully react to and manage a disaster situation. The data required might include aspects such as the availability of resources, road access, and required disaster response operations; crucial for informed decision-making and disaster management. Thus there is a need for the development and implementation of appropriate frameworks and utilization of technologies to alleviate the current lack of capacity to respond to disasters.
This paper elaborates the spatial data infrastructure required to have proper response to earthquake considering the optimum site selection of rescue centers using earthquake hazard maps through out Tehran.

GIDEON Turns One Year Old: State of Play (75)
Dirk van Barneveld, The Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM), The Netherlands

Spatial data has become increasingly important to society as a whole in recent years. The Dutch government responded to this increasing importance by introducing a score of policy measures. These measures have helped to increase commitment in the professional field and have resulted in succesful and ambitious projects. However, while there was ample consultation and partnership, there was no uniform strategy as yet.
In April 2008 the Dutch Council for Geo-information (GI Council) presented 'GIDEON - Key geo-information facility for the Netherlands. Approach and implementation strategy (2008-2011)'. This document sets out how the public sector parties responsible for managing and using spatial information intend to create a key geo-information facility for the Netherlands that all parties in society will use sustainably, successfully and intensively.
The creation of the key geo-facility for the Netherlands will be achieved by implementation of seven strategies:
1. to give geo-information an appropriately prominent place within e-services;
2. to encourage the use of the existing four key geo-registers, and to set up two new ones;
3. to embed the INSPIRE Directive into Dutch legislation and to implement the technical infrastructure;
4. to optimize supply by forming a government wide geo-information facility, which is to include geo-data standardization, new infrastructure, and collaborative maintenance;
5. to encourage the use of geo-information in numerous government policy and implementation chains, such as safety, the sustainable living environment, mobility, and area development;
6. to create a favourable climate for adding economic value to available public authority geo-information;
7. to encourage collaboration in knowledge, innovation and education, for the permanent development and renewal of the key geo-information facility for the Netherlands.
GIDEON met with a lot of enthusiasm in the Netherlands as well as abroad. But one year later, how is GIDEON doing? Are the public sector parties on track or do they need to step up their efforts? What are the consequences of the new economic realities; do they pose a threat to the further development of GIDEON or will geotechnology help to redress the economy? Are the parties involved still as enthusiastic as a year ago?
The paper will research these questions and conclude with lessons learnt in GIDEON's first year. It will finish off with ideas how to proceed in the years to come.

Process of Transition and SDI: Interaction, Effects and the Rrole of NMCA (275)
Zeljko Bacic, State Geodetic Administration of Republic of Croatia, Croatia

In the past twenty years, many European countries have experienced a process of transition from the Socialist setting into the market economy and political environment. Under specific transitional circumstances, these countries develop in parallel their spatial data infrastructures (SDI). The processes that arise from the situation are somewhat different from the processes happening in the developed countries because their premises differ as well as their motors of changes and immediate goals. Further differences exist also between countries in transition due to different historic legacy, culture, motors of economic development and political environment.
In the context of the economic and social transition, the SDI establishment is therefore a task that encompasses the recognition of political and social needs and the provision of adequate solutions to these needs, the accumulation of knowledge and capacities needed for the SDI establishment and the communication with the subjects that needs to promote the basic SDI idea formed in such a way that the subjects can understand and accept it. The afore-said clearly indicates that the SDI institutional framework and its clearly defined SDI role by the development stakeholders are extremely important and sensitive for the future of the SDI in any country.
The Republic of Croatia is one of the countries in transition, seeking its path towards the developed geo-conscious society. Croatia has established a legal framework for the establishment of the national SDI in which the State Geodetic Administration (SGA) plays and important role of the operational activity stakeholder. In this context, the SGA is monitoring and considering the economic and social trends in Croatia in order to provide the national SDI bodies with high-quality information for making the decisions and guidelines for the development of the Croatian SDI.
The interaction of incoming economic and social indicators of the society that takes Croatia and its historic legacy and the situation in the geo-sector as an example as well as the effects arising from this activity implemented in that respect by the SGA are shown in this paper with the desire to underline all the complexities of the SGI development that significantly exceed the framework of the establishment of standards, models and data exchange and financing models themselves as well as the role and tasks of the stakeholders in such a process that is often the NMCA itself.


Parallel Session 2.2
Volunteered Geographic Information
Moderator: Joao Geirinhas, Secretary General, EUROGI

Addressing Vagueness in Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) - A Case Study (221)
Bertrand De Longueville, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy; Nicole Ostländer, E. Carina H. Keskitalo, Sweden

In times of climate change, people's perceptions of environmental phenomena might become an invaluable source of information if shared with the general public and the scientific community (Craglia et al., 2008). Such information is generally described as VGI, which stands for 'Volunteered Geographic Information. However, in the environmental field, VGI can be also understood as 'Vague Geographic Information'. We will explain why: firstly, many environmental phenomena, like precipitation and temperature distribution, lack a precise location and extent. Secondly, these phenomena are perceived by people, and the resulting information should be seen as perceptions, that, unlike measurements, may differ with the individual's requirements on the environment: different individuals are affected by and notice different environmental characteristics depending on how they use the environment. Perceptions describe only a spatiotemporal and thematic snapshot of the entire phenomenon.
The way in which VGI systems are built today is often based on the principle of putting pushpins on maps or on uploading GPS tracks. By doing so, VGI systems inherit the object-oriented vision of geographic information, implying a certain spatial precision. Very often VGI actually has this precision, as it is provided in form of addresses ('my house' or 'my favorite coffee bar') or as it has been encoded using a GPS device ('my street') (Goodchild, 2007). However, as discussed in the previous paragraph, people's perceptions of environmental phenomena might not correspond to a precise street address or point on a map.
Motivated by the above said, we formulate the following research question: How can the vagueness of stakeholder's perception of environmental phenomenon be reconciled with the 'crisp objects' vision of current VGI, to build innovative VGI systems?
We propose a hybrid strategy, combining an Open Gazetteer approach (Jones et al., 2008), and the concept of Degree of Truth (Fisher, 2000). The Open Gazetteer approach permits users to locate events using their own words and reference system. The concept of Degree of Truth includes elements of the fuzzy sets theory in the web based VGI system to reflect uncertainty of a given localization.
The research is based on a real-world case study. Actors from forestry, fishing and reindeer husbandry sectors in the Barents region have been interviewed concerning their perception of how specific changes in climate (e.g., an earlier spring) would impact them according to their experience on the field (Keskiatlo, 2008). This data has been analyzed with respect to how people perceive and describe environmental phenomena and how they describe them, as well as which characteristics are important for them. This is the base for the proposed strategy of how to capture and represent such information.
As a proof-of concept we design a web based system that can capture, store and portray this Volunteered and Vague Geographic Information, to effectively capture stakeholder testimonials on climate change. The web based system will be applied for an ongoing study of forestry, reindeer husbandry and tourism in selected locations in northern Sweden.
References
Craglia, M., Goodchild, M. F., Annoni, A., Camara, G., Gould, M., Kuhn, W., Mark, D., Masser, I., Maguire, D., Liang, S. & Parsons, E. (2008). Next-Generation Digital Earth. A position paper from the Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information Science. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, 3, 146-167.
Fisher, P. (2000). Sorites paradox and vague geographies. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 113, 7-18.
Goodchild, M. F. (2007). Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69/4, 211-221.
Jones, C., Purves, R. S., Clough, P. D. & Joho, H. (2008). Modelling vague places with knowledge from the Web. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 22/10, 1045-1065.
Keskiatlo, E. C. H. (2008). Climate Change and Globalization in the Arctic. An Integrated Approach to Vulnerability Assessment. Earthscan, London.

Volunteered Geographic Information: The Nature and Motivation of Human Sensors (279)
David Coleman, University of New Brunswick, Canada; Yola Georgiadou, The Netherlands

Advances in positioning, Web mapping, cellular communications and wiki technologies have now outpaced the original visions of GSDI programs around the world. By tapping the distributed knowledge, personal time and energy of volunteer contributors, GI voluntarism relocates and redistributes GI productive activity from mapping agencies to networks of non-state volunteer actors. Indeed, GI voluntarism ultimately has the potential to redistribute the rights to define and judge the value of the produced geographic information and of the new production system in general. The concept and its implementation presents a rich collection of both opportunities _and risks_ now being considered by leaders of public and private mapping organizations world-wide.
Concepts of user-created content and descriptions of both passive and active user contribution systems in the consumer market are already well documented. The evidence of "neogeography" and "volunteered geographic information" (VGI) is now visible across the Web - supporting collaborative social networking applications like Open Street Map, GeoCommons, Tagzania, and Wayfaring.com ... influencing crowdsourcing strategies of Google Maps ... helping update and correct road network and navigation data offered by TeleAtlas, Navteq and TomTom ... and enabling Public Participation GIS applications for interested individuals to provide on-line input to community planning and resource allocation activities.
While clearly valuable, focusing purely on the "information" aspects of VGI ignores the human element driving this phenomenon. Important questions remain over people's motivation to volunteer information and the processes ultimately required to take into account not only issues of quality of the geographic information provided, sustainability of the efforts, and performance of the new social production system. Can we assume that the characteristics of VGI's "human sensors" will mirror the voluntary contributors and contributions found in Open Source software and Wikipedia communities? Are there important differences within and among VGI contributors that may influence the nature, frequency and quality of their contributions? Are new approaches required to evaluate the performance of VGI production systems in the market, social networks and the polis?
In this paper, the authors describe and classify the types of people who volunteer geospatial information and the nature of their contributions. Combining previous empirical research dealing with the Open Source software and Wikipedia communities with input from selected national mapping agencies and private companies, the authors propose a taxonomy of different types of voluntary geospatial information contributors. Differentiating between three different contexts in which these volunteer contributors operate - commercial, social networking, and civic/governmental - the authors describe key opportunities, constraints and factors to consider in each case when determining whether and how to assess information provided by such sources.

The Potential of Citizen Volunteered Spatial Information for Building SDI (310)
Kevin McDougall, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

The majority of spatial information and mapping has traditionally been captured, managed and controlled by public sector agencies. Over the past decade with the value and potential of spatial information slowly being realised, and the gradual down-sizing of government mapping agencies, the private sector has now become a significant holder of spatial information. However, the exchange mechanisms for value adding of spatial information are still only primarily one-way. A range of institutional factors still limit the potential for sharing of spatial information across governments and the private sector and hence the development of spatial data infrastructures at local and national scales.
An emerging trend in the spatial information and the wider information community is the growing use of open portals to collect and share information, both spatial and non-spatial. Shared information portals such as Facebook and Myspace, provide a mechanism for individuals to participate in information sharing and constructing social networks. This trend indicates an acceptance of people to engage in a discourse over the internet which effectively creates an environment for the sharing and distribution of information. Volunteered information, although only a relatively recent phenomena, is now being embraced by many industries including spatial information providers and distributors. The question is "how can governments and industry effectively harness this phenomenon to improve their sharing and maintenance of spatial information?" This paper examines the motivation for sharing data through social networks and the trends in sharing data across open portals. The implications of volunteered spatial information through open portals such as Openstreetmap and Wikimapia such as data quality, ownership and liability will be discussed. Finally, strategies for government and industry to harness citizen volunteered spatial information for building SDI will be explored.

A Framework for Understanding Participants' Motivations in Voluntary Contribution of Geographic Information (312)
Nama Budhathoki, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Zorica Nedovic-Budic, Chip Bruce, USA

Emergence of Web 2.0 and other enabling technologies has given rise to a phenomenon called volunteered geographic information (VGI). As a major departure from the past, VGI users use geospatial infrastructure in creating and supplying the local geographic knowledge on the web. Hence, users' role transcends from recipients to contributors in VGI. An intriguing aspect of VGI is that users' contributions are voluntary; they neither receive a direct monetary reward nor are they directed by anybody to contribute.
Participants' contribution forms the core of the VGI phenomenon. However, recent studies report that only a small subset of the participants actually contributes in VGI. This brings interesting questions: why do individuals contribute their geospatial knowledge? Why do some individuals contribute while others do not?
In this paper, we present an ongoing research focused on these questions. We propose a conceptual framework for studying participants' motivations to voluntary contribution of geographic information. This VGI motivational framework (VGI-MF) provides a foundation for understanding, managing, and predicting participants' motivations to contribute to VGI. In addition, by understanding participants' motivations, we can gain insights about the content, coverage, and quality of geographic information, as well as the underlying agendas contributors intend to promote. Once tested, the VGI-MF may prove to be instrumental toward theorizing the VGI phenomenon.

Developing SDIs Based on Volunteered Geographic Information (315)
Alexander Zipf, Bonn University, Germany

The prosumer oriented GeoWeb2.0 approach of collaborative data generation termed as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) as coined by Goodchild (2007) produced new data sources for geographic information. Most notably: OpenStreetMap (OSM). This can be used in developing web-based and mobile services based on OpenGIS standards. Examples include the first European-wide POI-Search (spatial Yellow Pages), geocoding & reverse geocoding, routing and of course maps (as well as an internal Web Feature Service, WFS) based both on VGI and SDI-technology. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has defined a set of standards for those called the Open Location Services (OpenLS) on OpenGIS Web Services in general. An example presents: www.openrouteservice.org, with the architecture described in
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OpenRouteService
On the other hand SDI moves from 2D to 3D. Also for that the OGC has released standards such as CityGML as exchange format. But in addition to that, web service specifications for visualizing 3D city and landscape models are needed. These are available as discussion papers - e.g. the Web 3D Service (W3DS). A working group within the OGC (including the author of this article) currently works on advancing those to an implementation specification. The argument of this paper is that these three topics - open user generated geodata, OGC services for LBS & dynamic sensor-information and 3D geographic information can come together in next generation spatial data infrastructures. Applications based on such deliver rich and dynamic 3D city and landscape models by combining data from those heterogeneous sources in an interoperable way.
A striking idea was to bring OSM into the third dimension by visualizing the OSM data itself on a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and then use this through the 3D SDI technology of www.gdi-3d.de. Starting with a 3D city model of Heidelberg we now are developing a 3D landscape model for a whole country based on VGI and SDI technology. Our first example is Germany, because the OSM data is already very rich for this country. In short a Web 3D Service for whole of Germany will be released based on OSM data that has been combined with digital elevation models.
Relevant References & further reading:
Goodchild, M.F. (2007): Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography, In: GeoJournal, Vol. 69. Issue 4, pp. 211-221
Neis, P. and Zipf, A. (2008): OpenRouteService.org - Combining Open Standards and Open Geodata. The State of the Map. 2nd Open Street Maps Conference, Limerik. Ireland.
Schilling, A.; Lanig, S.; Neis, P.; Zipf, A. (2008): Integrating Terrain Surface and Street Network for 3D Routing. 3D Geoinfo 08. 3rd International Workshop on 3D Geo-Information. Seoul. South Korea.
Schmitz,S., Neis, P. and A. Zipf (2008): New Applications based on Collaborative Geodata - the Case of Routing. Submitted for: XXVIII INCA International Congress on Collaborative Mapping and SpaceTechnology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.
Zipf, A. (2008): Integrating 3D, Processing and Location Services into future SDIs. GSDI_10. Tenth International Conference for Spatial Data Infrastructure. Port of Spain. Trinidad.


Parallel Session 2.3
Metadata in Action
Moderator: Gabor Remetey, Secretary General, Hungarian Association for Geo-information

Metadata in Flanders (Belgium) - The Challenge to Turn Problems and Disadvantages Into Opportunities (213)
Geraldine Nolf, Flemish Geographical Information Agency, Raf Lauriks, Bart Cosyn, Leen De Temmerman, Dirk De Baere, Belgium

In 1995, the Geographical Information System Flanders, or GIS-Flanders was set up as a partnership for the optimal use of geographical information within the Flemish civil services. The Flemish Geographical Information Agency (AGIV), as executive partner of GIS-Flanders, is coordinating the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive at regional level, starting with the topic metadata.
The AGIV has converted its existing CEN based metadata repository to an ISO 19115 compliant repository and built an online application to query, edit and manage this repository (http://metadata.agiv.be). Because the AGIV could start from its CEN based metadata repository, a comprehensively ISO compliant metadata repository could be built relatively quickly. The disadvantage related to this conversion process was that the mapping between metadata elements in the different standards was not easily made. The metadata authors had to upgrade their metadata into the complex ISO 19115 model and experienced this as very labour-intensive.
The metadata repository is built on the GIS-Flanders metadata profile for spatial data sets (ISO 19115) and for spatial services (ISO 19119). The GIS-Flanders profile implements the INSPIRE implementing rule for metadata and extends it with extra elements about quality and distribution because the elements foreseen in the INSPIRE implementing rules were too limited. To fulfil user needs, the AGIV implemented metadata for feature catalogues using the ISO standard 19110 as well.
Metadata publishers can describe, create, update, delete, and publish metadata using the online metadata application. Requestors can discover, either by browsing or querying, metadata and view and/or download the metadata set(s) that fits the search terms. Metadata records can be exported to ISO 19139 compliant XML or a PDF document. The metadata repository is centrally managed by the AGIV. The AGIV is also implementing the implementing rules on discovery services at regional level. Therefore, an experimental CSW service has been set up which enables querying the metadata repository.
Despite the fully operational, user-friendly online metadata application, the use of this application is not yet well established among geodata owners. The metadata of the data sets owned by AGIV are 100% synchronised, while at present the metadata of third parties does not reach this level. Currently, the need for metadata services in Flanders is limited.
Future challenges for the AGIV in Flanders (Belgium) shall be the implementation of the remaining components of the INSPIRE Directive. This includes the integration of the metadata application and metadata services with view (WMS) and download (WFS, WCS) services, and web applications. The integration of metadata services into a portfolio of other services along the lines of typical use-case workflows is expected to raise the usage level of metadata, whilst yielding an increased demand for middleware and end-user services. With a modern bind infrastructure, costs of data distribution for the AGIV will be reduced and data will be more accessible for users. These challenges and the modernization of our services are planned in 2009. In addition, the AGIV has started to develop a Geographic Service Bus, enabling secured orchestration, process chaining, data transformation and model mapping.

Closing the Gap Between Historical Digital Map Libraries and SDIs (257)
Miguel Ángel Bernabé-Poveda, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Miguel Ángel Manso-Callejo, Monica Wachowicz, Alberto Fernández-Wyttembach, Spain

The initiatives and projects in the field of Historical Digital Map Libraries (HDML) have greatly increased in the last few years. Most of them aim to provide access to old maps through geoportals that allow access to thousands of maps stored in the cartographic collections of different libraries and archives. The achieved progress is remarkable, since these geoportals are providing remote access capability to resources, through optimised searches, which until now were difficult to access. It is also worthwhile to highlight the impact of the current services on fund safety, preventing manipulations such as damage, deterioration and thefts from happening.
There are useful and basic similarities between the global reality of an SDI as a distributed geoportal and a HDML in terms of conformance to (a) standards (e.g. geographic metadata: ISO 19115, Dublin Core); (b) agreements (e.g. local, regional, national or international level; INSPIRE Directive); and (c) services (e.g. Open Geospatial Consortium, Web Map Service, Web Feature Service, Web Catalogue Service). However, there is a number of technological and policy considerations to be taken into account apart from the common characteristics to all SDIs. The cartographic heritage contained in the HDMLs stands out as an exceptional case within the generic frame of an SDI. Mainly because, maps catalogued in libraries have been usually described according to generic bibliographic metadata schemata such as the MARC standards (UNIMARC, MARC21, and IBERMARC). They are not always comprehensible by traditional geoportals which use geographic standard templates, and as a result, it is necessary to define the appropriate gateways for these descriptive profiles to be understandable among themselves.
This paper aims to describe our efforts to create a profile of metadata for historical maps, conformant with ISO 19115 and 19139 and agreed with the Spanish Metadata Core (Nucleo Espanol de Metadatos - NEM). The results demonstrate the feasibility of incorporating geographic and map bibliographic metadata profiles as a new information layer into the Spanish SDI. They also lay emphasis on the risk of deformation of documents of historical interest against the advantages of their publication together with other data in the SDI. In fact, this should also be taken into account during the geo-referencing process.

Experiences in the creation and updating of INSPIRE compliant metadata catalogue (305)
Monica Pasca, Universita' di Roma Sapienza, Laura Petriglia, Monica Torchio, Claudio Mariotti, Italy

One of the first steps for the set up of a spatial data infrastructure is obviously the creation of metadata standards and corresponding metadata catalogue.
In Italy, the "Committee for technical rules for public administration spatial data", established according to the national law on "Digital Administration Code" and including the participation of many public administrations involved in spatial data production, has worked on the development of rules for defining the metadata content of the National Metadata Catalogue, as well as the technical rules for the creation and updating of this catalogue of spatial datasets and services of general interest; a first list of spatial datasets for which Public Administrations have to put the metadata into the national catalogue has also been prepared.
This document has been recently updated with the provisions of the INSPIRE Implementing Rules for Metadata.
The main aim of the catalogue is to share and make easier the access to the spatial information created, maintained and updated by the Public Administrations: access to spatial data and services is possible through searching metadata. The access to the National Metadata Catalogue is totally free for everyone.
The present paper will present the work done within the project D.I.V.A. of the Italian Ministry of Environment and Protection of Land and Sea in order to achieve a full compliance of the Italian Metadata Catalogue with the INSPIRE Implementing Rules and its application for environmental purposes.
The technical rules for the creation and updating of the national metadata catalogue are mainly based on the INSPIRE Metadata Implementing Rules that define a basic set of metadata for spatial dataset and services. Furthermore, some additional information has been identified to better describe geographical information at national level.
Several comparisons have been performed at different levels in order to check the level of conformity, including, INSPIRE Implementing Rules and Guidance, National proposal, ISO standards and common practise metadata information.
Particular attention has been given to practical tests of filling in metadata for environmental data. Several difficulties have been pointed out, that need to be well addressed with guidances in order to obtain correct metadata and correct use of data classification.
Furthermore, in order to connect the "official" catalogues with every day life, a subset of metadata with will be requested by the OpenGIADA system not only for National Spatial Information but for all the spatial information used and catalogued in the system, has been defined. The aim is to accustom GIS users to attach to all their files appropriate metadata without burden the same user with information not needed, or even not available, for a more restricted use.
Some examples will be shown.

Metadata Cost-Benefit Analysis: Ideas for Maximizing Value and Minimizing Risks of Data Producers (339)
Bruce Westcott, Intergraph Corporation, USA

The old paradigm of geospatial metadata production and use - User A discovers data documented by Producers B and C - suffers from a tired business case. That is, government mandates aside, data producers see limited incentives and rewards for providing high-quality geospatial metadata to the public. Government mandates most often require the dissemination of only skeletal metadata content, and places few requirements on the quality - completeness, currency, precision, etc. - of that information. It costs data producers to prepare and disseminate high quality metadata; i.e., descriptive information that enables high value data analysis and automated spatial workflows, and producers require a business case in order to voluntarily bear those costs.
The ISO-19115 standard is abstract and not implementable without making many choices and without adding particular information that addresses the national requirements of user nations and organizations. Some of the elements of metadata profiles for European nations and communities of interest are well-defined through the INSPIRE initiative. Elements included in the INSPIRE profile will certainly enhance discoverability and interoperability of spatial data assets and services.
Metadata authors are faced with understanding the costs, benefits, and practical problems in producing metadata records which conform to the requirements of INSPIRE and national profiles and - at the same time - which provide added value for actual communities of metadata users. The goal of the presentation is to help information managers and metadata producers envision how supplemental metadata content can enable efficient deployment of their data assets to support the high value applications desired by customers.

Automatic Metadata Creation for Supporting Interoperability Levels of Spatial Data Infrastructures (194)
Miguel-Ángel Manso, Technical Univ of Madrid, Monica Wachowicz, Miguel-Ángel Bernabé, Spain

Interoperability in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) is a mature objective, which in turn, still holds many shortcomings in the definition of standards for geographical data transfer and exchange, different data types integration, and comprehensive semantic models. There is a vast literature available on interoperability models containing different interoperability levels, including technological, syntactic and semantic levels. However, very limited research has been carried out on the development of interoperability models for the implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). In a SDI context, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and International Standard Organization (ISO) TC211 have played a major role in improving Geodata and System Interoperability through the specification of object models and XML schemas to store and transfer data, Open Service Interfaces, and data and services metadata standards.
On the other hand, metadata is considered a key component to enable access to datasets in SDI. However, manual construction of metadata is difficult, laborious, time consuming and expensive. In order to improve metadata quality and to facilitate the work of the metadata editor, automatic metadata creation tools are urgently needed.
This paper aims to demonstrate the important role of metadata in the formalisation of interoperability models for the implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures. The research challenge is to define interoperability levels based on the automatic creation of metadata that facilitates the data, services, and applications exchange among SDI.
Therefore, this paper provides a short review of the main advances in interoperability related to SDI. It also discusses the important role of metadata elements in the formalisation of interoperability models for the implementation of SDI. An integrated interoperability model is proposed based on the definition of a common template that integrates seven interoperability levels. These levels are: technical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, dynamic, conceptual and organisational. The implementation is carried out by the automatic creation of the ISO19115 metadata standard. Finally, the results outline the strength and weaknesses in terms of interoperability levels of SDI based on the elements of ISO19115 metadata.

Parallel Session 2.4
Geoportals and Registries
Moderator: Greg Yetman, CIESIN, Colombia University, USA

The Swedish Geodata Portal - Geodata.se (88)
Kjell Hjorth, Lantmäteriet - The Swedish Mapping, Cadastre and Land Registration Authority, Sweden

The aim of the development of a Swedish Geodata Portal - Geodata.se - is to make it easier for users to search, find, view and download geodata from different sources being physically stored in different environments. The Geodata Portal will constitute the main node for the Swedish cooperation in Europe according to the INSPIRE-directive.
The Geodata Portal can be seen as the hub in the Swedish network or the infrastructure for geodata, web based services and metadata.
The Geodata Portal will provide geodata and web based services, such as:
- A search engine to search geodata. The searching is built on metadata.
- Map viewer to be able to search and view requested geodata. Normally the map is based on WMS-services.
- General information and documents on the geodata field.
- E-business systems for ordering, agreements, purchase, delivery and customer management.
The portal and infrastructure will be based on a service oriented architecture and processes, general IT-demands for tracing, rights, access and secrecy and the communication based on common standards.
The work will be done with a step-wise approach and result in different versions of the portal, gradually implemented with functionality.
Geodata and web based services which can be reached via the Geodata Portal are distributed and are the responsibility of the respective supplier or data keeper, which also applies to metadata.
Data suppliers as well as the customers of the Geodata Portal are public sector authorities, local authorities and private companies. This implies that it could be 5-10 thousand potential organisations customers to the Geodata portal.
The customers of the Geodata portal will find the handling of geodata easier and faster. The geodata should be easy to use in applications and software's. It should also be easier to make combinations of purchasing if there are several suppliers. It will be possible to reach geodata and web based services from many suppliers in one place. The suppliers could be Swedish or European. It should be easier to comprehend agreements and prices. It should be possible to see what other customers recommend and to compare different offers.
The suppliers of geodata will regard the Geodata Portal as a new channel of supplying. Though, it is possible to deliver directly to the customers, as before. The Geodata Portal will offer good solutions for e-business, security for web based services as well as support to handle customers and suppliers.
The private companies will be able to offer processed geodata and web based services on the Geodata Portal. Combined web based services increases the possibilities to develop new services and applications. The companies also have the possibility to help suppliers and customers in building and using the infrastructure of geodata.
The work with the Geodata Portal is done in close co-operation with the work with a sector portal for physical planning and test and research projects connecting to the Geodata field.

The Potential of a National Atlas as Integral Part of the Geodata Infrastructure Exemplified by the New Dutch National Atlas (157)
Menno-Jan Kraak, International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Ferjan Ormeling, Barend Köbben, The Netherlands; Trias Aditya, Indonesia

The recent developments around national geodata infrastructures have stimulated to take a fresh look at the national atlas concept. In a recent project a feasibility study and prototype implementation have been executed of an automatic visualization of geodata available through the geodata infrastructure (GDI) in a systematic and cartographically accountable way to guarantee an up-to-date national atlas. The objective was to investigate how the national atlas could be organized as an integral part of the geodata infrastructure. The atlas would benefit from an up-to-date data flow, and the GDI would benefit from integrated visual summaries of available geodata and geoservices in well designed comparable maps using the narrative characteristics of the atlas. As such the national atlas would provide alternative interactive and dynamic access to the GDI.

Connecting the Netherlands to the European and Global SDI (191)
Michel Grothe, Geonovum, The Netherlands

During the GSDI 11 World Conference the national georegistry and INSPIRE Portal of the Netherlands will be launched. The national georegistry and INSPIRE Portal allows users to discover, understand, view and access geographic information. For this purpose, the georegistry will facilitate links and coherence with institutional servers and portals and will provide on-line access to collections of spatial data and services supplied by both public organizations and private parties in the Netherlands. The georegistry is a key building block in the dutch NSDI, it's national policy, as well as in the dutch e-government initiative and the European INSPIRE SDI . The national georegistry is the central INSPIRE discovery service in the Netherlands. One crucial aspect in the Netherlands is the metadata. The Netherlands has derived profiles from the international metadata standards (ISO19115 and ISO 19119), that are INSPIRE compliant as well. The collection of metadata from distributed catalogues is now a priority. The georegistry is based on the open source Geonetwork toolkit and has been developed further to satisfy additional requirements, like Web2.0 concepts. Also attention is paid to interfacing the national georegistry with Internet mainstream search engines through RSS and OpenSearch.
This paper presents some of the work associated with the establishment of the dutch NSDI, and the role of the national georegistry. First the position of the georegistry within the dutch GI-policy "Gideon" and it's implementation strategies for supply optimization and value adding is elaborated. Also the interchange with national e-government initiatives is illustrated, like the national government portal and the national service registry. Special attention is paid to the relation with the INSPIRE EU portal. The paper will furthermore cover technical, financial, and organizational aspects and challenges for the future.

Registry Implementation for SDI Germany (GDI-DE) - Status Quo (307)
Andreas von Doemming, Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG), Coordination Office SDI, Jan Grohmann, Clemens Portele, Germany

The aim of a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is to make available existing digital spatial information for discovery, view and download services. The implementation of a SDI follows the pattern of service oriented architecture (SOA). A baseline of this architecture is the concept of loosely coupled services. That means, services are principally independent and cooperation will just happen in the context of a use case. This principle is called "Publish-Find-Bind", where the "publish" has to be done in advance. "Find" and "bind" will then happen just dynamically in the context of the use case (not static).
Registry-services are information systems that are supporting this concept as they can store information in registers including their metadata. They also provide interfaces for publishing and finding.
While there is already experience with managing information based on ISO 19115/ISO 19119 (catalogue services), there is hardly no experience with fields of other applications and information managed in registries and concepts of use in a SDI.
Use cases to manage and use other information in registries can be characterized by:
a) Cross organization context: e.g. information is used by many organisations in cross organisational products (e.g. consistent visualization of distributed spatial data).
b) Reusability: information is used by a huge number of users or systems in SDI.
c) Significant influence: essential information where it is important to use exactly the same information for all systems (e.g. parameters of coordination systems)
d) Strategic impact: the reuse of specific information may be of a great advantage for establishing a SDI and therefore it may be a strategic issue to provide these information widely (e.g. standardized terms of use).
To gain experience in this field and to prepare the linking of SDI Germany (GDI-DE) to INSPIRE a pilot project "Registry GDI-DE" has been initiated within the SDI Germany in June 2008. This pilot project is scheduled for duration of 2 years. Register types and information to evolve have already been identified:
a) Registers for parameter of coordinate reference systems and coordinate transformations.
b) Registers for managing and resolving of SDI wide unique identifiers as required by INSPIRE.
c) Registers to support sharing of visualisation descriptors.
d) Registers to support the management of INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting related data.
e) Registers to support simple terms of use, provided for click-through licences
These identified information types will be implemented in a pilot prototype registry service. Particular needs of the INSPIRE implementation in Germany will be evaluated and a focus will be given to organisational structures according to ISO 19135 that describes procedures for registration and usage in respect of their organizational relationships. Another aim is to evaluate standards like the electronic business Registry Information Model (ebRIM) and specifications to support access control specified by OASIS.
It is designated to present first results and the state of progress of this pilot project in context to the requirements of the INSPIRE implementation and SDI in Germany.

Sharing Change Information: The Most Efficient Way of Updating Geodata in The Netherlands (127)
Rob Beck, Corne van der Sande; NEO BV, The Netherlands

Ministries, municipalities, survey departments, and commercial mapping companies are all interested in changes that take place in our living environment. These changes comprise new houses or constructions, new roads, logged trees, a two-lane road changed into a three-lane road, etcetera. Spatial information that is not complete or up to date leads to unreliable information and subsequently to bad decision making and lower government returns. Currently the same changed house leads to mutations in at least 20 applications or databases. For example the tax inspector wants to know the changes applied to a building in relation to its value and the building inspection is interested in the safety aspects of the building.
In 2005, the 'Space for Geo-Information project' Mutatis Mutandis started to develop a method for quick and complete signalling of spatial changes and a system for "Singular detection, multiple use". The project is a consortium of 14 government organisations and companies. Firstly, a sharable change has been defined as a mutation signal. A mutation signal is a vector point, line or polygon, that signals a change of an object in use and/or function. It contains attributes as e.g. type and date of change and source data on which the mutation signalling has been applied. A web service has been made for sharing the consortium’s mutation signals. At www.mutmut.nl you find a map where you can select mutation signals on place, period, and type of changes.
A business model has been developed that arranges the payments for the supplier and purchaser of change signals by using the web service. For the exploitation of the service a government partner has been found in DataLand. DataLand is owned by the Dutch municipalities and acts as a portal for building information as area and economic value for a wide range of customers. DataLand needs up to date and high quality data. By offering change information in their portal municipal data can be improved and meet the requirements DataLand's customers have.
An economic impact assessment of selected "Space for Geo-Information projects" has been executed by Ecorys. Mutatis Mutandis takes half of the benefits for its account. First of all, direct benefits may arise through diminishing costs compared to the current way of keeping the geodata up to date. In the second place, indirect benefits may arise as a result of the value added by the web service. This means that companies may increase sales and hence profit because of increased quality of the products they sell. Moreover, by faster processing of the mutation signals by governments, more time can be spent on productive tasks. Faster detection of mutations will lead to increased tax revenue and reduced fraud. On annual basis, the benefits are 0,5 million euros (direct) and 10 million euros (indirect). Total benefits are estimated at 48 million euros in the period 2007-2011. The costs for this service are a fraction of the annual benefits and are estimated at euros 0,2 million.

Parallel Session 2.5
The Geographic Information Knowledge Network
Moderator: Vanessa Lawrence, Director General and Chief Executive, Ordnance Survey, UK

All geospatial organizations are invited to join in the development of The Geographic Information Knowledge Network (http://giknet.org). The primary goal of this web based system is to enable geospatial agencies, companies and organizations at all levels to report on their spatial data infrastructure deployments as well as report and maintain their organizational profiles in a pooled resource of benefit to all. Individual geospatial specialists also are invited to join the network. This session will illustrate the types of information that various entities can provide to each other through the network and all attendees will have an opportunity to join the network. The audience will be requested to provide feedback on additional services or capabilities they would like to see provided. 

Parallel Session 2.6
INSPIRE Reports from the Drafting Teams
Moderator: Beatrice Eiselt, EUROSTAT, European Commission

INSPIRE is a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an
Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) entered into force on the 15th May 2007.   INSPIRE lays down general rules to establish an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe for the purposes of Community environmental policies, and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.
INSPIRE foresees the establishment of more detailed provisions, known as Implementing Rules (IR).
Implementing Rules need to be established for:
- Metadata
- Network services
- Data specifications
- Data and service sharing
- Monitoring and reporting
The establishment of these Implementing Rules is the responsibility of the European Commission. A process for extensive stakeholder participation has been set-up and in close collaboration with stakeholders in the Member States the Commission started the drafting of the Implementing Rules. This is being done in Drafting Teams, which are composed of experts from stakeholder organisations. 
In sessions 2.6 and 3.6 the Drafting Teams will report on the current status of the Implementing Rule development, the process that has been followed, and the next steps.The INSPIRE Community Geoportal is Europe's Internet access point to a collection of geographic data and services within the framework of the infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive. The recent developments on the INSPIRE Community Geoportal prototype will be presented. 
Among the presentations to be heard in session 2.6 will include: Monitoring and Reporting Regulation and Guidelines by Marie-Louise Zambon, INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting Drafting Team, Data and Service Sharing by Clare Hadley, INSPIRE Data and Service Sharing Drafting Team, and Data Specifications by Clemens Portele, INSPIRE Data Specifications Drafting Team


Parallel Session 2.7
Participate Successfully in SDI/INSPIRE
Moderators/Speakers: Claudio Mingrino and Marek Brylski, Intergraph, Italy

The purpose of this sessions is to identify variations of participating in an SDI. We will discuss the pre-requisites as well as the necessary actions during the evaluation and setup. As the involvement and efforts may vary from one organization to others, the speakers will provide indicators supporting different levels of organizations ranging from local to national government as well as for private organizations. In detail, the session will focus on preparation work (i.e. what should be analyzed for planning the participation including data, infrastructure, organization, and processes and setting measurable goals what organizations want to achieve), first implementations (i.e. What kind of services should be provided, Setting-up these services, What services are enforced by INSPIRE), enhanced implementations (i.e. Planning and implementing an SDI portal, Controlling services: about service and content monitoring, Linking services with E-Shop Systems and Planning the harmonization for INSPIRE) and successful examples (including Background and technical issues, Administrative challenges and Live demonstrations).

Parallel Session 2.9
Beyond the Bridge: Cross-Border SDI
Moderator: Alex van de Ven, Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, The Netherlands; Speakers: Frans van der Storm, Van der Storm Consultancy, The Netherlands; Sven Robertz, Sven Robertz Unternehmensberatung, Germany

Since the beginning of the year 2004 Northrhine Westphalia, Lower Saxony, and the Netherlands started to organize their cross-boundary cooperation in the fields of spatial information. The main goal was to build up and implement a cross border geodata-infrastructure, which was realized with the programme X-border-GDI until the end of 2008. This is achieved by conducting almost 25 different projects under the co-ordinating and managing roof of X-border-GDI. Each of these projects was determined to provide practical solutions for concrete requirements of the project partners in several areas such as spatial planning, water and risk management, nature-tourism-environment, industrial areas planning and monitoring, and mobility. It showed that besides applications and software especially organization and co-ordination of processes and partners are the keys to successful activities. Concrete requirements for infrastructural solutions, cooperation and sharing of knowledge and experiences were the driving factors in the programme X-border-GDI. Dealing with a number of topics which form part of the INSPIRE, the partners of X-border-GDI learned that the directive has to be seen not solely as a matter of the geo-information community but even more as task for political and management authorities as decision making and coordinating bodies. Besides informing about the results and experiences of cross-border co-operation this session aims at discussing whether X-border-GDI and the most striking proceedings can be used as a guideline and an example how to manage cross border infrastructures. Major session topics include development and management of cross border infrastructure for geo-information, sharing of knowledge and experiences as a basis for expansion and costs and benefits.

Parallel Session 2.10
GSDI Regional Newsletters Open Meeting
Moderators: Santiago Borrero, Abbas Rajabifard, Hussein Farah and Al Stevens

This meeting is hosted by the managers and editors of the monthly regional SDI newsletters. Goals, purposes and plans for the newsletters will be covered and the editors will solicit suggestions for improving or expanding the newsletters and related services. Volunteers are needed to help as contributing editors. Organizations from poor and very poor nations may be official members of the GSDI Association by providing services rather than dues and one way to provide services of value is to provide reporters for one or more of the regional newsletters. Applications for membership will be provided at the meeting for those who might be interested.

Parallel Session 3.1
National SDI Experiences: Euro-Asia
Moderator: Erica Verkerk, Process Manager Spatial Planning Standards, Geonovum

Implementing INSPIRE in Real Life: The French Case (126)
Marc Leobet, Conseil National de linformation Geographique, France

The French situation is characterised by a major multiplicity of public authorities (40 000) superimposed on several levels and endowed with strong autonomy, by old equipment of the territory in geographical data at large scale of very variable quality (since Napoleon), by a wide territory encouraging average scales in the French logic of continuous public service on the national territory, by a major means disparity between the official authorities, some having of great volumes of data on very variable scales.
This situation is marked by with the different needs according to the sizes of the territories concerned and by the different agilities, which lead to difficulties in the trade and asymmetries. SDIC and LMO French are very few. At the same time, signs of dynamisms are apparent, like the creation of the Forum OGC France or the creation of national and regional portals strongly connected to INSPIRE. This complexity is at the same time a source of wealth and of potential blockings, and was an opportunity to set up specific operating modes intended to mobilise the actors, in particular in preparation for the implementation of the specifications of Annexe III themes.
The presentation will aim at showing the method implemented, the results obtained and the hoped for consequences. It will show that, in the French case, the INSPIRE implementation will bring major evolutions in the field of : - clarification and organisation of geographical data production, in particular between the local and national levels. That covers the organisation of the pooling and data-sharing, collaboration between the producers or even the co production, the relations between producers and users, and relevance for public finance to have updated data of quality, and maintained in the time.
- the implementation of the Directive INSPIRES in the field of coordination, that means help, information dissemination and of training to be set up.
- the analyse, the clarification and the management of the impact of the Directive on the economic operation in the geographic sector, with, among the issues, the development of the services, the associated procedures (licences...), the model coexistence where data is free with other where it is paying.

Towards A SDI In A Small Economy - Building Organisation and Commitment in Greenland (43)
Thomas Nielsen, Greenland Home Rule

Greenland is a vast and sparsely populated country far up north in the Arctic mostly covered by the ice cap. The country is known for an important but fragile environment largely affected by global warming and intoxication from the industrial world. Traditionally Greenland is a hunter and fisher society based on these natural resources. But Greenland is also a modern society using electronic and mechanical aids for exploiting the natural and mineral resources as well as planning large scale industry based on hydro power. Many of these activities have geographical dimensions and as such great potential of better governance using GI technologies.
With the new initiative called NunaGIS (www.nunagis.gl), we have decided to take leadership on building a SDI in Greenland. NunaGIS is a geoportal for managing, producing, displaying and sharing spatial information via the Internet and the system is based on Spatial Suite of Grontmij-CarlBro on top of free and open source software.
Our strategy is first of all to use NunaGIS as a starting point for structuring governmental data and integrating these with other administrative tools. This is a key effort towards bridging the gap between traditional eGovernment and GI initiatives. We hope this will broaden the use of geospatial information in public administration and we strive to inspire and commit other public organizations to use NunaGIS for data production and storage or with NunaGIS as an example to follow, we encourage the use of free and open standards, software and webservices.
Our SDI strategy is to partly meet the INSPIRE directive and make geodata freely available to the public, serving citizens, scientists and administrators through well-implemented, practical examples as our first big step towards a long-living SDI in Greenland. It is from the start a top-down approach as the Greenland Home Rule centralize much spatial data and furthermore dictate the use of open standards and services with the aim, that open standards, data and services would be free of use and hence encourage a bottom-up approach. In a sparsely populated country like Greenland it is necessary that the public sector set off and encourage GI initiatives for the benefit of the administrations and for the citizens of Greenland.

What does Spatial Data Infrastructure mean to Pakistan? (2)
Asmat Ali, Survey of Pakistan, Pakistan

The term Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) has been defined, redefined and still is being refined. Understanding, needs and rationale for SDI development cannot be exactly the same for developed and developing countries though it may have some commonalities. Therefore, time has come when it needs to be translated into tangible benefits according to local needs of specific regions for its smooth and successful implementation.
Natural resources are a vital asset to any economy. Developing countries like Pakistan depend more on natural resources such as crude oil, natural gas, reserves of coal, forests, water, hydropower, ores and minerals, as well as soil and less on industry for their economy. The rapid consumption of the natural resources due to ever increasing population adds value to the importance of these resources and demands strategies for better study, understanding and forecast of our environment and its relation to natural resources management. Moreover, there is a dire need for the country like Pakistan to address the most significant issues like environmental degradation and natural disasters such as, earthquake, flooding and soil erosion that are a great threat to natural resources. But to formulate effective and implementable strategies for the protection and extraction of these reserves and resources through efficient planning, require information that has been evaluated and synthesized persuasively. Information that is developed or accumulated from multiple sources and is objective, reliable, accessible and usable. This is one of the reasons that many countries are developing Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) so, that sharing of data/information could be made possible from multiple sources.
The development of SDI is therefore, a phenomenon as well as a culture that is beyond the capabilities of one sector may it be public or private. Therefore, this paper takes a closer look at SDI readiness in Pakistan in the context of E-government, socio-technical and geopolitical situation of the country. The paper determines "where are we" and not "how to get there" (Georgiadou, 2006) in the SDI domain of Pakistan

A Twinning Experience In Prototyping a NSDI in Romania (150)
Jandirk Bulens, Wageningen-UR, Alterra, Marcel Schram, The Netherlands; Gabriela Dragan, Daniela Docan, Romania

Romania is undergoing rapid changes due to the process towards and the membership of the European Union, among others. Also the geo-information sector in Romania is facing many challenges which are to a major extent related to EU initiatives. One of the most important drivers is the Directive for an INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe (INSPIRE). INSPIRE will build on the National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDI) of the EU Member States. Through the PHARE Twinning project Geodetic network modernisation and spatial data infrastructure framework in 2007-2008 the Romanian National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (NACLR) initiated the further development of the NSDI of Romania. The main objective was to develop a strategy and implementation plan for the NSDI, supported by a first attempt to set up the National Romanian Geoportal.
For the implementation of the NSDI an organisational structure is proposed based on the experiences of the Dutch Kadaster. The chosen organisational structure suits its purpose and consists out of three layers: the political responsibility, the decision making level and the operational and technical layer. It is built on the notion that all the relevant stakeholders have to be involved and the primary responsibility for the NSDI is taken by the national government.
The Dutch Cadastre and NACLR worked together to raise awareness and commitment for realising the Romanian NSDI. An inventory had taken place on previous studies on the subject, interviews were taken with the most relevant stakeholders, workshops and training were organised and at last, also a prototype was developed to be able to demonstrate the possible use of such a NSDI in Romania.
In defining the prototype it became soon clear that the project wanted to demonstrate two objectives by realising two different geoportals. The first geoportal is set up as a national Geo Register with a search engine on all the metadata and functionality to view and browse the actual data published in OGC web services. The second portal is designed as a webshop geoportal of the NACLR, showing a catalogue of their information products including the shopping cart to put the products on a shopping list.
The development of the geoportals showed that the technical realisation using the appropriate international standards seemed to be relative easy. Especially because we had the opportunity to reuse software components developed by the Dutch RGI-project 'Geoloketten' in which innovative software components were made to facilitate SDI's.
What appeared to be more difficult is to have the organisational necessities in place to provide sufficient content. In the geoportal were included only the datasets and information products of the NACLR. It took some effort to obtain the proper metadata to populate the metadata catalogues. Applying the right structure, according to the EU-profile of the metadata set including the use of the correct keywords from the thesauri is not a straight forward job. But the prototype clearly demonstrated the importance of having this done carefully in order to be discoverable.
Despite the fact that spatial data is not always digitally available and broad knowledge on standards and interoperable services is still emerging in Romania, the results showed that it was possible to create a functional prototype for demonstrating the underlying INSPIRE principles. It is clear that the INSPIRE directive is an important driving force in the process.

Turkey National LIS Actions Towards Building SDI (256)
Orhan Mataraci, General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre, Arif Cagdas Aydinoglu, Tahsin Yomralioglu, Halil Ibrahim Inan, Turkey

Digital Maps started to be produced in Turkey after 1990s. Analog maps were converted to digital format and used as a base map in some specific projects. The General Command of Mapping (GCM) of Turkey pioneered digital map production especially. Standard Topographic Maps (STM), smaller than 1:5000, are produced by GCM. Large Scaled Maps, 1/5000 and larger, are produced by Land Registry & Cadastre Directorate (LRCD) and State Provincial Bank. Other public institutions and municipalities also produce maps serving their own needs, depending on their responsibilities and rights legalized by the laws. As time goes by, the needs and requirements for geographic information have increased in Turkey. E-transformation Turkey Project, following Europe+, triggered actions for building "Turkey National GIS" under responsibility of LRCD with participation of public institutions. In these actions, current situation to build Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) was examined in 2004 and Turkey National SDI strategy as policy encouragement was determined in 2005. It was noted that INSPIRE directive should be followed as a part of e-Europe participation. KYM-75 initiative, suggested in 2007, aims to build a portal where public institutions can present their spatial information. It is emphasized on INSPIRE initiative and Turkey National GIS actions that land registry and cadastre related spatial data sets should be produced and used as a part of National SDI initiatives. As a one aspect of SDI, LRCD collect and manage land registry and cadastre data with all sub-directorates all over Turkey, including 22 of Regional Directorate, 1018 of Land Registry Directorate, 325 of Cadastre Directorate, and 122 of Cadastre office. As a part of National GIS and LIS actions, a variety of projects were taken into effect by LRCD. Land Information System (TAKBIS) project are in the development process to manage the cadastral data and all business digitally. Continuously Operating Reference Stations -Turkey (CORS-TR) project has being executed to build GPS stations with the function of Real Time Kinematic (RTK) that enables to determine the coordinates definitely. Map Information Bank (HBB) project aims to build a metadata portal to share information about produced maps. Land Registry Archive Information System (TARBİS) project collects all land registry titles on digital format and indexes all titles since Ottoman Empire. Agriculture Reform Implementation Project (ARIP) aims to develop agriculture sector with some programs. In this paper, cadastre activities and the projects explained above were examined as an integral part of National GIS actions of Turkey. In this context, Turkish Cadastral System was also compared with some European countries as a concluding discussion.


Parallel Session 3.2
Legal and Policy Aspects of SDI's
Moderator: Roger Longhorn, Editor, GEO:connexion International, Belgium

Rights Management and Licensing for Spatial Data Infrastructures (124)
Rudiger Gartmann, con terra GmbH, Germany

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) are designed for the purpose of sharing spatial data among different organizations using different GIS software. The real potential lies in the agility of SDIs, allowing to access external data immediately and to integrate it into business process on the fly.
This goal is mostly reached on a technical level by the provision of data ancoding and service interface standards. But besides the technical challenge there is a legal barrier still in place, obstructing especially the commercial use of SDIs.
Legally, it is mostly necessary to have an agreement between data provider and data user on the terms and conditions of data exchange. These agreements are still processed offline, typically in the form of a written licens contract, signed by all invloved parties. It is easily imaginable that this tome-consuming way of licensing clearly contradicts the goal of seamless integration and agile interaction.
This gap was already identified by INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe), resulting in the demand for e-commerce services in the INSPIRE Directive, Article 14(4).
This paper describes how standard SDIs can be enhanced in order to support license agreements directly in-process, without any prior agreements being necessary between data provider and data user. This includes the aspects of license encodings, security to enforce license-confomant access to services, metadata extensions to inform about license- and security-related requirements of a certain service, protocol extensions to submit license and identity information between the communicating parties, and federation concepts in order to establish trust between initially unknown parties.
The licenses being concluded electronically are legally equivalent to paper-based licenses, but they also bridge the gap between the legal and the technical world by automatically enforcing license elements, such as access rights and price models.
The architecture being introduced in this paper results from varous testbeds conducted by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), where it has proven its applicability to OGC-based SDIs, and is implemented in the con terra product 'sdi-suite licenseManager', which is used as a practical example for seamless integration of licensing and rights management technology into existing SDIs.

Defining the Public Task of Making Spatial Data Available: Should We Admit Defeat? (208)
Katleen Janssen, K.U.Leuven, Jos Dumortier, Joep Crompvoets, Belgium

Making spatial data available is a part of the mission or public task of many public bodies, either as a core activity or as a secondary activity next to the core activity for which they need the spatial data themselves. This public task of providing spatial data is described in many international and European legislative and policy documents, such as Recommendation (2002)2 of the Council of Europe on public access to official documents, the Aarhus Convention, Directive 2003/4 on public access to environmental information, the PSI directive, the INSPIRE directive, etc.
While all these documents shed some light on the extent of the public task of the public bodies to provide spatial data - either to the public, to re-users, to other public bodies, etc. - they still leave us to wonder what the exact scope of this public task is. The question is important on two levels. On the one hand, the public bodies need to know what they are obliged to do, i.e. which data they have to provide under which conditions. This paper will argue that the European and international policymaker may know how they want the spatial data to be made available, but is much less clear what data should be provided or why it should be provided to possible different target groups. On the other hand, the public bodies need to know what they are allowed to do, i.e. which information services they can provide to the public. While providing such services may be required under their public task of providing accessible information to the public rather than just providing data, in other cases such services may be in competition with the private sector on the market. The European and international legislative or policy documents are clear about what the consequences are of a public body entering the market, namely the application of competition law, but not about where the line between public task activities and market activities should be drawn.
The paper will argue that using the concept of public task as a criterion for determining the obligations or possibilities of the public bodies is too difficult on a European or broader level. If it is described widely (and hence vaguely), it does not give any legal certainty in concrete situations. However, describing narrowly is not possible either, because the concept is too dependent on time, place, circumstances, political opinions, etc. This once again hinders legal certainty. Hence, alternatives for the public task concept should be considered. This paper will attempt to set out a course towards such alternatives.

Reaching the Next Level: From Technical to Business Interoperability - Creative Commons Like Licensing in Roaming Enabled SDIs (rSDI) (244)
Hochschule für Technik, Fanghong Ye, Germany

After the introduction of the OGC Web Mapping Service Specification in the year 2000, the release of the EU INSPIRE law in 2007 was a major milestone in the development of spatial data infrastructures. In the meantime, other large players discovered spatial information for Earth viewing or for car navigation. Due to it thematic and legal nature, INSPIRE can cover different requirements. On the other hand professional usage requires a professional business environment with ensured contracting. Because almost all INSPIRE SDI service providers do have only limited coverage due to MS national borders, business interoperability beyond technical interoperability is needed.
The concept of a Roaming-enabled SDI (rSDI) (Wagner, 2006) showed the breaking though characteristics of this concept in GSM. The concept in general is also applicable for SDIs. A specific issue of spatial information is the need for licensing to define terms-of-use. The authors' proposal to introduce license categories is similar to the creative-commons (cc) concept was considered in the INSPIRE DT DSS. Three types of licenses are in development. Within the EU ESDIN project some experiments were conducted to apply the concept and should be reported here.
The first contribution is that the creative commons licensing approach was adapted to the Catalogue Service (CS-W), which also helps the clients get advanced query results according to the license types. The concept was positive for the relationship SDI Service Provider to SDI Service Customer.
The second is proposing the principle of Rights Management (RM) for the Roaming-enabled SDI business case in ISO metadata, which redeems the defect RM rule for the roaming cooperation conception and convince the possibility of success to initial stage of rSDI. Moreover, we indicate the IPR management marking mode towards the Web Feature Service (WFS).These preliminary examined mechanisms are based on the analysis of ISO 19115 metadata /ISO 19139 metadata implementation specification, and ISO 19119 catalogue service specification, etc. Simultaneously INSPIRE Implementation rules metadata and discovery service were referred. However, by comparing the two specifications this paper also indicates that the information of distributor, the legal constraints as well as other right management related metadata are not included in the INSPIRE nor OGC queryable data fields list. Some additional logic is needed to execute a second query on the CSW given results. This logic will be presented as second contribution of the experiment.
Because INSPIRE does not give any recommendations for business operators, this paper is addressed to the SDI audience and not to an INSPIRE drafting team.
Wagner, R. 2006. "A Roaming-enabled SDI (rSDI): -Balancing interests, opportunities, investments and risks", GSDI9, Santiago, Chile.
Doyle, A. 2000. OpenGIS Web Mapping Service Implementation Specification, OGC.
INSPIRE. Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe. http://inspire.jrc.it
INSPIRE Drafting Team Network Services 2008. INSPIRE Network Service Architecture, Joint Research Center. EU.
Vretanos, P. 2002. OpenGIS® Web Feature Service Implementation Specification, OGC.
Vowles, G. 2006. OGC GeoDRM Reference Model, OGC.

Standard Licenses for Geographic Information: The Development and Implementation in Local Government in Italy (350)
Luigi Garretti; Regione Piemonte, Silvana Griffa, Maria Teresa Lopreiato, Roberta Luca, Italy

As technological innovations into the digital frontier, many types of content are becoming rapidly available, with no exception for geospatial data. Sharing and spread of geographic information, available by Public Administration bodies, assume an important role in Geographic Information field, above all with the definitive coming into force of the INSPIRE Directive (15 May 2007).

Power and Privacy: The Use of LBS in Dutch Public Administration (371)
Charlotte Van Ooijen, Tilburg University, Sjaak Nouwt, The Netherlands

Advances in both geo-information science and computer science enable increased combining of citizens' location information and personal data, thereby providing location-based services (LBS) to government institutions. In the Netherlands, in the policy fields of traffic management as well as public order and safety new LBS-applications can be found, such as the public transport chip card and the use of mobile phone location data in policing. These applications are 'sold' to the public by emphasizing values such as personalized service and honest distribution while hiding the technical details along with the incorporated logic. In this contribution we unveil the dominant technological logic as one in which citizens are addressed as subjects rather than clients or citoyens in their relationship with government, thereby reinforcing the power of the state. Consequently, the concept of 'public privacy' is explored to determine the ethical and legal implications of LBS-applications in Dutch public administration.


Parallel Session 3.3
Metadata Tools
Moderator: Tatiana Delgado, National Office of Hydrography and Geodesy, Cuba

SDI and Metadata Entry and Updating Tools (165)
Abbas Rajabifardl, Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration, Department of Geomatics, University of Melbourne, Mohsen Kalantari, Andrew Binns, Australia

Metadata is a vital tool for management of spatial data and plays a key role in any spatial data infrastructure (SDI) initiatives. It provides users of spatial data with information about the purpose, quality, actuality and accuracy and many more of spatial datasets. More importantly, metadata performs crucial functions that make spatial data interoperable, that is, capable of being shared between systems. However, current metadata models and standards are complex and very difficult to handle. Also, metadata for spatial datasets is often missing or incomplete and is acquired in heterogeneous ways.
Besides, metadata is commonly viewed by organisations as an overhead and extra cost. Typically it is acquired after the spatial data itself, through lengthy, complex efforts. Metadata is usually created and stored separately to the actual data set it relates to, and is often managed by people with a limited knowledge of its value. Separation of storage creates two independent data sets that must be managed and updated - spatial data and metadata. These are often redundant and inconsistent. Thus the reliability of spatial information and the extent it can be used are unclear.
To respond to this issue, this paper discusses the importance of having an integrated system for both spatial data and metadata information in which that metadata and spatial data can be integrated within the one spatial dataset, so that when spatial data is updated, metadata related to that data is also automatically updated. The paper highlights the significance of spatial data and metadata integration through developing a set of criteria for metadata application development and the result of applying the criteria against a selection of metadata entry tools.

Extending INSPIRE Metadata to Imperfect Temporal Descriptions (235)
Gloria Bordogna, CNR-IDPA, Paola Carrara, Marco Pagani, Monica Pepe, Anna Rampini, Italy

When looking for geodata in a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) the user expresses selection conditions on the values of metadata archived in Catalog services of the SDI which describe available geodata, possibly remotely accessible through web service facilities. These selection conditions specify "what" is of interest through content keywords (e.g., landslides), "where" the interesting features should be located (e.g., in a bounding box surrounding the Alps), and "when" these features should have been observed (e.g., the date/s of the observation). In order to obtain a list of results by current Catalog services, such conditions must exactly match corresponding values of metadata. This practice suffers from several drawbacks.
With respect to the temporal characterisation, available recommendations for metadata specification of the INSPIRE Directive are inadequate to satisfy the several semantics of the temporal conditions. They are poor, ambiguous and unfitted to the users' discovery purposes. In fact, they are mainly devoted to time stamping metadata lifecycle, while only one field contains a date related to the geodata whose meaning is ambiguous since it is unclear if it refers to the observation date or to the event date and, in several contexts, it is not expressed in standard format. Some proposals have been formulated and a set of six new recommendations are now available (Dekkers M., Craglia M., Temporal Metadata for Discovery - A review of current practice, JRC Scientific and Technical Report, EUR 23209 EN, 2008). However, these recommendations are still limited, with respect to both the requirements of time stamping from metadata providers, and the representation of the temporal search condition necessary to geodata users. In particular, we propose to extend the metadata in order to include more time-related fields to enrich the description of geodata, i.e. to offer the distinction of temporal metadata related to the observations and those related to the observed event; to allow the description of the case of a set of data regarding a unique geographic area observed at different dates (while current metadata allow to define only spatial sets of data related to a unique time stamp); last but not least, to propose the definition of imperfect temporal values which is not considered nor managed now. As far as the discovery service, we propose to allow to express flexible selection conditions so as to apply partial matching mechanisms between the ideal metadata, expressed by the user, and the archived metadata: this would allow to retrieve geodata in decreasing order of relevance to the user needs, as it usually occurs on the Web when using search engines.
This contribution will discuss the above listed limitations and related solutions, presenting proposals of formal and operational methods to take into account imperfect temporal metadata values and allow users to express flexible searching conditions. Proposals will be illustrated with examples taken from an already existing European SDI.

A Prototype Metadata Tool for Landuse Change and Impact Models - A Case Study in Regional Victoria (198)
Stephen Williams, Victorian Department of Primary Industries, Christopher Pettit, David Hunter, Donald Cherry, Australia

The use of models to infer or predict changes and impacts in natural resources and environmental systems is a fundamental research activity around the world. A recent audit of such modeling activities in eastern Australia uncovered a plethora of models in use and a number of instances where models were implemented across various groups and agencies. In many case the active parties were unaware of each others research. The preparation of data and development of model parameters to support deployment of a model can take considerable effort and this can often be leveraged by subsequent research. Additionally, previous modeling when accessible may reduce expenses and inform by lessons of experience the selection of models and approaches to their future implementation. Addressing these research needs is the subject of this paper. A prototype tool for storing and managing model metadata has been developed that extends the utility of the more traditional model register allowing storage of details associated with each instance of a model run. A non-standard approach has been taken to enable efficient registration of the spatial context for model runs. The overall approach taken has implications for the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), model automation and e-science.

CatalogConnector, An OGC CSW Client to Connect Metadata Catalogues (228)
Victor Pascual, Spatial Data Infrastructure of Catalonia, Jordi Guimet, Spain

In the last few years many applications client, implementing OGC specifications, have been developed, basically map viewers dealing with multiple connections to OGC services, such as Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS)
However, this phenomenon has not occurred in the field of the OGC metadata catalogues.
The most important piece of any Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI).
Among the different causes that explain the non-proliferation of OGC Catalogue client applications dedicated to connect multiple catalogues, we highlight:
- The lack of understanding within the OGC members for maintaining and consolidating a unique implementation of OGC Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) specification.
-Coexistence of multiple applications profile. ISO versus EbRim
This seems to have been resolved with version 2.0.2, but it will take some time before the main developers adopt this version.
- The hard task of creating metadata
- The inherent complexity to maintain and manage a catalogue
- Until very recently, free and open availability software.
Fortunately, the future scenario tends to change, thanks in part to a new CSW version (2.0.2) and free software as GeoNetwork or Deegree.
It is expected in the short term, the emergency of new SDI nodes offering, in addition to WMS and WFS services, CSW services.
All this has led us to develop a client application that allows connection to OGC CSW catalogues (CatalogConnector), with a mission to launch multiple simultaneous requests to catalogs implementing different CSW application profiles and versions.
Finally show all results in a single window.
This paper expose some interoperability problems between OGC CSW catalogues and presents an open source application "CatalogConnector" developed by the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Catalonia (Spain) .

Global Unrestricted Access to Geospatial Data: Implications for the LAC Countries (352)
Nancy Aguirre, Pan American Institute of Geography and History, Colombia

In 2005, more than 150 years after the first aerial photograph was taken from a balloon, the world witnessed the conformation of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). An ad hoc coordinating body -the Group on Earth Observations (GEO)- in 2003, was formally established in 2005 for the purpose of building GEOSS. This body includes 51 participating organizations as of October 2008. GEOSS 10-year implementation Plan has been signed (as of July 2008) by around 80 members including National Governments, and the European Commission. In the last few years scientists and decision makers worldwide are having increasingly free access to geospatial information collected worldwide, under policies lead by governments such as the US, and Brazil, among others. In November 2008, the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI) made a Statement for the GEO Plenary, through its President, Prof. Bas Kok, in which GSDI "is pleased to engage and contribute as a Participating Organization to the Group on Earth Observation and, in particular, to the realization of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, GEOSS." Interests in land use and land cover change research arose several decades ago, primarily linked to potential impacts to global environmental change: namely the Global Land Cover project, Land Use and Cover Change (www.igbp.net) core project co-sponsored by the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global environmental Change (IDHP). These efforts have a) fostered pertinent policy; b) allocated financial resources; c) contribute scholarly/ scientific knowledge; and e) resulted in capacity building at global, regional and local scales. Key applications include land use planning, food security, and disaster prevention and attention, among many others. This paper will assess recent initiatives for unrestricted access to geospatial data, and pertinent implications in Latin America and the Caribbean, with emphasis on land use and land cover research.


Parallel Session 3.4
SDI and Interoperability
Moderator: Marcel Reuvers, Standards Specialist, GEONOVUM

Analysing the Use and Impact of GI Standards in Business Processes: A Case within the Flemish SDI (317)
Danny Vandenbroucke, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Jos Van Orshoven, Belgium

Over the last decade, more and more spatial data became available across the world. But even if many spatial data and related information exist, data sets are scattered over many organizations and departments. In practice a lot of barriers exist, making access to and use of these spatial data very difficult. These barriers are technological as well as organizational. One of the major technical problems is that data and systems are not (enough) interoperable.
Technical and semantic standards have been developed, e.g. the ISO191XX-series and OGC specifications, to address the issue of interoperability. Technical standards guarantee interaction between different software-systems by providing common interfaces. The standards provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) largely contribute to this field of standardization. Semantic standards guarantee a seamless integration of data content. Some of the standards of the ISO19XX series provide the building blocs to develop data specifications in a coherent way and can contribute to reach semantic interoperability. In short: technical standards will make you connected while semantic standards will make you understood (Reuvers, 2004).
Athough standards are easy to obtain (ISO standards have to be bought, OGC standards can simply be downloaded), in practice they are poorly adhered to, and they are even less integrated in existing business processes (Reed, 2004). There is often no clear strategy for implementing them and/or they are applied in isolation. In addition, standards are evolving over time with several standardization bodies and consortia involved. Therefore following questions are sometimes difficult to answer: What types of standards are appropriate? Which specific standards are current? (Croswell, 2000) This makes implementation even more complex. In order to help practitioners, FGDC and OGC work on a proposal for a Spatial Data Infrastructure Standards Suite, SDI 1.0 (Nebert et al., 2007). This suite gives advice on which standards should be applied to be successful, and which standards can be implemented rather as an option.
No systematic research has been done so far on the dynamic use of standards within the context of an operating SDI, with a focus on their implementation in business processes. Within the SPATIALIST project, the Flemish SDI is analyzed from this perspective. The major research question from the technological point of view is: "What is the impact of the application (or not) of standards on the performance of the SDI?" The analysis is carried out on four business processes within the Flemish government (cases): the elaboration of spatial development plans, the development of flood risk maps, the car accident registration mechanism and the development of an address register. The paper describes how standards are applied in these processes: in the separate organizations (nodes), as well as in the overall process (chains). An analysis is made on how this affects the performance of the specific processes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Through further research, the objective is to be able to define different options for standardization strategies in view of different types of organizations within the business processes.

Implementing Multi-National Interoperability and Multi-Lingual Metadata - Experiences in developing the North American Profile of ISO-19115/19119 (338)
Bruce Westcott, Intergraph Corporation, USA; Jean Brodeur, Canada

In 1994, the U. S. Federal Geographic Data Committee introduced the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata which specifies a set of metadata elements and its structure for the representation of geographic datasets. In 1995, the Canadian General Standard Board published the Directory Information Describing Geo-referenced Datasets, which introduced standardized metadata content for the description of geographic datasets. In this context, the USA and Canada have agreed to revise their respective metadata standards and develop a common profile of ISO19115 (Metadata). The profile also includes elements from ISO19119:2005 (Services) and implementation perspectives from ISO/TS19139:2007 (XML schema).
The North American Profile of ISO19115:2003 Geographic information - Metadata (NAP - Metadata) will enhance interoperability of geographic information metadata in North America. As outlined in ISO19106:2004 (Profiles), it satisfies conformance Class 1 since it defines a pure subset of ISO19115:2003 and ISO19119:2005 geographic information standards. Retained metadata elements have been selected to enhance discovery of geographic information within North America and to minimize authorized duplications. In addition, this profile provides a mechanism to support cultural and linguistic adaptability by enabling representation of free text in multiple languages and by introducing a metadata register describing metadata in multiple languages (e.g. English and French) compliant to ISO19135:2005 Geographic information - Procedures.
This presentation will provide information about the institutional and procedural hurdles overcome in developing a bi-lingual, multi-national profile; (Mexico has followed developments and expressed interest in becoming a party). It will identify the major reasons on which concrete implementation decisions were made, and the value of a registry maintained to support use of the profile. Finally, the presentation will identify further steps which US and Canadian authorities anticipate in enhancing interoperability across our shared border and digital geospatial assets.

Case Studies in Data Harmonization for SDI Initiatives (340)
Dean Hintz, Safe Software Inc, Canada

INSPIRE by definition seeks to bring together spatial information from diverse domains to better support environmental decision making. At the core of this is the need to develop a common community standard for spatial data and to integrate local and national systems with this. One of the key technical challenges many organizations face is in developing tools and processes to better support data harmonization between inherently different data models. This presentation focuses on three case studies that highlight the challenges, approaches to solving, and results of spatial data sharing between local, regional and state data models, as well as the common lessons can be learned.
The case studies reviewed include Indiana Department of Homeland Security (county / state integration), York Region Spatial Data Automation (city / regional) and Geodata Denmark for KL (municipal / national). First, we will discuss how the Indiana Department of Homeland Security (DHS) addressed the challenge of presenting timely data to first responders for situational awareness during emergencies through the dynamic transformation and consolidation of multiple data sets, formats and schemas into the federal DHS schema. Second, we'll examine how York Region has created a standardized data model definition within their spatial data warehouse which needs to be updated regularly from their member municipalities. This ultimately allows them to provide harmonized subsets of this data to a variety of customers such as transportation, utilities and emergency services. Finally, we'll look at Geodata Denmark for KL, a national SDI project where data from municipalities is uploaded to a national database and local databases are updated based on the national baseline. We will explore how the use of a standardized data model and the use of open standards and web services is being used to support data exchange between the local and national level, and how these systems are planned to support INSPIRE-related requirements, while still maintaining support for legacy proprietary systems.
Time permitting, we'll also discuss the ongoing schema mapping challenges posed by the requirements of INSPIRE, including ways to address the need for a mix of both dynamic and fixed schema elements. Lessons learned in the areas of schema testing and validation for quality assurance, the use of schema templates to improve efficiency during implementation, and methods for improving automation and performance for production systems will be highlighted.

Harmonising and Integrating Two Domain Models Topography (355)
Jantien Stoter, ITC, Arjen Hofman, The Netherlands

'Collect once, use many times' is a main drive for establishing national SDIs. To be able to reuse data in a correct way, concepts defined in different domain models need to be harmonised. This paper reports on a study on harmonising concepts within a similar domain, which is topography. Two domain models for topography have been independently established in the Netherlands: Information Model Geography (for large scale topography) and TOP10NL (for small scale topography). TOP10NL is being extended to an Information Model TOPography (IMTOP) to also cover TOP50NL, TOP100NL, TOP250NL etc. The two domain models IMGeo and TOP10NL model the content and meaning of existing data sets which will be legally established as spatial registers for the national SDI. Since both domain models and corresponding data sets represent the same reality, the question is if one domain model and one base register topography will be sufficient to serve the Dutch SDI. This paper contains a thorough comparison of how similar concepts in the two domain models are handled. The conclusion is that two key-registers topography need to remain since the two registers do not only differ in scale but also in source, providers, objectives and stake holders. The paper proposes a Base Model Topography that models how concepts in IMGeo relate to concepts in TOP10NL in order to serve the goal: collect once, maintain it at several key-registers covering different scales to use it many times.

The OGC WCPS Standard for Flexible Ad-Hoc Sensor Processing (105)
Peter Baumann; Jacobs University Bremen, Germany

Sensor data increasingly contribute to today's geo data mix. Often measurements can be re­pre­sented as multi-dimensional raster data, such as 1-D timeseries, 2-D imagery, 3-D image time series or geophysical data, 4-D climate/ocean data, and n-D statistics data with "abstract", non-spatio­temporal axes. While today's efforts still emphasize mere data navigation, the next generation of services foreseeably will include on-demand extraction and analysis capabilities.
In Fall 2008, the Web Coverage Processing Standard (WCPS) Language Implementation Standard has been issued by the Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC, www.opengeo­spatial.org). WCPS is part of the extends the Web Coverage Service (WCS) suite which is OGC’s raster service standard [07-067r5]. Based on the coverage model of ISO 19123 and WCS, the WCPS extension adds a request language for multi-dimensional raster data, suitable for specifying navigation, extraction, and analysis of sensor, image, and statistics data. By nesting expressions, tasks of unlimited complexity can be formulated. WCPS, therefore, has already been dubbed "SQL for coverages".
WCPS closes several gaps currently existing:
* Feature and meta data standards already have their query capabilities, namely OGC Common Query Language (CQL) / Filter Encoding (FE). With WCPS, retrieval capabilities are now available on all geo data categories.
* The Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) deals with coverages over the full width of its processing chain; however, versatile retrieval on the sensor data assets generated is not specified (for good reasons, such as modularity of specifications).
* The Web Processing Service (WPS) provides a powerful service paradigm. However, it lacks interoperability and semantics sharing: the operation semantics is only defined in the human-readable title and abstract, only the function signature is machine-readable and discoverable. Further, WPS functionality is static – any change in functionality requires programming. WCPS as a WPS profile [OGC 08-070] adds interoperable ad-hoc coverage processing to WPS.
The reference implementation, which has been done in parallel to the conceptual development, is accessible through www.earthlook.org which showcases 1D to 4D use cases. Thanks to the semantics formalization manifold optimizations are possible such as exploiting hardware parallelism.

Parallel Session 3.5
Mapping Agency Open Forum
Moderator: Jarmo Ratia, Director General, National Land Survey of Finland, GSDI Past-President

The goal of this discussion session is to address several questions of importance to national mapping and land administration agencies. Panelists have been asked to be ready to respond to the following questions: (1) What are the most critical needs in your nation at this point in time that could be better addressed through expanded development of spatial data infrastructure? (2) How is your organization responding? What are the most appropriate roles for government in building spatial data infrastructure and what are the most appropriate roles for the private sector? Why? (3) What actions need to be taken to realize convergence among successfully implemented infrastructures to create a sustainable spatial data infrastructure spanning local, regional and global levels?  After all panelists each address a question, comments will be solicited from audience members on the same question. Among national agency executives serving on the panel include Ingrid Vanden Bergh, National Geographic Institute of Belgium, Dorine Burmanje, Director General, Land Registry and Mapping Agency Kadaster, Colonel Juan Vidal Garcia-Huidobro, Military Geographic Institute of Chile (IGM), Magnus Gudmundsson, General Director of National Land Survey of Iceland and Olaf Magnus Østensen, Director, Norwegian Mapping and Cadastre Authority.


Parallel Session 3.6
INSPIRE Progress Reports
Moderator: Paul Smits, JRC, European Commission

One of the increasingly important trends in Information Management is the need to demonstrate to senior decision and policy makers a robust financial Return on Investment (ROI) or business case. The Geographic Information industry has been slow in this respect to "speak the language" of the senior decision maker and consequently, many projects, particularly those with wide impact such as SDIs, have either been delayed or cancelled. The lack of good published ROI stories, which can be referenced by others, further exacerbates the problem.
We will discuss case studies where organisations have measured the benefits of GIS and also identified how those benefits were realised. The paper also covers some of the tools and techniques which can be used to create powerful and compelling ROI case for an SDI. The tools include a suggested workflow, based on government guidance that ensures that both measurable and so called intangible factors can be taken into account. It will look at the applicability of investment appraisal techniques, risk and sensitivity analysis and the value of external comparators.
Rightly or wrongly it is often claimed that the "real" benefits of an SDI are better decision making, improved policy outcomes, more flexible access to data or some other so-called soft benefit. In this paper wewill argue that intangible benefits can be measured in a meaningful way that further reduces uncertainty in any business case. The central principle is that if improved policy outcomes and better decision making are things that are important to us then they must be detectable by one method or another. More importantly, we see intangibles not as problem to be overcome but as an opportunity to be seized. Intangibles are increasingly being seen as the real value drivers for SDIs.
The aim of the paper is take a systematic and practical approach to identifying and quantifying all the benefits of an SDI business case.

Public Sector Geo Web Services: Which Business Model Will Pay for a Free Lunch (143)
Frederika Welle Donker, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Geo-information (GI) is increasingly having a bigger impact on socio-economic benefits. Over the last decade use of GI has shifted from a specialised GIS niche market to serving as a direct input to planning and decision making, public policy, environmental management, readiness to deal with emergencies, creation of value added products, citizen mobility and participation, community platforms, etc. The emergence of Google Earth and Google Maps has created a geo-awareness and has catalysed a thirst for custom-made geo-information. Governments possess, often high quality, large scale GI, primarily created, collected, developed and maintained to support their public tasks. This rich source of GI begs to be used and reused both within the public sector and by society. Both the INSPIRE Directive (2007/02/EC) and the Directive on reuse of Public Service Information - the so-called PSI Directive - (2003/98/EC) underwrite the philosophy of "collect once, reuse many times". Web services are an effective way to make public sector geo-information available as web services allow information to be combined from different sources directly at the source. The INSPIRE Directive even requires that as part of developing geo-information infrastructures (GII) web services should be used. National GIIs are now evolving from first to second generation GIIs. The existence of web services are regarded as the main technological drivers of second generation GIIs because they can fulfil the needs of users and improve the use of data (Crompvoets et al. 2004, Rajabifard et al. 2003). However, the costs of web services are high and revenues do not always cover the costs. Assuming that there is no such thing as a free lunch related to public sector GI (Longhorn & Blakemore 2008), which business models and which financial models form the basis for public sector geo web services? This paper will give an inventory of the different models currently in use and illustrate them with examples. In section 1 a description of various types of web services will be provided. Section 2 will supply a theoretic framework for business models. Section 3 will build on the business model framework with a framework for financial models and price strategies. In section 4 the analysis will show which business model and which financial model will be most suited and robust in a given situation. Section 5 will give some conclusions and offer some recommendations.

Charging for Spatial Data: A Balancing Act on a Rope of Purpose? (160)
Katleen Janssen, K.U.Leuven, Jos Dumortier, Joep Crompvoets, Belgium

The question whether public bodies can charge for making their spatial data available has been a constantly returning item on the SDI-agenda for years. This discussion often culminates in a heated debate between proponents of so-called cost recovery or open access policies, which cannot yet be backed up by empirical evidence. In addition, existing charging policies do not bring more clarity, as they often refer to "reasonable charges", "reasonable return on investment", charges "required to ensure minimum quality", etc.
While the debate on open access and cost recovery policies is important, one should recognize that the arguments that are used in the debate are sometimes of a too generalised nature, not taking into account that different situations might call for different measures. Such a difference that is often disregarded lies in the purpose for which the data is used. Spatial data can be used by public bodies for performing their public tasks, by the private sector for creating commercial products, or by citizens for participating in their national democracy or holding their government accountable. The arguments that are used to defend either cost recovery or open access policies will have a higher or lower value depending on this purpose of use. For instance, the argument that open access increases democracy will be true for providing spatial data to the citizens, but less so for re-use of the data by commercial companies. On the other hand, the argument that open access policies lead to the taxpayer paying for the use of data by only a small group of specific users can only work for re-use by the information industry and less for access by the general public, as this is a right that any citizen can use. This paper will look at the most commonly used arguments with regard to cost recovery and open access policies, and assess their merit based on the purpose for which the spatial data are used. This should contribute to a more nuanced and balanced discussion on charging for spatial data.

The Socio Economic Impact of the Spatial Data Infrastructure in Regione Lombardia (278)
Massimo Craglia, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Michele Campagna, Roberto Laffi, Andrea Piccin, Italy

Whilst national Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) are emerging in European Member States, along with the INSPIRE transposition process, efforts at the regional level already demonstrate levels of maturity and best practice. Some examples already feature high compliancy with the INSPIRE framework, alongside increasing numbers of both partners and users. Documentation of these cases has mainly made reference to technology, normative issues and organisational settings. What is less clear are the economic and social impacts they have on the regional governance and development processes. Only few studies on this perspective are available in the literature, among them the study of the socio-economic impact of the spatial data infrastructure of Catalonia commissioned to the Universitat Politècnica de Catalonia by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) that also recommended the methodology.
In this paper we present the findings of a further study conducted by the JRC on the socio-economic impact of the SDI developed by the Regione Lombardia in Italy. In one of the most populated and rich areas in Europe, the Regional Administration fostered the development of their SDI through political, technical, and economic support, to fulfill the requirements of their 2005 Regional Spatial Planning Law. Since 2006, Communes have been co-funded to built large scale topographic database, partnership have been established with administrations at the province and local level, and, in 2008, a new geo-portal has been developed, offering the public access to shared geographic data, metadata, and services. The 'parenthood' relationship between the planning Act and the new regional SDI, together with its advanced level of development, makes the Lombardy Region an interesting case study to harvest new insights about the impacts a SDI generates on regional development processes. A collaborative agreement between the Regione Lombardia and the JRC makes the regional SDI a pilot for INSPIRE both in terms of testing technical components and specifications, and assessing the impact of SDIs in the regional context.
The methodology adopted for this study builds on that deployed in Catalonia, and involved an extensive set of interviews with a range of stakeholders, from both the service/supply and user sides of the Lombardy SDI. Stakeholders from the public and private sectors have been interviewed in order to understand and quantify the impact of the SDI on selected processes in spatial governance, including local planning, environmental impact assessment, and soil protection. Moreover the reliability of the large scale topographic database to support spatial governance and public service delivery was analyzed, showing direct and indirect actual and potential benefits on local development obtained in the face of actual costs.

The Value Chain Approach to Evaluate the Economic Impact of Geographic Information: Towards a New Visual Tool (373)
Elisabetta Genovese, Universite Laval, Stephane Roche, Claude Caron, Canada

Geographic information (GI) is becoming more important everyday at all levels of society: GI has a central role in supporting economies, improving business effectiveness in the private sector, enabling more efficient governments, and increasing citizens' quality of life.
Assessing the value of digital information products, services and infrastructures is particularly complex due to the specific characteristics of GI as a not- standard economic good (Krek and Frank, 2000) and the nature of the geoinformation market itself (Krek, 2006). One assessment approach that has been suggested by several authors is the value chain: according to Porter (1985), value is created step-by-step along the chain, thus, pricing in a value chain serves to determine the way in which the value created for the end user is distributed among the contributors.
Although the value chain appears to be, in theory, one of the most suitable approaches which can be adapted to assess GI, it is also one of the most complex due to the number of variables connected to how GI is produced and used. Therefore, it is often impossible to determine a single and constant value to specific GI (Longhorn and Blakemore, 2008) and a concrete example of application of a formal economic analysis based on the value chain concept still does not exist (Genovese et al, 2008).
The EcoGeo project, in its first phase, has developed a prototype computer tool named Socioscope, which provides cartography of the links existing between various public and private contributors (Plante, 2006). In Ecogeo's second phase, Socioscope will be upgraded and the value chain of the geomatic sector in Quebec will be defined.
The final goal of the project is an economic evaluation for a test-area inside the value chain: the ability to economically measure the GI value will provide key decision support for both institutional and private sectors.


Parallel Session 4.3
Data Sharing
Moderator: Magnus Gudmundsson, President EuroGeographics and  Managing Director, National Land Survey of Iceland

GeoTest: A Testing Environment for Swedish Geodata (234)
Anders Östman; GIS Institute, University of Gävle, Imad Abugessaisa, Tanzilli Solgerd, Xin He, Sweden

GeoTest is a project initiated by Future Position X (a GIS cluster organization in Gävle, Sweden, Lantmäteriet - The Swedish Mapping, Cadastre and Land Registry Authority and the GIS institute in Gävle, Sweden. The project aims to test Swedish geodata and make sure they comply with the INSPIRE specifications in Annex I-III. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of and experiences from GeoTest in developing the required infrastructure for testing Swedish geodata.
Due to the high demand for geodata in modern society, and anticipated requirements by INSPIRE, the issue of testing a national SDI is very important.
An adequate testing environment is required. In this context, two aspects are discussed:
1. Technical requirements for GeoTest.
2. Organizational and coordination aspects.
The technical requirements for GeoTest are to provide an environment to test current specifications in the context of INSPIRE Annex I. The methodology is crucial to govern the testing process. The developed methodology mainly relates to the transformation testing of the themes specified in Annex I-III. The Member States will test these specifications via their LMOs and SDICs,. The objective of the tests is to ensure that the specifications are balanced in terms of costs and that they contribute to address user needs. At this stage, GeoTest focuses on transformation testing. The aim is to test that the transformations from local schemas to INSPIRE schemas are technically feasible.
The methodology is based on four stages; the main strategy in this testing is to use the ETL (extract-transform-load) approach. The testing process starts with a preliminary desk study, with the objective to collect basic information about the themes and identify the availability and sources of schemas. The extraction process will help to identify the costly procedures when generating GML data that conform to the source schemas; in this stage we expect to encounter some problems in the extraction process, especially if the data are loosely coupled to the source schema. The transformation procedures of the GML data from the extraction process to the INSPIRE GML schema will be performed in three sub-stages, mainly related to schema mapping, matching and transformation.
The testing process will be coordinated with Lantmäteriet, via one contact person per theme. The extraction for the sample data and instances will be selected randomly based on map sheet index used. The full paper will describe the experiences and results of the transformations testing at Annex I data.

SDI Communities: Improve Data Quality and Facilitate Knowledge Sharing (283)
Steven Ramage, 1Spatial, Norway; Luc van Linden, Belgium; Matthew Beare, UK

Projects or programmes involving geospatial data typically utilise some methods for assessing, measuring, reporting and controlling spatial data quality; this includes Spatial Data Infrastructures. There is an opportunity for INSPIRE, and other SDI activities on the global geospatial stage, to create communities of domain specialists working in harmony to deliver data quality based on standards. This can be done through an open source community activity to define and create robust business rules.
This paper will present a view on improving knowledge sharing within the context of an SDI, as well as a collaborative approach to data quality management, in line with global SDI initiatives. It will highlight how users can create a series of rule templates that can be shared across domains to facilitate greater understanding of geospatial data and associated quality measures. More specifically, it will explain the concept of business rules within the geospatial context, outline the possibilities for creating such rules in an open source, standards-based environment and provide candidate rules for specific domains, such as cadastral parcels, hydrography and transport networks. It will outline a collaborative approach for knowledge sharing and building SDI communities worldwide.
1Spatial has been involved in a number of SDI activities worldwide and has developed a standards-based rules language. The Radius Studio product implements this language and can be used to measure the quality of data in the sense of measuring the degree of conformance of the data to a rules-base. The rules language is one that enables logical constraints to be specified and defined using syntactics (encoding) or semantics (meaning). It was designed with a view to taking knowledge, which is buried inside data, point applications or in people's heads, and formalising it as information using rules. Addressing areas like semantics can contribute to removing ambiguities and to storing the knowledge/expertise of the organisation, where everyone can contribute to it and share it, as enterprise metadata that is portable and independent of specific datasets and systems.
As part of the INSPIRE Annex I testing phase, 1Spatial is working with a number of industry leading organisations to use Radius Studio and define a series of sample test rules according to the INSPIRE schema; this way the rules would only have to be created once for one schema from each of the data themes. Once the data is loaded (and transformed) into the INSPIRE schema users can evaluate their data content against the sample set of INSPIRE rules. As the number of SDI activities increases worldwide, and more participants get engaged at a local level, there is the likelihood that efforts to address the same issues, such as data quality, will be undertaken many times over. For example, in Europe with INSPIRE, there are potentially 27 Member States that will be assessing ways to make their data conform to INSPIRE specifications across a number of Thematic Working Groups. By building an open source community with a standards-based rules language for addressing data quality, this issue could be resolved.

A Network Approach to Spatial Data Infrastructure (285)
Glenn Vancauwenberghe; K.U.Leuven, Joep Crompvoets, Geert Bouckaert, Belgium

At different levels of society spatial data infrastructures (SDI) are developed to facilitate and coordinate the exchange and sharing of spatial data. Therefore it should be an important objective of SDI research to provide insight into these practices of spatial data exchange. Based on this insight into patterns of data exchange, we can analyze the organisations exchanging spatial data and the - organisational and technological - arrangements affecting this exchange. In this paper we propose the Social Network Analysis (SNA) as an appropriate method to achieve this objective.
In general terms the concept of a network refers to patterned relationships among individuals, groups or organizations. Any network thus encompasses two indispensible elements: actors and relations. In the context of spatial data infrastructures actors are in essence the producers and users of spatial data. The geographic data flows between these producers and users represent their relational ties. It is the combination of actors and data flows that constitutes the network.
This network approach emphasizes that three levels are crucial in SDI research and SDI development: the organisations, the flows of geographic data and the network as a whole. To analyze SDI from this network perspective specific models and methods are necessary. These models and methods can be provided by Social Network Analysis. The basic difference between this methodology and the more traditional research methodologies is the focus on relationships among the units in a study. The presence of information on these structured relationships makes it possible to understand the behaviour of individual actors in the context of these relationships and to make evaluations about the network in general. Depending on the level of analysis that is used, specific measurements and methods are available.
The objective of this paper is to explore the potential of Social Network Analysis in describing and analyzing spatial data infrastructures. Therefore, this methodology is applied to practices of spatial data exchange within the region of Flanders (Belgium). The data for this analysis were collected from a online survey of 164 public organisations in Flanders (April-May 2008). The results of this application are presented and interpreted.

IGN Spain and IGN France Collaboration to Set Up Cross-border INSPIRE Compliant Services (347)
Antonio Rodríguez, National Geographic Institute, Spain; Didier Richard, Francois Chirie, France; Sebastian Mas, Spain

IGN France opened the viewer part of the geoportail.fr in 2006, using Virtual Globes technologies, enabling to freely navigate on orthophotos, maps and other reference datasets covering the whole France, including overseas territories, with high availability and performance. IGN Spain, as the body responsible for the coordination of the Spanish SDI, opened in 2004 the IDEE geoportal, a standard application enabling to access nine different types of OGC services.
French and Spanish NMAs are collaborating in the perspective of setting up seamless cross border services trying to fulfil the INSPIRE Implementing Rules taking into account their specific data policies and economic models.
With an excellent spirit of collaboration and trying to interoperate above national borders, the following actions have been undertaken:
- Interchange of experiences, ideas and all kind of technical information about web services and INSPIRE implementation challenges;
- Participation in the SDIGER Project, an INSPIRE Pilot Project developed by a consortium (IGN-F, IGN-FI, UNIZAR, CNIG-E, CHE);
- Translation of both Geoportals to the other country language;
- Implementation of the mechanisms needed to plug the Spanish WMS-C services in the French geoportal;
- Implementation of the mechanisms needed to access the French WMS-C in the Spanish geoportal using an Application Programming Interface (API) specific solution;
- Cooperation to support the French initiative to develop an Open Source software, OGC compliant, for European NMAs.
The difference between the respective economic models of the two NMAs changes the process of setting up seamless cross border services into a more challenging task that requires specific software solutions.
In this communication, the experience and lessons learnt from French-Spanish collaboration in this area are described, including the analysis of problems, difficulties, opportunities and good points. Pending issues and challenges are identified as a conclusion of all those activities.

A Proposal for Studying Decision-Making and Spatial Data Infrastructures in the Public Sector in India (381)
Prasanna Kolte; International Institute for Geo-Information Management and Earth Observation (ITC), Luc Boerboom, Gianluca Miscione, Yola Georgiadou, The Netherlands

This paper is based on a research-in-progress which focuses on public decision-making in a selected Indian city using the case of spatial data infrastructure in participatory budgeting. We are particularly interested in the ways in which spatial information is used in public decision-making and the contributions of local spatial data infrastructures in participatory decision-making in Indian cities.
Spatial information collection, storage and retrieval are the base of an SDI. The Indian-NSDI (website, 2003) claims that spatial information is good for decision-making and government decision-makers are using spatial information for decision-making as more and more spatial data sets on a verity of themes are available to them. But one of the challenges faced by governments and developers and promoters of SDIs in India is to increase the use of spatial information in government decision-making (Sivakumar et al, 2004).
In the light of above claims it is important to understand how local government decision-makers in Indian cities make decisions, what spatial information they consider useful for decision-making, how does use of spatial information influence decision-making and whether they are benefitting from it. Keeping this as the main focus, this research studies how individual decision-makers and (individuals in) collectives use spatial information to make decisions.
For this purpose we will make use of the concept of 'frames' and 'framing' to understand the cognitive and behavioural aspects involving the use of spatial information in decision-making. Following Goffman (1975) and Tversky and Kahneman (1981), frames are images of a social reality that generate perceptions of the real world that drives their decision-making. If we understand how frames are generated and how they affect decision-making (cognitive frames) and in turn how frames influence the selection of spatial information in different decision situations, we can draw important conclusions for upscaling and institutionalisation of spatial data infrastructures in the India context.
Studies of decision-making in developing countries are scarce and through this research we attempt to fill this gap to extend the understanding of cognitive and behavioural aspects on decision-making in non-western environments. At the same time it is our effort to fill the gap of "real world" empirical case studies focusing on cognitive aspects of decision-making by individuals and in collectives.
References:
India-NSDI Portal. (2003). http://gisserver.nic.in/nsdiportal/gos (Last accessed: 2 October 2008).
Goffman, E. (1975). Frame analysis: An Essay on the Organisation of Experience. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
Sivakumar, R., M. Rao and A.R. Dasgupta. (2004). National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) -The Vision Ahead. GSDI-7, Bangalore, India, January 30- February 6, [online] URL: gsdidocs.org/gsdiconf/GSDI-7/papers/NIskk.pdf (accessed - 21 august 2008).
Tversky, A. and D. Kahneman. (1981). The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice Author(s): Science, New Series, 211(4481), pp. 453-458.


Parallel Session 4.4
Geoportals, Registries, and Interoperability
Moderator: Athina Trakas, Director, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) European Services

SITNA Geoportal: Towards a New Integrating Scenario (227)
Pablo Echamendi, Carlos Sabando, Isabel Goni, Miguel Villafranca, Cristina Sanchez Tracasa, Spain

The NAVARRE TERRITORIAL INFORMATION SYSTEM (SITNA), is the organised set of human, technological and organisational resources which make up and regularly update, manage and distribute information on the territory of Navarre. SITNA aims to incorporate all information referring to the territory of Navarre and make sure that this is available wherever, whenever and however it is required. The internet is one of the most popular distribution channels.
SITNA's website has exhibited the vast majority of territorial information which is generated by public administrations and other public and private entities from the region of Navarre (Spain). Since it was set up, it has provided a service not only to society but also to public administrations by providing them with data (orthoimages, different scale cartography and thematic maps, etc.) and tools which they need to make decisions. Over the last few years, developing IDENA has made it possible to substantially enlarge what SITNA's WEBSITE can offer and it has also supposed adopting principles from the INSPIRE Directive.
Since it started, SITNA has been an essentially evolving project, which over the years has been growing and adapting to the demands and trends of each moment and, for this reason, it has not escaped the fast evolution if not revolution in the world of geographic information technologies, both from a conceptual and technological point of view. The current situation clearly paints us a scenario encouraging relocation, access to data and services distributed by means of all types of devices making use of the inter-operability made possible and promoted by the use of common standards and specifications.
Within this perspective, SITNA decided to reconsider the role of its geographic portal and move towards a new design for contents, services and technological components. The result has been evolving from a Web portal, until now centred exclusively on a search engine and displaying information, towards a Geoportal, which compiles and structures the whole data and public service offer for the territory of Navarre.
Following INSPIRE philosophy, the new SITNA Geoportal, published in December 2008, was created with the objective to make access to geospatial information easier, faster and cheaper. In short, geographic data, services and resources should be shared as much as possible, strengthening the efficacy of e-government and generally satisfying whoever might need to use it. For all these reasons, we can say that the new SITNA Geoportal is, in terms of concept and services, an SDI Geoportal.
As a main conclusion, the SITNA project, like many other initiatives, is rapidly changing from corporatism and restricted information distribution to infrastructures which are more open to citizens, companies, research and the market in general. This is the real challenge for the new geoportal, and for SITNA in general, over the next few years.

IGN France Geoportal API: When Opensource Software Helps Online Access for Citizens and Third Parties Developments (271)
Didier Richard, Institut Geographique National, France

With the publication of INSPIRE network services implementation rules, Member States face a tremendous challenge in publishing on-line web services. Most Member States already have websites allowing to discover their metadata and datasets through the use of dedicated interfaces getting connected to the underlying catalogue and map services. The objective of this presentation is to show how the French Geoportal project is trying to answer to this challenge by developing an Open Source component giving access to different services within the framework of INSPIRE.
In 2006 France launched its Geoportal project aiming at providing free viewing of French reference datasets and a platform enabling development of viewers based on the portal services. In early 2008 this Geoportal opened its Web 2D Application Programming Interface (API) in order to allow citizens and partners to overlay their datasets with reference datasets.
This API is based on the well-known OpenLayers library and has been released under the BSD licence to facilitate sharing of development with Open Source Editors. The main difficulties in maintaining this API were to follow the evolutions of the OpenLayers library along with supporting more components to facilitate interoperability.
Key issues to make this API useful were the choice of coordinate reference systems for enabling overlaying and the use of a light Geo Right Management (GeoRM) for accessing portal's web services in compliance with the French data policy.
In this presentation the experience of using Open Source software is described as well as the opportunities given to users for elaborating services and to partners for participating in such a development aimed at either commercial products or demonstrating co-viewing. As Open Source software is based on collaboration, the presentation will show the benefit of common tools allowing sharing of knowledge and reducing the cost of maintenance through the community of users and developers.

OGC Standards in Daily Practice: Gaps and Difficulties Found in Their Use (185)
Bas Vanmeulebrouk, Alterra Wageningen UR, Hugo de Groot, Arno Krause, The Netherlands

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) defines standards for the geospatial domain. Well known examples include the Web Map Service (WMS) standard, Web Feature Service (WFS) standard and the catalogue service (CSW) standard. Most of these standards are recommended by the INSPIRE directive. The purpose of open standards is to provide interoperability and to prevent vendor lock in. But are interoperability and connectivity sufficiently supported by the current standards? In our daily practice of creating web applications based on a service oriented architecture we experienced that problems associated with the application of open standards do surface. In this paper, a conceptual model on the use of these standards for further discussion is proposed. This model is based on experiences gained during the development of several internet GIS applications.
The first step of the development of these internet GIS applications consisted of setting up a framework for the integration of geospatial web services based on a distributed architecture adhering to the INSPIRE principle to store the data at its source. This framework has been used to create several user friendly internet GIS applications. Examples of applications using the WMS, CSW and the WFS-T standards will be mentioned.
In carrying out these projects several issues regarding the application of open standards in daily practice surfaced. We tried to conceptualize these issues in a model for the usage of standards. Issues associated with the application of open standards can surface at three levels: the definition of the standard, the implementation of the standard in software, and the application of this software. The issues can be divided into three categories: semantic issues, organizational issues and technical issues. This leads to a two dimensional matrix which can be used to classify gaps and difficulties encountered when working with open standards.
Examples of issues related to the standards themselves include the large degrees of freedom sometimes present in the specifications and version proliferation. Examples of issues related to the implementation of standards in software are the presence of bugs and errors in the implementation. Examples of issues related to the application of standards are the harmonization of heterogeneous data and symbolization for instance. In the paper, more issues will be discussed in greater detail.
In conclusion we can see that despite the issues raised in this paper, the proper use of the current OGC standards already proved to support interoperability and connectivity sufficiently. We could realize the mentioned applications and they adequately served their purpose. However, the identification of these issues in the right context makes it easier to address the shortcomings and to improve existing standards.

Data Model Transformation for INSPIRE Conformance: Practical Experience from INPSIRE Testing (232)
Eddie Curtis, Snowflake Software, Gareth Robson, UK

INSPIRE testing began in September 2008 and involved over 70 participants from across Europe. Organisations consisted of SDICs and LMOs performing the roles of Data Providers, Software Licence Providers, Transformation Testing Participants and Application Testing Participants with the aim of testing the 9 themes of the Annex 1 data specification. The aim of this testing was to gain experience and provide feedback to the European Commission's Drafting Teams and Technical Working Groups to enable problem areas to be identified, data specifications to be refined and cost-benefit analysis to be performed. For the partners participating in this testing the opportunity to gain practical experience of the issues encountered and effort required to achieve INSPIRE compliance is of paramount importance. In particular, the viability of translating data from the various existing data models in use in the member states to the community schema required by INSPIRE must be verified.
This paper is a joint paper by the Land Registry of England and Wales (HMLR) - who acted as Data Provider and Snowflake Software - who acted as a Software Provider. It describes practical experience gained in working together in an INSPIRE Testing Team on the Transformation Testing aspect of INSPIRE testing using the Annex 1 Cadastral Parcel Schema. The paper describes:
1) The techniques and approach used to map HMLR local data as is into the Annex 1 Cadastral Schema.
2) Compatibility between HMLR local data and INSPIRE Annex 1 Cadastral Schema. Omissions and areas of complexity in transforming the data.
3) The suitability of using commercial off-the-shelf technology to perform the mapping.
4) The relative merits of on-the-fly transformation versus off-line transformation.
5) The degree of interoperability achieved with other participants testing the cadastral theme.
6) Lessons learnt to aid the move into production.

Open Source Geospatial Foundation - Globally Powering SDIs (272)
Arnulf Christl, Open Source Geospatial Foundation, USA

This presentation gives an insight to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation and the role it plays in the emerging GSDI.
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of open source geospatial software, community collaboration and spatial data access. OSGeo is a community of communities reaching into all areas of interest to the global spatial infrastructure. Millions of end users and web developers unknowingly use Open Source Geospatial software in a daily manner. The investment into the core software goes into the tens of millions of US$. Several 10 thousand GIS professionals use Open Source geospatial software an a daily basis. Thousands of active members in more than 40 local chapter initiatives continuously build the global OSGeo community. Activities can be grouped into three areas:
- Software Projects
- Spatial Data Projects
- Education and Research√In order to be able to provide a reliable technical infrastructure and protect its software projects OSGeo has a legal body. It is a non-profit organization incorporated in Delaware, USA and is supported by 73 individual charter members from 20 nations. These vote for the board of directors who in turn employ the CEO. This way an organization has been created that can also take on copyright ownership for code.
OSGeo operates and maintains development environments for its software projects with code repositories, tracking systems, mailing lists, web sites, wikis, build bots, download space and so on. To be able to focus its efforts on viable projects these are first vetted by the incubation process. Any geospatial Open Source project can apply for incubation by submitting an application form. During incubation several aspects of the project and its governance are evaluated. Many of these processes have been gleaned from larger organizations like the Apache Foundation, for example the code provenance review that each project has to go through or the list of accepted licenses that comes from the Open Source Initiative. Projects are expected to provide well documented working code and documentation as well as a functioning community and communication infrastructure.
OSGeo provides for a forum of users, service and data providers and developers. It cooperates with existing communities from all realms rather than trying to do all on its own. One example is the memorandum of understanding between OGC and OSGeo allowing for quicker development and deployment of standards and leveraging OGC's integration potential with proprietary software vendors.
One issue that is of mutual interest to all commnuities is the availablility of spatial data justifying a meta level project of its own, the Geospatial Data Committee. Initially thought to become a place where to upload global spatial data it quickly became evident that this would not make much sense due to the great amount of data and the need for a high frequency of updates. Other issues were also found to be much more pressing, for example the need for a clear policy on copyright and licensing and usage of spatial data and most of all a usable meta data policy and repository of resources.
In summary OSGeo has developed into of a natural global repository of spatial data services, providers and users.

Parallel Session 4.5
United Nations and World Bank Spatial Initiatives
Moderator: Lorant Czaran, Head of Office (Bonn), UN-SPIDER and UNGIWG Secretariat

This session includes presentations by UN and World Bank agency personnel on several initiatives followed by a panel discussion. Initiatives to be described are currently being invited. The open panel discussion will address ideas for means by which UN, World Bank and other initiatives might work more closely with other organizations and each other to better fulfill the mandates of each organization and better meet critical global human and environmental needs. Among the speakers include Marisela Montoliu Munoz, Head of Spatial and Local Development Team, Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank and Lorant Czaran, Head of Office (Bonn), UN Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER), United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and UNGIWG Secretariat as well as others.

Parallel Session 4.6
INSPIRE Data Interoperability and Harmonization
Moderator: Clemens Portele, INSPIRE Data Specifications Drafting Team

Sessions 4.6 and 5.6 are dedicated to Data Specifications development and the input received from INSPIRE stakeholders. The work on data specifications has focused on in the first phase on the specifications for the nine themes of Annex I, namely Coordinate Reference systems, Geographic grid systems, Geographical names, Administrative units,  Addresses, Cadastral parcels, Transport networks, Hydrography and Protected sites.The difference between the draft INSPIRE data specifications and the legal text of the Implementing Rules will be explained.
The results obtained from the open consultation of the INSPIRE Stakeholders and from the Data Specification testing, undertaken by around 80 organisations, will be presented. These two initiatives played an important role in the improvement of the data specifications.
In a round table with the facilitators of the Thematic Working Groups, the main characteristics of data specification for each theme will be presented, explaining the cross-themes relations and potential extension to other relevant applications. The presentations and the open discussion aim to inform the audience on the latest developments and achievements on the data model and data product specification in Europe, towards the interoperability and harmonization of data sets and services.
Finally, the main lessons learned from the Data Specifications process on developing the specifications for themes of INSPIRE Annex I and how to capitalise them for the development of themes included in INSPIRE Annex II and III will be summarised.
Among the presentations to be included session 4.6 include INSPIRE Data Specifications, Implementing Rules and their Relationship by Vanda Nunes de Lima, JRC, European Commission Joint Research Centre, and Results from the Consultation and Testing by D. Lihteneger, JRC, European Commission. These presentations will be followed by a Roundtable with Facilitators of the Thematic Working Groups including Coordinate Reference Systems and Geographical Grid Systems, Lars Engberg; Geographical Names, Andreas Illert; Administrative Units, Geir Myrind; Addresses, Andrew Coote; and Cadastral Parcels, Dominique Laurent


Parallel Session 4.7
Acceleration: Public Sector Meets Science & Industry
Moderators/Speakers: Dorine Burmanje, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Dutch Cadastre and Jo van Valckenborgh, AGIV - FGIA, Flemish Geographical Information Agency and and Uwe Fietzek, Geo-partner from Germany

Inspiration, sharing information,  that will be crucial during the 3rd conference day organised by Geonovum and RGI of the GSDI 11 World Conference. What the world does not know (yet) is that The Netherlands has a top position when it comes to geo-information technology. The Netherlands has access to enormous amounts of geo information which will bring many national and international geo successes. Geo information is very important for The Netherlands. Think about the complex spatial planning issues, the ambitious sustainable climate policy and the challenging mobility issues. The nation is well prepared when it comes to GI matters. The explosive demand for and the use of geo information, also in the area of public assignments, assures a golden Dutch future. On this day The Netherlands shares her SDI challenges, assignments, innovations and results with counterparts from over the globe. The central question is amongst others: 'What is in it for the world?! In short, react to The Netherlands! Among the questions that session will address include: What is the (desired) future scenario of applications of geo-information in The Netherlands and the rest of the world for these top-managers? How do we make The Netherlands a world level geo cluster? And which political, social and economical steps do trade and industry, the government, universities and the users have to make to realise this?


Parallel Session 4.8
Geo Statistics and INSPIRE
Moderator: Ekkehard Petri, EUROSTAT, European Commission

In the light of current Global concerns like overpopulation, climate change, threats to important ecosystems, limited resources a true Global Integrated Information System is needed. Such an information system has to integrate qualified information from a variety of sources to serve as a reference for all administrative and the market actions. A true information system needs to include as a minimum both spatial and statistical information. On the other hand actual use of statistics which is mostly based on spatially aggregated information does not allow to exploit the full potential of statistical information, as aggregation renders this information useless for spatial analysis.
In this session, organisations producing statistical data will report on their activities in overcoming these obstacles and in developing an Integrated Information System for their organisation. Topics and speakers will include: The GIISS Vision, GEOSTAT and the Problem with Statistics by Lars Backer, Statistics Sweden; Implementing INSPIRE in a Federal Republic - Views from German Municipalities by Udo Maack, the Association of the German Communes; INSPIRE at Statistics Netherlands by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and Spatial Information in the Polish Official Statistics by Janusz Dygaszewicz, Statistics Poland.

Implementing INSPIRE in a Federal Republic - Views from German Municipalities
Udo Maack, the Association of the German Communes

No abstract.

Spatial Information in the Polish Official Statistics
Janusz Dygaszewicz, Statistics Poland

Central Statistical Office (CSO) is actively participating in works regarding the implementation of the Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE).
In Poland the contact point (as mentioned in article 19 section 2 of the directive), responsible for the contacts with the European Commission in terms related to the inspire directive, is Surveyor General of Poland. In order to support works on the implementation of the directive, the Surveyor General of Poland appointed the INSPIRE Implementation Council. Tasks of the Council include: expressing opinions in matters of legislation, organization and in technical matters regarding the Polish Spatial Data Infrastructure (PSDI), which is created accordingly to the INSPIRE Directive. Furthermore, the Council recommends actions and projects of the inter-departmental matter in the field of geoinformation and supports Polish experts in committees and European Commission teams regarding INSPIRE.
As a result of actions of the national contact point and members of the Council, a draft of a spatial data infrastructure legislation act has been created. The act regulates basics of creation and operation of the Polish Spatial Data Infrastructure. PSDI will include all levels of public administration and serve all users of geographical information in Poland and in the Community.
Central Statistical Office was appointed as a leading unit in terms of two spatial data themes mentioned in appendix III: “Statistical units” and “Population distribution – demography”. As a cooperating unit, CSO undertakes actions in terms of two themes from appendix I: “Administrative units” and “Addresses”.
Along with activities in the matter of legislation, a testing team for appendix I themes’ data specifications has been appointed. The testing process’ goal is to analyze relations between data sets existing in Poland and themes specified by the INSPIRE directive, create a preliminary technical and economical analysis of the INSPIRE data themes implementation, design a schedule of works in the field of appendix I INSPIRE themes’ data sets creation.
Unfortunately, the testing of appendix I themes’ data sets led to a conclusion that there are no data sets in Poland that completely comply with the technical specification prepared by Thematic Work Groups. In most cases data is gathered by different, not cooperating public institutions, so none of these institutions is able to provide a complete set of objects and attributes. Steps are taken at the moment to achieve compliance of spatial data sets with the INSPIRE requirements.
CSO is currently working on adding spatial information to the territorial identification registry. Administrative division of Poland already has its spatial representation in the form of the National Registry of Borders and Areas of the Country’s Administrative Division. Steps are taken to create spatial data for the statistical division of Poland. Acquisition of such a data set is expected in the end of 2009. Address point acquisition for the whole country is currently in a pilot phase. So far 4 address databases have been built for 4 communes selected for the trial agricultural census, which takes place September 2009. Address point coordinates are acquired with help of following materials: basic (cadastral data and/or ortophotomap, address point sketches), referential (LPIS, Topographic Data Base, VMap Level 2).
Acquisition of address points’ coordinates will allow transition from the area assignment of statistical data to the point assignment. This will eliminate the necessity to recalculate data when administrative borders are changing. Furthermore, the point assignment will allow easy processing of statistical data in any area. This functionality is crucial in all three stages of the census: the preparatory works, management of pollsters and enumerators and after the census for multidimensional spatial analysis.
Appointment of a Metadata Team, which is expected to prepare the technical specifications for creating metadata for appendix I spatial data sets and services within two years.

INSPIRE Implementation at Statistics Netherlands (CBS)
Pieter Bresters, Statistics Netherlands (CBS)

No abstract.


Parallel Session 4.9
Data Standards for Global Map
Moderator: Chris Higgins, EDINA, Edinburgh University Data Library, UK

The purpose of ths workshop is information exchange between the EuroGeographics led European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (ESDIN) project and the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM). The ESDIN project has major implications for EuroGlobalMap and the ISCGM is currently considering version 2 of the Global Map data product specification. The objective is to provide the Global Map community with the opportunity to learn about ESDIN and have input to the relevant work packages. It is hoped that sharing European experience in this area will be of help to the ISCGM in their data product specification revision.


Parallel Session 4.10
Capacity Building Open Roundtable
Moderator: Mark Reichardt, President, Open Geospatial Consortium

This roundtable is being hosted and organized by the GSDI Communications Committee to explore, develop and offer learning opportunities for GSDI Association members as well as learning opportunities for the government, commercial, not-for-profit and private citizen sectors. The session will engage GSDI 11 attendees in developing and achieving a work plan. All interested parties are invited to join the committee and contribute. Among items likely to be discussed for inclusion in the work plan include creation of the annual GSDI Association Newsletter, development of web-based learning materials, support and recruitment for the GIK Network, GSDI website improvements, potential workshops and membership recruitment for the GSDI Association.


Parallel Session 5.1
National Experiences: Africa
Moderator: Chukwudozie Ezigbalike, UNECA, Ethiopia

SDI and Governance: Prospects and Challenges for Federal State Developing Countires (Case of Nigeria) (296)
Olukunle Ogundele, Regional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys, Olalekan Somefun, Nigeria

Implementation of SDIs in inherently complex, tension arises from various sources including the need for consensus on standards for example between federal and local agencies(Georgiadou et al., 2007). Despite the numerous benefits of SDI, there are still several failure of the project(Georgiadou and Harvey, 2007) and most of these failures are in developing countries. Factors affecting such failures include lack of technology to handle enormous data, financial constrains and many other socio-economic constraints. More so, there are other underlying factors that have effect on implementation of SDI. One of such factors is the system and structure of governance in the country. A decentralized system brings service closer to the community and also devolves control to the local level. This has a vital implication on SDI implementation and service delivery within the system.
It is obvious that system of governance can either facilitate of mitigate against a successful implementation of SDI mostly in developing countries. Nigeria as a developing country is faced with great challenges in implementing NSDI in its present unitary system of government. A look into the prospect and challenges of SDI in the context of decentralization system of governance in Nigeria can aids proper implementation plans of SDIs at all levels of governance, thereby boosting its chance of success. The findings however can be generalized to many developing countries presently operating under decentralization policy.

Experiences in Developing Local, National SDI Initiatives, Projects and Programs (NICI Plan) in Rwanda (217)
Jean Pierre Hitimana, GIS and Remote Sensing Centre of the National University of Rwanda (CGIS-NUR); Rwanda

The value of geo-information for social and economic planning and development, crime management, business development, flood mitigation, environmental restoration, community land use assessments and disaster recovery etc. is already recognized by the Government of Rwanda.
In Rwanda there is a growing interest in creating a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) that makes geo-information accessible to support governmental decision-making processes. A major move to create the Rwandan NSDI was in October 2006 with the SDI Conference aiming at the establishment and maintenance of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure.
This paper will discuss about experiences in developing SDI initiative in Rwanda and a project which is running at the GIS and Remote Sensing Centre of the National University of Rwanda (CGIS-NUR) as a pilot project for accomplishing a geodata inventory of data created/assisted to create by CGIS-NUR and metadata representing the spatial data holdings of CGIS-NUR, and the establishment of a sample web mapping service and uploading the gathered information to a Geo-portal. It will then be a future objective to provide the National University of Rwanda with information about available geodata and web mapping services. Although the initial focus is narrowed down to CGIS-NUR, the overall goal is to facilitate the development of NSDI in Rwanda. This project is intended to help to raise awareness within the National University of Rwanda and thus hopes to contribute to the establishment of an NSDI which is a part of National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) Plan or program in Rwanda.

Exploring Relationships Between Municipal, Provincial and National Government SDI Implementers in South Africa (477, aka 209)
Prestige Makanga, University of Cape Town, Julian Smit, South Africa; Kate Lance, USA; Walter de Vries, The Netherlands

Worldwide, nations are implementing National Spatial Data Infrastructures. To achieve this, many governments are spearheading the process. Some researchers have argued that a hierarchical approach in terms of jurisdiction exists, whereby SDI is implemented at a national level first, and then smaller provincial governments and municipalities implement the policies established at the national level as part of ensuring seamless spatial data management and sharing. National level policy can support uniform NSDI standards and foster interoperability at lower levels of government. However, in reality, smaller and multiple jurisdictions may be innovating faster than national government bodies and may not be mirror images of the SDI design from 'above'.
In 2004, the South African Spatial Data infrastructure (SASDI) Act was officially endorsed, and there have been continuous efforts to further refine the Act in an attempt to eliminate ambiguities and come up with a more relevant and useful Act. The SASDI Act dictates the way in which all data custodians are supposed adhere to certain prescriptions with regards to metadata, spatial data capture, maintenance, management, integration, distribution and usage. Local Authorities fall into the bracket of data custodians as they make use of public funds in their data creation efforts. Provincial governments (who are smaller governing units of the National government) on the other hand are making attempts to manage, coordinate and facilitate public access to spatial data and other information resources in different local authorities within their jurisdiction. Therefore, there seems to be a seemingly involuntary adoption of a hierarchical approach to SDI implementation.
This research takes a closer look at the vertical institutional relationships that exist between the National, Provincial and Municipal governments within South Africa. Our aim is to evaluate whether a hierarchical top down approach truly exists or whether SDI in the province is more a result of a bricolage of bottom up activity. We therefore evaluate the extent to which National policy has affected SDI activity at the local level or vice versa.

Getting Geoinformation and SDI To Work For Africa: The Rationale Behind AESI-ALIGN (476)
Sives Govender, Craig Schwabe and Hussein Farah

African countries have been involved in various SDI activities for more than a decade. However, recent studies have indicated that SDI implementation (as defined by the GSDI) has largely been a failure in Africa.
This conclusion can be drawn from presentations made at the AfricaGIS and AARSE conferences as well as from the study that has emanated from research done by the University of Cape Town together with results of the Catalogue of Fundamental Geospatial Datasets projects undertaken by EIS-AFRICA and the HSRC for the Mapping Africa for Africa (MAfA) initiative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
What the latter study has also shown is that although there are many gaps in fundamental geospatial datasets in African countries there is much geospatial information available within member states but the quality of this data and fitness of use is questionable. 
With this said, a positive development on the continent is that the geo-information institutions and practitioners in consultation with one another have defined what they believe to be the fundamental geospatial datasets for Africa.
Across the African continent many initiatives geo-information have been implemented which include the MAfA initiative. The first two stages of this initiative have been completed with the defining of the fundamental geospatial datasets for Africa and the completing of an inventory/cataloguing of these fundamental datasets. Further stages for MAfA include the undertaking of more detailed investigations of the availability of geospatial datasets within selected countries and looking at the mechanisms by which the geo-information gaps can be filled. There is a clear indication that there is much interest in Africa, especially considering that incredible resource wealth. Major initiatives are being funded and implemented with the support of the Google.ORG and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Africa is a continent where the implementation of development agendas such as the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are vital for sustainable development. No other continent has more to lose and we strongly believe that underpinning any development programme is the need for quality geospatial data. This "quality" can only be assured if proper policies and standards are implemented that meet international best practise. Europe through the INSPIRE initiative has recognised the value of SDI for their continent and its socio-economic development.
Africa can rapidly benefit from aligning our SDI efforts with that of Europe, with a focus on closer collaboration and looking at mechanisms by which aid from Europe to Africa can be properly monitored under an appropriate social accountability framework.
Regional organisations (e.g. UNECA, EIS-AFRICA, AARSE) and sub-regional organisations (e.g. RCMRD, RECTAS, CEDARE, SADC RRSU) have the expertise but require further knowledge, capacity and financial support to ensure the implementation of a needs driven and development focussed SDI. It is for these reasons that African institutions have engaged with EUROGI and have put forward the concept of the Africa-European Spatial Infrastructure Alignment (AESI-Align). The main principle behind this initiative is that lessons learnt through INSPIRE will be transferred to African intuitions. At the same time, lessons learnt in Africa will also be communicated to institutions in Europe. Other key areas where there can be collaboration are in the implementation of development and business orientated GI initiatives.
We as representatives of Africa's GI community must pursue with our European partners the Framework Programme (FP) channel to seek funding to get alignment of European and African SDI initiatives.
African countries must realise the huge economic benefit of investment in an information infrastructure. In the US, Geo-information Sciences have become one of the leading immerging sectors in job creation. Why can't this be replicated in Africa? GI should be more than a natural resource management tool but it should spawn innovation and create jobs too.
It is with this rationale and motivation that we submit our abstract that will discuss GI and SDI in Africa, the importance of GIS/SDI to the future development of Africa and the value of the AESI Align initiative and the potential benefits to Africa.

Parallel Session 5.2
Institutional Arrangements for SDIs
Moderator: Mauro Salvemini, President, EUROGI

Public-Private SDI Challenges in Germany (247)
Heinz Brueggemann, Cologne District Government, Bonn, Germany

After the establishment of the basic technical and organisational structures, SDI development is now part of the application domain in Germany. This leads to new discussions on the interface between the public and private sectors and the roles of the different actors. First public-private value adding chains have successfully been built. The public and private user communities are organizing themselves to express their interests and to optimize solutions. Strong initiatives are coming up on the regional and local level, building their own SDI solutions with private and public participants. On the other hand, the Inspire challenges are affecting the local, State and the federal level in Germany as a federal nation. In addition, the legal realization of the PSI Directive by two German laws, one law on information liberty and one law on the reuse of public sector data, is the source for a principle debate on public data access by private users. Currently SDI-based standards are being developed and tested by the interested communities. A basic problem is sustainable maintenance of these standards. On the national level, Germany Online Geodata („Deutschland Online - Geodaten") is part of the national German e-government initiative and gives interested groups the opportunity to organize themselves under it's umbrella and to develop applications following the principle "Few for all". The author is the co-ordinator of Germany Online Geodata and is in this role involved in the field of public-private co-operation and will report about his experiences and views on the above mentioned topic.

Towards Geo-Information Access and Sharing: Institutional Obstacles (173)
Yvette Pluijmers, GeoBusiness Nederland, Netherlands

The Netherlands, as well as many other European and non-European countries, are struggling to find the right balance between open access policies and cost recovery policies for public sector geo-data. Since the European Directive on Public Sector Information, the issue has gotten more attention from government as well as the private sector.
Geo-data Industry Organization 'GeoBusiness Nederland' has, in close co-operation with several of its members and the Universities of Delft and Wageningen, conducted a project to emphasize the current institutional obstacles that prevent open access to public sector geo-data. The obstacles include legal, technical, financial as well as organizational obstacles.
The main objective of the project is to create high-level political and governmental awareness for the benefits of open access policies. Also, solutions are given to decrease these obstacles, for the benefit of the private sector who wishes to create value-added products and services based on public sector geo-data. One of the solutions is based on the important technical difference between 'retrieving data' and 'having access to data'. Having access to data does not necessarily imply that the actual data itself is needed, which may cause a workaround regarding several legal and financial issues.
Since 2006, the project has indeed contributed significantly to the awareness for the current obstacles, and the awareness for the benefits of open access policies. The findings of the project have played an important role in the points of view of politicians and government officials, and have emphasized the role of the private sector within the Dutch Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). With that it has left an important mark on the recently published Dutch SDI policy document (GIDEON).

G-Governance in India: Search for a Suitable Framework and Research Directions (113)
Pramod K Singh, Institute of Rural Management (IRMA), India

When governance involves the use of geo-information and communication technology (Geo-ICT), the same can be called GIS- enabled governance or G-Governance. The paper presents a framework for the governance of the spatial information infrastructure. It argues for a move from the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) to the spatial information infrastructure (SII). It describes the guiding principles, enablers, de-enablers, strategies, and critical success factors for the governance of SII. The Right to Information Act (RTI), the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), and the New Map Policy (MNP) are part of the shift towards openness and an enabling macro-environment for spatial governance. The provisions of the core enabling infrastructure under the NeGP are: national e-government intranets (NICNET and ERNET), state- wide area networks (SWANs), common service centres (CSCs) as primary modes of delivery, national data bank and state data centres, and a national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI). In addition, the paper describes the supporting enabling infrastructure. It identifies the key spatial programmes and/ projects in India as the other core enablers. The 27 mission mode projects proposed under the NeGP may also play the role of supporting enablers in the G-Governance process. However, these enablers cannot yield the desired results unless the de-enabling factors are set right. The main de-enablers relating to the governance of SII may be categorized under four heads: (i) technical, which includes system architecture, standards, interoperability, and integration strategies; (ii) organizational, which includes how well the staff of an organization understands the technology and its role, and how the organization adapts to new sources and types of information; (iii) approach of the programme/ project management; and (iv) macro-environmental or institutional, which includes factors external to an organization that influence its ability to adopt or use SII. The paper examines the importance of the above four de-enablers, proposes suitable frameworks for project management and change management, and suggests ways and means of overcoming each of the de-enablers. It also identifies the key strategies and critical factors for good spatial governance. It presents future research directions in the areas of G-Governance. The proposed frameworks could guide planners and managers in developing countries in the successful implementation of G-Governance.

An Environmental Business Case for INSPIRE? (280)
Chris Jarvis, Environment Agency (England and Wales), UK; Michael Stanley-Jones, Switzerland

Providing access to high quality, targeted environmental information is an important tool for those organisations tasked with protecting and enhancing the environment - it helps to influence personal, political and business decisions, and encourages sustainable lifestyles.
The importance of providing such access to the achievement of sustainable development led to the agreement of the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the 'Aarhus' Convention), and subsequent implementation through European legislation, including EC Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information.
The Aarhus Convention recognises that sustainable development can be achieved only through the involvement of all stakeholders. It links government accountability and environmental protection and focuses on interactions between the public and public authorities in a democratic context. Access to information is a key pillar of the Convention - it therefore grants the public rights and imposes obligations on public authorities. But how does Aarhus relate to INSPIRE? Does the INSPIRE Directive help environmental organisations fulfil their obligations under Aarhus, and if so what are the opportunities, costs and benefits in moving forward?
This paper proposes that the INSPIRE Directive provides a mechanism to meet Aarhus obligations in an efficient and effective manner. It draws upon a series of wide-ranging 'best practice' case studies of information provision, gathered from across the UNECE region by the UNECE Electronic Information Tools Task Force. These are considered in the context of INSPIRE, utilising specific experience of the Environment Agency of England and Wales in developing an INSPIRE implementation plan based on cost/benefits. It includes a summary of work streams undertaken, the issues that have arisen and how they have been addressed, the importance of a user centric approach, an increasing focus on federated data management, the simplification of licensing and intellectual property rights/restrictions, and the re-use of standards based infrastructure and technologies for cost effective (and reusable) services provision are discussed.

The Role of Urban Sensing in Strengthening SDIs (263)
Rob McLaren, KnowEdge Ltd., UK

Many megacities are growing at an annual rate of over 6% and some will double their populations in the next decade. This incredibly rapid growth of megacities causes severe social, economical ecological and problems. New tools, techniques and policies are required to baseline and integrate the social, economic and environmental factors associated with megacities, to monitor growth and change across the megacity and to forecast areas of risk – all within shorter timeframes than previously accepted.
M-government is an extension or supplement to e-government and provides information and services through mobile devices, e.g. cellular phone, laptops, and is mobile and wireless. For developing countries with no infrastructures of wired Internet technology, this is the only low cost infrastructure option available. Despite cellular phones having disadvantages in the delivery of information and services, e.g. size of screens and some security aspects, M-government opens up additional channels for citizen participation and has a significant potential to increase the constituent participation.
This paper explores the role of ‘urban sensing’ that uses cellular phones, sensor technologies, GIS related technologies. Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing (mass collaboration using Web 2.0) to support the creation of a public infrastructure, a ‘data commons,’ that will allow the citizen to increasingly participate in politics, civics (including land administration and management), aesthetics and science. These emerging techniques have the potential to strengthen the Spatial Data Infrastructures and urban change information available to megacities.

Parallel Session 5.3
Metadata and Data Sharing
Moderator: Ruby Beltman, Assistant Director, GEONOVUM

Development and Deployment of a Sservices Catalog in Compliance with the INSPIRE Metadata Implementing Rules (343)
Javier Nogueras-Iso, University of Zaragoza, Jesus Barrera, Antonio F. Rodriguez, Rocio Recio, ChristianLaborda, Spain

In order to facilitate the availability of and access to spatial data, Spatial Data Infrastructures must set up a series of services to be reused by their community of users in the construction of different applications and value-added services. Therefore, one of the key elements to exploit the resources provided by these infrastructures is to facilitate a catalog of services describing the features of the services offered to their users. This paper presents the development and deployment of a services catalog within the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Spain, a catalog in compliance with the INSPIRE implementing rules.

Portugal and Spain Twin SDI's - From National Projects to an Iberian SDI (120)
Rui Pedro Juliao, Instituto Geografico Portugues, Portugal; Sebastian Mas Mayoral, Spain; Antonio Rodriguez Pascual, Spain; Danilo Furtado, Portugal

Portugal was one of the pioneer countries on SDI conceptual and operational developments and Spain is at present one of the most active countries on this type of projects.
Both countries are very actively involved in developing their own National SDI, focusing, like every nation, on meeting INSPIRE requirements and national needs.
However, there is a common vision assumed by IGN and IGP, that a SDI cannot be developed considering only the European and national needs. There is a natural obligation to work together with the neighbouring countries, shaping policies, coordinating activities and implementing tools jointly.
If an SDI can be considered as a set of interoperable and standardized geospatial resources supported by an organized community of actors, opened via Internet to a global arena, it is clear that an SDI cannot be restricted to a single and isolated country.
The natural tendency of such type of infrastructures is to overflow national boundaries.
In this sense, the experience of collaboration between National SDI of Spain and Portugal, is that it is possible to have a relevant level of mutual integration based only in a good spirit of collaboration, a background of technical cooperation of both Institutes, an open mind to think not only in domestic requirements and a very few informal agreements to work in coordination.
Without signing a formal collaboration agreement, both parts have completed the following collaboration actions:
- Translation of both Geoportals to have a version in the language of the other country.
- Placement of a banner of the other Geoportal in the website of each NSDI.
- Referencing the URL services of the national SDI node in the services directory and catalogue of the other national Geoportal.
- Integration of Web Map Services in the viewer of the other country.
- Integration of a representation of Portuguese SDI in the WG for the Spanish SDI (WG IDEE).
- Celebration of a WG IDEE meeting in Lisbon.
The two last actions are very important to merge as much as possible both SDI communities.
Future plans include showing explicitly the interoperability of both Metadata catalogues and Gazetteer services in a single client application.
Therefore, the result is a virtual Iberian SDI as a set of integrated standard services supported by a transnational community that share experiences, knowledge and information.
According to the principles mentioned above, and based on the listed actions, in this paper it will be described how Portugal and Spain are moving from two successful SDIs to a new concept of fully integrated Iberian SDI.

Cooperation - Key Factor for a Sustainable Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) (152)
Olof Olsson, Lantmateriet, Sweden

Questions of cooperation are essential in the process of constructing and operating SDI´s. However, even if cooperation in this field is often regarded as an important factor it is seldom a prime target for studies and research. This is in contrast to other fields were some real breakthroughs has been done with cooperation in focus. In this article basic information about cooperation is provided. Furthermore a view on SDI is developed based on the notion of cooperation and the authors general (Swedish) experience. This leads to a problem analysis which is presented here and will be used for further research.

The Danish Way, Development of the Danish Infrastructure for Spatial Information Through Binding Collaboration (179)
Jesper Jarmbaek, National Survey and Cadastre, Denmark

The Danish eGovernment strategy "Towards better digital service, increased efficiency and stronger collaboration" highlights binding collaboration across sectors and government levels as an impor-tant factor in the realization of the strategy.
Cooperation and consensus-based decisions has been the driver for the development as well for e-government as for the infrastructure for spatial information in Denmark. The United Nations' "e-government readines index" (2008), highlights that leading e-government countries like Denmark have demonstrated that cooperation is a major driver.
Besides cooperation a number of structural reforms have changed the administrative landscape. The reforms have increased the need for a nationwide location based backbone supporting the various e-Government initiatives.
Several infrastructure components, like the digital cadastre, the digital topographic "maps", the shared addresses, the public information server, the digital map supply, etc. have been developed over the last 15 years. The most recent and perhaps the most essential initiatives, which will become pillars in location based e-government, are:
- the shared object types (FOT)
- the environment portal
- the shared Elevation model
- the agreement on shared funding on state level
The FOT cooperation is a public-public partnership that ensures shared data capture for updating of all topographic databases. The updating is carried at least every three years.
The Danish Nature and Environment Portal is a result of the municipal reform. It is a partnership between the Local Government Denmark, Danish Regions and the Ministry of the Environment. The aim is to ensure mutual access to a number of data on the environment, as well as enhancing digital administration.
Last year three government departments funded the development of high-precision elevation model. The height model is available to all state institutions. The majority of the Danish municipalities have acquired rights to the same height model.
The National Survey and Cadastre (KMS) is partially user financed. The government has decided that from 2009 all ministries have to pay an annual flat fee to KMS. In return all KMS data and ser-vices will be available for the agencies and the institutions on state level.
The binding cooperation, or if you like that way, the public-public partnership, has been an efficient driver of the development of the Danish infrastructure for spatial information.
From May 2009 the new law on infrastructure for geographical information will enter into force. In addition to the INSPIRE provisions, the law contains provisions which can be used to support and promote continued development of e-Government. Furthermore the law constitutes a coordination committee.
The future challenge will be to find the right balance and synergy between rule and consensus based development, because the approach based on consensus in combination with binding cooperation has proven to be as well motivating as efficient in cross sector development of an infrastructure for geographic information.

Guaranteeing Quality of Service in a Spatial Data Infrastructure by using Service Level Agreements (182)
Bastian Baranski, University of Munster, Institute for Geoinformatics, Germany

With the advent of the Service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm and general advancements in Web Services technology, the geoinformation (GI) world underwent a substantial change from stand-alone applications to distributed service architectures manifested in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). Existing SDIs are mainly focused on data retrieval, data processing and data visualization. An open standard based - for example an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) based - SDI mostly supports the retrieval, processing and visualization of data through web services. The availability of OGC Web Services (OWS) rapidly grow for the last decade and they'll play a major role in emerging e-commerce models. Monitoring the performance of loosely coupled web services in a distributed infrastructure and the ability to react quickly on service quality fluctuations is an essential skill for service consumers and service providers. On this account, typically a formal contract between a service consumer and a service provider - the Service Level Agreement (SLA) - will be negotiated. The SLA formalizes a business relationship and enables contractual parties to measure, manage and enforce certain Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. Among other things, the SLA typically contains limits of maximum and average service response times and rights of service customer if the service provider fails to match defined service qualities over specified time periods. But existing OWS specifications and standards do not support any kind of agreement and service quality enforcement functionality and therefore, attaching SLA functionality to OWS will pose a great advancement for future business models. Particularly with regard to the upcoming Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) directive, in which several performance criteria requirements for network services are defined.
Based on the OGC technical baseline, this work aims at identifying and developing an abstract architecture in which different service qualities in a SDI can be measured and managed by attaching SLA functionality to existing OWS and corresponding SDIs. The presented approach is developed with respect to existing ambitious efforts on attaching license enforcement functionality to OWS and without replacing any previous OGC specification. Furthermore, the application of Grid Computing and related technologies for active enforcement of negotiated service quality goals will be investigated. Finally, the relevance of this work will be demonstrated in a real-world scenario focusing on processing of complex real-time data in an emergency situation.


Parallel Session 5.4
Global, Multi-National, State and Local Experiences
Moderator: Sandra van Wijngaarden, INSPIRE Program Manager, GEONOVUM

Ocean Science, OneGeology, and GEOSS: 'SDI Bridges' Exemplars (293)
Mark Reichardt, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), Carl Reed, USA

In both the global ocean science and the geology communities, there is increasing agreement on community information models and geospatial standards that enable ocean science and geological structure data sharing within and between different communities of interest.
Marine research organizations from many countries have been actively working to implement and influence the evolution of metadata, semantics, geospatial, and sensor standards that help ocean scientists discover, access and apply a wide range of sensors, sensor networks and sensor data. Ocean scientists are seeking the ability to fuse data from many sources, including real time sensor data and traditional digital maps, to create useful information that contributes to enhanced policy decisions in areas such as marine ecosystem research, Tsunami warning, and climate monitoring. The cost-effectiveness of data collection and software development is multiplied many times when multiple researchers can easily share sensors, sensor observations and processing resources. In addition to interface standards that enable open Web service architectures, of course, researchers who seek to share data must collaborate in the areas of encoding standards, data models, and metadata schemas.
Standards play a key role in OneGeology (www.onegeology.org ), a global project that has produced the first on-line digital geological map of the world. UNESCO and six other international organizations support the OneGeology activity . OneGeology is the flagship project for the UN International Year of Planet Earth 2008. OneGeology depends on standards such as the OGC Web Map Service Interface and GeoSciML (http://www.geosciml.org/ ). GeoSciML is a geoscience encoding standard developed by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) (www.iugs.org/ ) Interoperability Working Group. GeoSciML is an "application schema" of the OGC® Geography Markup Language Encoding Standard (GML) (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml ). Without such standards, geology data clients and servers around the world would not be able to interoperate across the Web as OneGeology nodes.
Similarly, a partnership of 124 governments and international organizations is developing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), (http://www.earthobservations.org/about_geo.shtml), a set of agreements and online data and processing resources based on a shared, open, standards-based architecture that enables continuous monitoring of the Earth and access to a vast shared set of information resources. GEOSS is intended to serve nine broad scientific and professional domains that address societal needs such as disaster management, agriculture and natural resource management.
For SDI bridges in ocean science, geology and GEOSS, interoperability is the key requirement, based on non-proprietary standards, with preference given to formal international standards. Geography has always been interdisciplinary and GIS has always been a tool for combining data from different sources. "Bridging" is more than just data sharing: it is accomplished through community collaboration, defined vocabularies, information models and ultimately technical standards.

Contribution of Global Mapping Project to Building SDI for Addressing Global Challenges (111)
Toru Nagayama, Geographical Survey Institute, Yoshikazu Fukushima, Shozo Kajikawa, Junichi Kisanuki, Toshihiro Tutui, Japan

Global Mapping Project aims to develop digital geo-information framework of the whole land area of the globe through international cooperation of National Mapping Organizations （NMOs） of the world. As of 28 November 2008, 164 countries and 16 regions participate in the project, covering 97% of the whole land area. International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM) governs the implementation of the project.
Global Map data have eight data layers: administrative boundary, transportation, drainage, population centers, elevation, land cover, land use and vegetation. The Global Map data are basically supposed to be developed by respective NMOs. However, land cover and vegetation layers for Global Map version 1 were developed in a unified manner with the international cooperation of NMOs under the ISCGM initiative.
As a result of completion of Global Map version 1 in 2008, Global version of Land Cover layer (GLCNMO, i. e. Global Land Cover by National Mapping Organizations) and Vegetation layer (Percent Tree Cover) as well as 73 datasets of national/regional version of Global Map have been developed. These data are currently distributed to the public through ISCGM website (http://www.iscgm.org) or through some national websites for respective Global Map data.
Global Map data can be used to predict, assess, prepare for and cope with global challenges, such as environmental degradation and disaster mitigation by combining with other spatial and non-spatial data. To make Global Map an integral component of Global SDI to address global challenges, following two points are emphasized.
First, Global Map data should be continuously developed and updated. In this regard, international cooperation of NMOs is indispensable. To be more precise, it is preferable that national SDI and regional SDI are developed all over the world, and that the Global Map data are updated in linking with these frameworks. While the Project has much affected building NSDI and RSDI, such as Americas Global Map and APSDI promoted by PCGIAP, further partnership with NSDI, RSDI and also with different areas such as Earth Observation are also essential for developing Global Map, an indispensable component in the framework of global SDI.
Second, Global Map data should be produced and utilized more easily. ISCGM is considering revising data specifications to ensure open and standardized formats for the development of Global Map version 2, in the phase 3 (2008-2012). Adoption of GML-based ISO19136 as well as ISO19115 for metadata is being considered. Discussion is also underway on a use of technologies such as Web Map Service (WMS). Other actions already taken recently are to provide Global Map data in user-friendly shape and TIFF formats and to made GLCNMO and Percent Tree Cover available for commercial purposes. It is hoped that these actions will collectively facilitate both production and use of Global Map and ensure interoperability of Global Map data in the Global SDI implementation framework.
Dealing with these two points with relevant organizations such as GSDI, the ISCGM is ready to contribute to building SDI for addressing global challenges.

The Influence of INSPIRE in National and Global Geosciences (169)
Ian Jackson, British Geological Survey, UK

The INSPIRE Directive was one of the key catalysts for a global geoscience data infrastructure project OneGeology and its European element, OneGeology-Europe. In their core aspirations OneGeology and INSPIRE goals are the same and they are essentially symbiotic. While it is still early in the process and these benefits may be viewed by some as insufficiently tangible, there is a growing body of evidence coming out of the OneGeology global and European projects that indicates that the "standard setting" and "knowledge exchange" aspects of introducing the INSPIRE Directive have the power to do immense good. Good within the Member States of Europe and just as importantly good in the global domain beyond it. There is a geological survey organisation of some sort within every Member State, indeed within most countries of the world. All of these organisations deal in geoscience data, most of which has a spatial component. The capabilities of these organisations in capturing, managing and disseminating that data vary enormously, from state of the art modelling and web mapping systems, to those who still have the bulk of their spatial data assets in analogue form. Information management has never been a high priority for most of these, essentially scientific, organisations, but the need to be INSPIRE-ready within Member States is forcing a major shift of thinking about improving information management practice. With the improvement in basic indexing, discovery and viewing systems will come better use and re-use of crucial data assets that for too long have remained inaccessible and un-usable. The European geological survey community has (most notably through the eContentplus funded project - OneGeology-Europe) pulled together to try and understand how it can best implement INSPIRE. In doing that there has been a real exchange of know-how and best practice between the organisations - raising the base level of understanding at senior management and coal face level significantly. One of the outcomes of the OneGeology global project is that through its close connection to INSPIRE the Directive is having a significant impact within the global geological community too. Federal, state and provincial geological surveys in North America, Australia and Asia are taking a close interest in INSPIRE implementation and the standards it may introduce. The process is, as it should be, two-way, and developments in global geoscience interoperability, such as GeoSciML, are also influencing the core architecture and standards within INSPIRE too. Rocks, like most of the other INSPIRE themes, don't stop at the European border.

Implementation of SDIs in the Public and Private Sector: A Comparison of Opportunities and Challenges (369)
Gesche Schmid, Atkins Ltd, Anne Kemp, UK

In order to meet the requirements of the Directive for the Infrastructure for spatial information in Europe (INSPIRE) adopted in 2007, the public sector is preparing to implement Spatial Data Infrastructures. Many of the INSPIRE contribution in 2008 focused on examples of implementing SDIs in the public sector but there has been little discussion about the implementation of SDIs in the private sector. ATKINS's SDI is a private sector initiative that offers a fully integrated information management solution to facilitate the access and sharing of spatial data within one of the largest engineering and environmental consultancies in the UK. The SDI links spatial data to attribute information, CAD drawings and other related project information and makes these data accessible, shareable, visible and editable in a spatial context through one point of access via the web. The implementation of the SDI links up data across offices worldwide and join ups different disciplines and projects internally and externally. Despite these clear advantages there are challenges in encouraging take-up of the SDI both within the company and among clients.
This paper makes a comparison between the implementation of spatial data infrastructures in the private and public sector and looks at business drivers, user requirements, technical and data management solutions, data sharing and licensing and the cultural and organisational challenges faced to encourage take-up and implementation of SDIs. The study is based on the experience of the authors working on SDI implementation in the public and private sector in the UK.

Integration of Vector Datasets from Central and South American Nations (147)
Edwin Hunt, Armando Lobos, Military Geographic Institute of Chile

This paper describes a technique that is part of a larger project for international cooperation in the field of small scale digital mapping, involving an interaction between technical challenges with issues of trans-national coordination.
The context is an initiative dependant on the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History (PAIGH) and its cooperation with the program of the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM). The Americas Global Map (MGA) is the PAIGH project arising from that cooperation. Among the objectives of the MGA is the creation of a continuous map of the Americas made up mostly of the existing contributions from individual nations in the Americas to the ISCGM project. The union and harmonisation of widely differing datasets presents special challenges; at the same time the special requirements of most participating nations and of their cartographic agencies requires special care to be taken with the harmonization solutions chosen.
MGA is currently preparing detailed plans and implementation of this map, called the MGA Continental Vector Map. In the process, techniques are being developed as a guide to the future implementation team. This paper describes these techniques and the special challenges they are intended to overcome. Equivalent techniques for harmonisation and union of datasets from different sources have already been tried by Eurogeographics in the "EuroGlobalMap" project; however, the context of the Americas is a very different environment in terms of current practices, available resources and in particular the legal, insitutional and administrative policies of the participating nations.
This attempt to achieve a union of spatial data from differing sources is special because so far there have been few attempts in this region to place digital spatial data from differing sources into the same geographic workspace with a common reference system, at least not without substantially altering them. MGA intends to try and unite the datasets with only minimal intervention, assuming that the general convergence on ISCGM specifications and the SIRGAS positioning system will ensure sufficient initial compatibility.
The techniques described focus on what happens at the boundaries between national datasets, where harmonisation is both technically challenging and politically sensitive. The techniques includes the generation of a buffer generated around the international boundary and also the use of remote sensing images as a reference; these aid the reconciliation of features such as rivers, roads and lake edges that cross from one dataset to another. The necessary tools and processing steps will be summarised.

Parallel Session 5.5
Implementing GEOSS Data Sharing Principles
Moderator: Robert Chen, Director, CIESIN, Columbia University, USA

The Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) is a major international initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to develop "coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations and information" for the benefit of humankind. The GEOSS Data Sharing Principles, accepted in 2005, call for the "full and open exchange of data, metadata, and products shared within GEOSS, recognizing relevant international instruments and national policies and legislation." Since 2006, CODATA has led an international effort to develop a set of recommended implementation guidelines for the Principles. This session will review past and current data policies related to space-based and spatial data and provide case studies of how specific guidelines have been implemented in practice. It will review alternative approaches towards promoting full and open access to scientific data and summarize situations where exceptions may be warranted. The session will also provide an overview of past and potential benefits of open access approaches and identify areas where there may be opportunities for innovation, coordination, and community building. Participants will gain a basic understanding needed to begin developing and applying data policies and procedures consistent with the GEOSS Data Sharing Principles in their own areas of data management. Copies of the proposed implementation guidelines, the CODATA White Paper, and other background materials will be distributed in electronic form. Among speakers will include Robert Chen, CODATA Secretary General and CIESIN Director at Columbia University, Anne Fitzgerald, QUT Law Faculty, Australia, Katleen Janssen, K.U.Leuven Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT, Belgium, and Harlan Onsrud, University of Maine, USA.


Parallel Session 5.6
INSPIRE Round Table on Data Interoperability and Harmonization
Moderator: Clemens Portele, INSPIRE Data Specifications Drafting Team

See the abstract of session 4.6 for this continuing session. This session continues a round table process with the facilitators of the Thematic Working Groups. In this session the Roundtable with Facilitators of the Thematic Working Groups will include Transport Networks, Jordi Escriu Paradell; Hydrography, Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk; Protected Sites, Markus Seifert. The roundtable will be followed by an open Discussion


Parallel Session 5.7
Emerging Challenges and Approaches
Moderator: Heli Ursin, Director, International Program, Land Survey of Finland

Cross Border Edge-matching: Finding a Solution
Dominique Laurent, IGN France, Carol Agius and Antti Jakobsson

The INSPIRE Directive states in article 10.2 that "in order to ensure that spatial data relating to a geographical feature, the location of which spans the frontier between two or more Member States, are coherent, Member States shall, where appropriate, decide by mutual consent on the depiction and position of such common features."
Besides in the Directive itself, edge-matching in INSPIRE is also considered in the common framework, written by the Data Specification Drafting Team in order to provide common guidelines for the specification of the 34 themes of INSPIRE, and the data specification for annex I themes, elaborated by the Thematic Working Groups.
However, though there is a specific article in the Directive related to consistency across state boundaries, there are few detailed requirements in the common framework and current data specifications for Annex I themes on how edge-matching at international boundaries will be carried out.
Edge-matching has to be done, as said in the Directive, "where appropriate". These requirements may be very different, according to themes. Whereas the continuity of hydrographic or transport network is very likely a key requirement to make possible flood management, journey planning, the computation of pollution propagation or flow modelling across international borders, some themes of annex III, like atmospheric conditions, meteorological geographical features, oceanographic geographical features or sea regions, are not or not much concerned by edge-matching at international boundaries, because of their cross-border, transitory or fuzzy nature.
Requirements and feasibility of edge-matching vary according to theme, e.g. there are probably stronger requirements to match networks (than other features) and probably more feasibility issues to match cadastral parcels or administrative units (than other features), because it may imply legal procedures
Practical experience about edge-matching exists nonetheless; within specific geo-communities such as geology and from EuroGeographics products or projects. The latter experiences include existing EuroGeographics products (EuroBoundaryMap, EuroRegionMap, EuroGlobalMap) or projects (State Boundaries of Europe, ESDIN) which can provide agreed international boundaries at different levels of detail and some recommendations based on the matching rules established for EuroRegionMap, and EuroGlobalMap (e.g. choose as common position to merge two features the most accurate one).
The State Boundaries of Europe (SBE) project was established by EuroGeographics to manage the precise geometric description of the boundary points and lines based on the administrative and legal definition of international boundaries. The first phase of the SBE project, to establish the technical framework, completed successfully in December 2007. Many of the outputs of this work are already incorporated in Annex B of the INSPIRE Methodology for the development of data specifications. The second phase, to create a fully populated database incorporating the national mapping, land registry and cadastral agencies national data has now started. The State Boundaries of Europe project has already developed a boundaries data model. Procedures have been developed for how to implement the data for edge-matching and work is in hand to extend the SBE data model to boundaries in the sea.
The project Multi-Level State Boundaries of Europe providing Edge-matching and Cross-border Services for European Spatial Data Infrastructure (EuroXBoundary Service) is a proposal submitted for the ICT PSP 2009 call as a Pilot Type B. The aim of the project is to build an Edge-matching and cross-border service for the European Spatial Data Infrastructure based on multi-level State Boundaries of Europe.
As part of the Service the EuroXBoundary project will build on a common dataset, containing agreed state boundaries at small, large and state treaty level. It is expected that dataset would contain agreed boundaries at the INSPIRE level of accuracy by INSPIRE Annex I deadline in 2016.
Besides using the EuroGeographics EuroBoundaryMap 1:100 000 datasets containing harmonized administrative datasets in Europe, the EuroXBoundary Project will build on the EuroGeographics State Boundaries of Europe project, which is building the precise geometric description of the boundaries in Land and Sea borders.
EuroXBoundary will also exploit the approach developed in of the eContentplus project ESDIN for edge-matching of small and large scale INSPIRE Annex I data themes. An essential component of the ESDIN project, which is currently underway, is set to develop a practical approach to edge-matching.
EuroXBoundaryService would use the most accurate State Boundaries available at a certain time. During the project time life the expectation is to meet at least EU27 coverage in small scale and at the level of accuracy contained in the topographic datasets of National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies.
It is recognised that edge-matching at state boundaries is not currently an INSPIRE priority, transformation into a common data model and common coordinate reference system will/should come first. Nevertheless, edge-matching will be required sooner or later especially once data from neighbour countries have been harmonised in a common data model and in a common coordinate reference system. When applications start to be developed, based on these harmonised data, users will begin to demand edge-matched features.
Edge-matching requires agreement between neighbour countries, and is therefore a more complex issue than simply applying common rules. Establishing a service and framework that will provide this service may take appreciable time to put into place. A service such as the proposed EuroXBoundary project will prepare and put into place a framework for the agreement on common boundaries and about the mutual connection and matching of common features.

From Facilitating to Participatory GIS: The Dutch Planning Domain (145)
Karolina Orlinska, Ajo Otto, Arjan Wilkens and Marcel Steenis, Grontmij

The Dutch planning domain is changing. There is more demand for openness, transparency and friendliness of the authorities as well as more willingness to involve citizens in the development of the common spaces. This is reflected to some extent in the specific initiatives, laws and acts (i.e. RO-Online, IMRO standards, Digital municipality, reporting on public space issues – MOR etc.). Although, there are still a lot of matters that require solving and questions that have not been answered, the Dutch planning system has already stepped on the path that inevitably leads to the change of the relationship between the authorities, their partners and the public. This change is going to be gradual and available technology is not going to be one of the most important aspects of it. Development in information technology such as Geographic Information System (GIS) constantly offers more and more solutions for mapping the real world and allows participation of third parties and public in formerly closed processes of local and regional governments. However, GIS is mostly used as a tool that facilitates the inner processes of the local and regional authorities. It is clear to the authors that GIS has potential of becoming a part of much more complex and collaborative relationship between the authorities and third parties or/ and public. Furthermore, it is also clear that a change of the approach towards technology and planning process is necessary in order to be able to benefit from Participatory Geographical Information System (PGIS). By bringing GIS out of the field of professionals and making it interesting and acceptable for the broader public, PGIS can lead to public participation from the beginning of the planning cycle. This article presents a vision of transition from facilitating to participatory GIS in the Dutch planning domain concentrating on both technical and organizational aspects of such a transition.

Hard Lesson on Implementing Interoperability in Europe: EuroGeographics Experience
Antii Jakobsson, Eurogeographics

EuroGeographics (EG) vision is to achieve interoperability of European mapping and other GI data and so help the public and private sectors develop good governance, sustainable growth and benefit future generations. Our experience of providing harmonized and interoperable data over European territory was already begun in 1992 when our first version of administrative boundary dataset was published. Since then we have published mostly generalized datasets including EuroGlobalMap 1:1000 000, EuroRegionalMap 1:250 000, EuroDEM and our recent projects related to State Boundaries of Europe and Geographical Names. This paper will explore some of the difficulties we have experienced. The hard lessons we have learned might be useful for the implementing of INSPIRE, while there are obvious differences in the approaches. INSPIRE is driven my member states and based on legislation while EG work is based on agreements and voluntary work. Also our approach has been to produce harmonized products while INSPIRE will start on basic interoperability at specification and technical level.
The issues explored by this paper are: general approach, harmonization paradigm vs. interoperability, user requirements, production processes and quality.
EG approach for producing European datasets has been utilization of existing generalized datasets based on national specifications. One of the reasons for selecting this approach has been a practical one: It would have taken too long time to change or agree to change national specifications when producing European datasets. Also the main goal in the beginning has been production of map datasets. This has been a satisfactory solution if the use of data is mainly visual. However, the users' needs have changed and now number of users will require object-oriented data for analysis purposes. This leads to need for chancing the whole production paradigm. In future, the production of generalized datasets has to be based on common generalization rules. From theoretical point of view it would be easier to produce European datasets from the less generalized data and then make a more generalized product from that master dataset.
The paper will discuss also the harmonization paradigm versus interoperability. One of the major challenged INSPIRE will phase is that basic level of interoperability will not meet any user requirements totally. However, there is hope if quality and selection criteria will be set close enough. There has to be some effort to go further and someone has to set these requirements. EG is currently working on this in the ESDIN project, where our goal is to define specifications that would meet the user requirements.
To understand the user requirements of European users has been a major challenge for EG. This has lead to continuous change of our specifications. EuroBoundaryMap 1:100 000 is a perfect example. In the beginning it didn't meet the users' expectations but over the years it has been developed to a dataset accepted by majority of European users. Therefore the current specification is very close to the INSPIRE specification as well. The paper will discuss future examples of this.
Our approach for production process of European data has been regional virtual teams. One of our members has acted as a regional co-ordinator and co-ordinated the work done in member organizations. While in general this has worked well, one of the major problems has been the burden of having many products updated annually. We have had parallel separate teams for our products, which is very difficult to operate and control. A solution for this is to concentrate distributed production on large scales and to produce generalized products centrally. 
Quality is and will be our major challenge. Process management will be a key methodology we will have to introduce in order to have quality at the right level. We are working in the standardization area to produce a technical specification on quality assurance of data supply process (ISO 19158). We have had a permanent working group on the quality since 1997 and have made several benchmarking activities in order to identify best practices in NMCAs. 
To conclude our experience suggest that production of harmonized data requires a strong quality managed production process and production should be based on common specification. EG is working on implementing this in the ESDIN project, where focus is to produce data for Europe in large, medium and small scale based on distributed services.

Parallel Session 5.8
INSPIREing the Community
Moderator: Paul Smits, JRC, European Commission:

INSPIRE Impact Study for the Meteorological Community: KNMI Use Case: Climate Data (46)
Wim Som de Cerff, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Inst. (KNMI), Raymond Sluiter, Jan Willem Noteboom, Bert van den Oord, Albert Klein Tank, Netherlands

The INSPIRE directive addresses data and services for meteorology and related themes. KNMI has written an Impact analysis to analyze INSPIRE impact. Based on this analysis, a plan of work was set-up. Base of the plan of work is the Climate data use case. In this use case, datasets from the Regional Climate Centre (RCC) [R3], which contains interpolated climate observations from Europe, will be made available according the INSPIRE guidelines. The use case will illustrate key issues which will also arise for other meteorological datasets, like 'who is responsible for providing the data to the INSPIRE infrastructure?', 'which services are needed', 'how do we integrate INSPIRE services in our production systems?'. The case study will also enable us to find gaps in the INSPIRE IRs, guidelines and recommendations, enabling us to give feedback to the community.

INSPIRE Baseline and Road Map for NERC (89)
Robin Waters, RSWGeomatics,Robert Walker, Jeremy Giles, United Kingdom

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC: www.nerc.ac.uk) is the foremost United Kingdom agency for funding and managing research, training and knowledge exchange in the environmental sciences.
At NERC we coordinate some of the world's most exciting research projects, tackling fundamental issues such as climate change, environmental influences on human health, the genetic make-up of life on earth, and much more.
Working internationally, NERC maintains bases in the most hostile parts of the planet. By running a fleet of research ships and aircraft, and investing in satellite technology to monitor gradual environmental change on a worldwide scale, we provide knowledge, forewarning and solutions to the key environmental challenges facing global society.
The NERC is responsible for managing a significant component of the United Kingdom's environmental information, covering a spectrum of disciplines encompassing atmospheric science, earth observation, earth science, hydrology, marine science, polar science and terrestrial and freshwater science. This invaluable store of information is managed through a network of environmental data centres, whose staff work in close collaboration with the NERC's own centres and university departments (data.nerc.ac.uk). Many of the individual disciplines map closely to Themes identified within the INSPIRE Directive.
To ensure that its component bodies would be well positioned to comply with the INSPIRE Directive the NERC commissioned independent consultants to review:
- The current baseline of INSPIRE readiness across the NERC with respect to INSPIRE requirements for metadata and associated discovery services, view service and download services.
- A description of what the NERC will need to provide to comply fully with the aspirations of the INSPIRE Directive.
- A description of the technological options that are currently envisaged to support implementation of the INSPIRE Directive.
- A Road Map showing what the NERC will need to do if it is to meet the INSPIRE Directive.
This paper will describe the process, its outcomes and the lessons learned from undertaking such a study.

INSPIRE Academy - A Way To Introduce Geoinformaion To Practice (192)
Maria Andrzejewska, UNEP/GRID-Warsaw, Marek Baranowski, Monika Rusztecka, Poland

One of the basic goal of the INSPIRE Directive is to enable a broad use of geographic information in European societies. On the other hand the INSPIRE rules and process are rather complex and hard to be easily understood by an average employee of the local government authority. A broad training programme named "INSPIRE Academy" has been initiated in Poland in order to facilitate the absorption of the INSPIRE ideas to the practice of the administration at the central, regional and local levels. The main goal of the programme is to raise qualifications and enhance competencies of administration staff in applying information and geoinformation technologies in order to support: environmental management, spatial planning, services for the public (including e-services for the public based on the use of geoinformation techniques), co-operation between public authorities and institutions at local and regional levels. The INSPIRE Academy also addresses the issue of dissemination among employees of the departments of the local government offices information about the EU Directive INSPIRE. The training programme has been also consulted with the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography which declared its patronage and support over the future undertaking.
The INSPIRE Academy is a comprehensive training programme (stationary and Internet-based), whose goal is to broaden knowledge and improve skills of self-government administration in practical applications of geoinformation. The programme will be implemented in several projects. The first one started at the end of 2008 and will be implemented for self-government authorities: 150 communes and 150 districts across the whole country. The training programme will be implemented according to the following scheme: basic stationary training, then Internet-based e-Learning, followed by specialized stationary training.
An INSPIRE Academy Internet portal will be created within the project. The portal will consist of three functional modules: geo-portal, e-Learning course, and contents management system. The implementation of the first project is divided into three stages. The goal of the first stage will be programmatic and organizational preparation of the training programme, including an educational package to be distributed among the trainees and to be presented on the INSPIRE Academy web portal. Upon completion of the pilot training, the training programme and necessary modifications will be consulted with the experts and incorporated. At the second stage, the actual training programme will be conducted. Then, the whole training programme will be summarized (subject to a comprehensive evaluation) and the following materials will be elaborated: report for state- and self-government level decision-makers on the use of GIS in administration, as well as an educational package for country-wide dissemination. Those materials will be published and distributed across the whole country.
The results of the training programme will have direct impact on the communes covered by the that undertaking and districts involved in collaboration. Indirectly, it will have country-wide impact due to continually conducted information and promotion activities. The first training project provides institutional enhancement of the civic society through supporting activities carried out by the non-governmental sector, like UNEP/GRID-Warsaw.

Geographic Information and SDIs in Central and Eastern Europe (252)
Bruce McCormack, EUROGI; Jiri Hiess, Czech Republic

In May 2009 the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) and its Czech Republic member the Czech Association for Geoinformation (CAGI) will be hosting a two day conference in Prague which be concerned with issues regarding Geographic Information and SDIs in Central and Eastern European counties. The target countries are those which are members of the Council of Europe and which were formally in the eastern block.
Some of the main issues which will be covered at the conference will be the state of play regarding GI and SDIs in the CEE countries, the identification of good/best practice, the situation regarding the existence of national GI associations and the suitability/applicability of INSPIRE principles and mechanisms for building SDIs. It is envisaged that a part of the conference will involve workshopping the processes involved in establishing a national GI association using a draft manual produced by EUROGI as the basis for discussion.
If sufficient interest is generated then it is hoped that this conference may be the first of a number to be held in difference CEE counties so that interest and momentum can be built regarding GI and SDIs in these countries.
The paper would highlight the findings from the conference with a focus on the main issues mentioned above.


Parallel Session 5.9
<left purposefully vacant by Geonovum>


Parallel Session 5.10
Societal Impacts Open Roundtable
Moderator: Carmelle Terborgh, ESRI, and Al Stevens, FGDC

This roundtable is being hosted and organized by the GSDI Sponsored Projects Committee that will review progress made to date through the GSDI Association small grants program and solicit input from the community on this program as well as the broader work of the committee. Potential improvements and expansion of the grant program will be discussed and a work plan will be developed for upcoming years. Among additional items to be addressed in the work plan are likely to include the potential development of workshops and teaching materials (written, videos, etc.). All interested parties are invited to join the committee and contribute to achieving work plan tasks to be itemized at this meeting.


Parallel Session 6.1
National Experiences: Latin America
Moderator: Santiago Borerro, Secretary General, Pan American Institute for Geography and History, PAIGH

Basis for the National SDI (Chile) (57)
Maria-Loreto Advis, Military Geographic Institute of Chile, Chile

For several years, specifically from the year 2000, in Chile efforts are being made to make progress in the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, achieving in the year 2006 a Decree Law that created the National Territorial Information Coordination System (SNIT), the Chilean SDI.
Currently there is an organizational structure for the SNIT. The Ministry, whwre its Executive Secretariat is located, has state finance for it to fucntion. This situation is not repeated at the other state organizations that make up the SNIT; these must all finance this work with their own resources. While the SNIT has made systematic progress in its mission, it has not been an easy task and Chile is still only on the threshold of an SDI.
Considering the fact that the information and knowledge of the territory makes up the basis for that which sustains the SDIs, the Military Geographic Institute, as official organisation representing the state in issues of portraying national territorial information and as an active member of the SNIT, and being aware of this reality, has been working on a project to create what has been called 'Basic Territorial Information' (ITB in spanish initials) with the level of detail suitable for the real needs of those organizations requiring genuine knowledge of the territory as part of its mission and decision-making. In other words, a cartographic base at 1:1,000 scale for urban areas and 1:10,000 for rural areas that satisfies these needs and constitutes a geo-referenced basis for the NSDI and the SNIT.
The project called CONO SUR constitutes the first Chilean initiative to create an essential cartographic base incorporating the concept of FUNDAMENTAL DATA in a standardized way, geo-referenced and homogenous for the whole country, upon which all the different sectors active in the country can work on their own thematic issues, then subsequently exhange information and ensure the datasets complement each other, to benefit development policies and decision-making for the country.

Spatial Data Infrastructure: From National to Local Level (376)
Tatiana Delgado, National Office of Hydrography and Geodesy, Rafael Cruz, Cuba

The status of the Spatial Data Infrastructure of the Republic of Cuba (IDERC)is presented by means of eleven main projects undertaken by the National Commission of IDERC. One of these projects is aimed to strengthen the capacity of provincial and municipality levels in order to underpine their local SDIs. In this work is presented methodological issues to build local SDI in the cuban context, showing a first scenario like case study with the first steps of the building of the SDI of Villa Clara (a central province in Cuba).
Finally, a future vision of more participative SDI based on Web 2.0 oriented to local levels is projected.

Data Spatial Infrastructure (DSI) for the Analysis and Study of Environmental Risks: An Experience in Southern Ecuador (363)
Victor Gonzalez, Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, Fernando Onate, Ecuador

In this work, we apply the concept of Data Spatial Infrastructure (DSI) in order to create a tool to study and analyze environmental variables. This system will also support decision making for a sustainable environmental management in southern Ecuador. To develop this system, we used Open Source tools such as: Apache Server, MapServer 4.6 and OpenGis standards for publishing georeferenced information on the Internet. The thematic information has been collected from different development organizations. Most of this information is derived from satellite images such as , NOAA, ASTER, LANDSAT; and MODIS. The system also allows for the display of geographical information, associated thematic data query and download of different thematic layers.

The Spatial Data Infrastructure of Mexico and the New Law of the National System of Statistical and Geographical Information (475)
Mario Alberto Reyes Ibarra, National Institute of Statistics and Geography, Mexico

Since 2004, Mexico has promoted the concept as well as the building of the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Mexico (IDEMex, Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de México), in charge of the generation of geographical and statistical data and information. Nevertheless, the "Law of the Statistical and Geographical Information", in force from 1985 to 2008, did not include the IDEMex concept nor its building and implementation considerations.
The new Law of the National System of Statistical and Geographical Information for Mexico (SNIEG, Sistema Nacional de Información Estadística y Geográfica), released on April 15, 2008 and in force on July 15, 2008, states the existence of the IDEMex which shall generate a minimum of seven data groups: geodetic reference framework; coastal, international, state and municipality boundaries; continental, insular and submarine relief data; cadastre, topographical and natural resources and climate data, as well as geographical names. The IDEMex is the geographical component of the National Geographical and Environmental Information Subsystem, that along with the National Subsystems of Demographic and Social Information, and of Economic Information constitute the SNIEG.
As long the Law of the SNIEG is a national mandate for the statistical and geographical data and information producers, the convergence of efforts of the three government levels -federal, state and municipality- will make possible to generate information based on the data groups specified by the Law.
The Law of the SNIEG considers the INEGI as the coordinating instance of the Units of the State that generate spatial data and information and bestows to the Institute the relevant role of the development of technical standards. In this sense, the geographical terminology included by the Law will help to standardize the semantics of all these Units of the State.
The three Information Subsystems are dedicated to the ultimate goal of producing and disseminating Information of National Interest, a concept that goes beyond the existing definitions of "Information", "Geographical Information" and other similar ones. The figure of the IDEMex in the Law will contribute to build and order the value chain of Data - Information - Geographical and Statistical Information - Information of National Interest.

Case for Establishing a National Spatial Data Infrastructure in Trinidad and Tobago (197)
Lisa Ramoutar, The Univ of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Rehanna Jadoo, Carlene Boodoo, Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago today is poised on the brink of a Spatial Data Sharing revolution. The data resources, technology, analytical and technical skills required for successful data sharing are available on the Twin Islands. However, views on this issue are segregated as data producers are not yet convinced as to how sharing data would benefit themselves, their organizations, and the country as a whole. Therefore data production continues to be done in isolation with a great potential for data duplication and repetition of errors.
Some of the major challenges faced by the spatial community in Trinidad and Tobago today are as follows: limited, incomplete and/or dated spatial data; lack of spatial data availability; lack of data standards; ownership, law and policy issues; and the reluctance to share data. This report seeks to investigate the development of a NSDI as a solution to these and other challenges. It addresses the issues by extensively reviewing NSDI literature, by discussing the components of a NSDI, by looking at the NSDI implementation experiences of other countries regionally and internationally, by assessing the readiness of Trinidad and Tobago for a NSDI and assessing the cost-benefits of implementing such a NSDI.


Parallel Session 6.2
SDI Strategies and Capacity Building
Moderator: Milan Konecny, Vice-President, International Society on Digital Earth, Czech Republic

Building SDI: Balancing Between Infrastructure and Innovation (36)
Henk Koerten, Delft University of Technology, Marcel Veenswijk, Netherlands

Some studies have been published on how Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI's) or National Geo Information Infrastructures (NGII's) should be designed, set up and monitored (Rajabifard and Williamson 2001; Nebert 2004; de Bree and Rajabifard 2005; Masser 2005). They provide practitioners with lots of information on models that have received recognition, but when they have been put into practice, it is unknown how they actually worked out. Appropriate social scientific research of what is really happening in projects related to SDI-projects is hard to find.
In this paper we will present research findings of the Dutch Geo Portal project, intended to be a part of the Dutch National Geo Information Infrastructures (NGII). The project was funded by the Space for Geoinformation Program (RGI), meant to stimulate innovation in the geoinformation sector in the Netherlands. The project goal itself was formulated in general terms, translated into measurable assessable project terms, and ultimately into an executable plan.
We have carried out intensive research by observing project meetings and conferences, and interviewing key persons both within and outside the project environment regarding the Geo Portal project. The research method we used was the narrative approach: out of the research data we elicited different kinds of narratives, representing thinking patterns among project participants (Berendse, Duijnhoven et al. 2006).
Our research shows that it is hard within the project setting to distinguish between requirements for establishing an infrastructure and those needed for innovation. Infrastructures need stable environments with harsh standardization that will last. However, innovation is always on the brink of something new, the uncontested terrain. Being uncomfortable with this discrepancy within the project, this is a cause for serious redefinitions of project goals, assessment rules and results. Ultimately, while only a fraction of the initial project objectives were reached, participants call the entire project a success.
References
Berendse, M., H. Duijnhoven, et al. (2006). "Editing narratives of change. Identity and legitimacy in complex innovative infrastructure organizations." Intervention Research: 73-89.
de Bree, F. and A. Rajabifard (2005). "Involving Users in the Process of Using and Sharing Geo-information within the Context of SDI Initiatives." From Pharaohs to Geoinformatics, FIG Working week.
Masser, I. (2005). GIS Worlds: Creating Spatial Data Infrastructures. Redlands CA, ESRI Press.
Nebert, D. (2004). The SDI Cookbook.
Rajabifard, A. and I. Williamson (2001). Spatial Data Infrastructures: concept, SDI Hierarchy and Future Directions. Geomatics '80, Tehran, Iran.

SDI Governance (151)
Paul Box, University of Melbourne, Abbas Rajabifard, Australia

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is a framework of policies, standards and technology that enables data providers to publish, and users to find, access and use distributed heterogeneous geospatial information. Organisational arrangements have long been recognised as a critical enabler and fundamental component of SDI. More recently, the term governance has become increasingly used to refer to aspects of SDI organizational arrangements.
Broadly, governance is concerned with collective decision making and steering of collaborative efforts. Governance is a key concept in a number of disciplines and in many cases is a contested concept that means different things to different people. In the context of SDI, the role of governance is key, as it provides a mechanism for reaching consensus and developing agreements that bind together individual stakeholders to create beneficial collective outcomes.
The concept of and approaches to implementing SDI have evolved, in response to changing socio-political and technological realities such as the increased role of non-state actors in SDI implementation, the emergence of networked societies and the move towards web-based interaction and service delivery. Consequently, there are a larger number of diverse stakeholders that need to be involved in decision making processes that guide the SDI.
Given the polysemous nature of the term governance and the rapidly evolving, and increasingly collaborative approaches to SDI implementation, the meaning of the term governance when applied to SDI is not clear. Consequently the scope and functions of governance and the relationship between governance and other SDI enablers such as leadership, coordination and management are not clearly defined. This ambiguity is compounded by the increased adoption of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches to building SDI, which brings a whole new set of challenges related to collective decision making in the technical realm, that are not as yet clearly understood.
The lack of common understanding about SDI governance together with an absence of documented approaches to implementing SDI governance, means that each SDI initiative must tackle the same set of governance challenges. This results in inconsistent approaches to governance that ultimately hamper the prospects for achieving interoperability between SDIs and limit opportunities for leveraging and re-using governance resources between SDIs.
This paper presents the initial finding of ongoing research that aims to develop a clearer understanding of the scope, functions, responsibilities and mechanisms of governance, through the development of a conceptual model of SDI governance. Based on four Australian SDI case studies at national and state/territory levels, and drawing upon conceptual models and theories from political science and IT, this paper presents an initial high-level conceptual model of SDI governance. The model outlines key elements of SDI governance from a number of different perspectives.

Dissemination of Geo-Knowledge and Geo-Awareness (186)
Willemijn Simon van Leeuwen, Stichting Geofort, Henk J. Scholten, The Netherlands

Geography has an uncertain place not only in the upper levels of secondary education, but also in primary education (Rawling 2004). The question is how geography can be put on the map again. Are digital maps and geographical information systems the solution?
Tremendous advancement that has taken place over the last few decades in Information Computing Technology (ICT) in general, and in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in particular. These systems offer scientists unprecedented opportunities to collect, store, analyse and visualise geo-referenced data. On the one hand, initiatives show the great confidence of leading scholars and funding bodies in the added value of spatial methods and tools. On the other hand, they suggest that their widespread dissemination will not occur spontaneously.
The impact of developments in Geo-ICT is not restricted to the academic world or to schoolchildren, but can also be found in other areas of society. For instance, new global scale products such as Google Earth and Virtual Earth (Microsoft) have increased public awareness of the possibilities of digital maps for gathering knowledge about their neighbourhood, region or country, but also their destinations for tourism or business purposes. Also, navigation systems like Navteq and TOMTOM have demonstrated that Geo-ICT is able to support decision making, in finding your way around, in a very natural way. But it also became possible for the public to play with these systems to gather information, and to enrich these systems.
In the Netherlands is well known of her knowledge and products related to geographical information. The Ruimte voor Geo-Informatie (Space for Geo-Information, RGI) innovation programme has invested 20 million euros as an incentive to projects that bring geo specialists and geo users together. In this paper we will describe one special theme: the knowledge dissemination and the concepts and structures which have been developed to assure a higher level of geo-awareness in the country. Two projects will be discussed in depth: EDUGIS, based on GSDI concepts, is an infrastructure for education and scientific research. GeoFort is a an educational experience based on Geo-ICT, located in one of the old fortresses it will become a living Geo-ICT Lab.
The lessons learned will be discussed in a broader scientific context.

Supporting the INSPIRE Implementing Rules Application by Non Governmental Organisations: EUROGI Vision (261)
Mauro Salvemini, EUROGI, Italy

INSPIRE EU directive (http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ ) is concretising through the legal-procedural process to be transposed into member states legislations and is drafting and adopting the so called implementing rules which are produced through a transparent process by the ad-hoc set up drafting teams of experts.
Implementing rules (I.R.) are the crucial core of INSPIRE directive since they will directly affect the technical and financial feasibility. Their discussion have been already a relevant part of the approval process which took place within the EU Parliament with the Commission ending in the Joint text approved by the Conciliation Committee.
Once the implementing rules are agreed and even in the production process they are to be taken into serious consideration by the subjects which are in charge of applying the directive. Due to different themes addressed by the implementing rules and the peculiarity of each addressed themes which spans from metadata standard implementation to networking architecture, to monitoring and reporting it may be expected that the usage and the application of the I.R. will evolve differently.
EUROGI (www.eurogi.org) has been the NGO which supported INSPIRE since the beginning when it has been launched as an initiative and put in reality a consistent set of initiatives for the realising through INSPIRE itself the benefit of the principles settled in the EUROGI' mission.
In order to fulfil his mission EUROGI is called from now to ahead , in his capacity of being an NGO, to complement the actions of the EC regarding the implementing rules for the benefit of his members and of entire GI European community.
The paper is presenting and discussing the main activities of an NGO for supporting the application and the evolution of the I.R. In terms of principles an NGO such as EUROGI firstly supports the ideas and concepts underlying the I.R. but his mission will continue in analysing and complementing by his National Member Associations the initiatives which will be put in place at national level for concretising the I.R.. In terms of methods to apply for supporting the I.R. and complementing the EC related actions EUROGI will use his cultural approach . focusing on cultural, governmental and organisational aspects which play a fundamental role and unfortunately sometime represent uneasy frictions or obstacles.
EUROGI is characterised by grouping under his "umbrella" national organisations, other organisations and corporate members and SMEs therefore the actions to put in place should consider how to involve and benefit of the diversities of the members focusing to the main task of making INPIRE directive and his technical annexes sustainable through the I.R..
The main themes to be addressed and discussed will be :
- How to support the usage of the implementing rules and to increase their awareness at different administrative and technical levels ( national and subnational) and to complement the activities which the EC put in place.
- How to match the industrial expectations with the implementing rules to the regard of EUROGI member competencies and users involvement.
- How to maximise the already in place activities of EUROGI for complementing the EC activities specifically related to the implementing rules.

GIN, Dutch Platform for GEO Experts (366)
Hendrik Westerbeek, Kadaster, The Netherlands

GIN (Geo Information Netherlands) is an association of members all working in the Geo information sector. This association is a platform for geo experts. It supports its members in the fields of study, promotion and use of geo information. With professional and innovative activities in the Netherlands and in an international context. GIN strives for cooperation.
GIN aims to formulate recommendations for minimum requirements for education and professionalism as well as for professional and ethical standards. GIN took the initiative -together with governmental institutions, secundary and higher education and the association of companies working in the geo sector- to install a foundation to solve problems in the total chain of geo education and to improve the image of the geo sector for students.
About 4000 members (persons, companies and governmental institutes) offer GIN the possibilities to organise successful seminars and congresses at a national and regional level. This can be an evening discussion or a three days congress about state of the art developments. Other products of GIN are a monthly magazine, a national portal on internet, national and international excursions, a geo-information dictionary. GIN itself is member of international federations like FIG and ISPRS.
Since 2003 GIN is the amalgamation of several small associations in the fields of land surveying, cartography, geodesy and remote sensing. The initiators of GIN supported the idea that for the success of national spatial data infrastructures geo-experts should join hands and minds and leave the traditional grouping within the geo sector. After five years it is interesting to present an evaluation during GSDI 11 of the amalgation and the achievements of GIN. This evaluation could be of importance for countries in which at present comparable initiatives of amalgation are taken or in discussion.


Parallel Session 6.3
Marine Data SDIs
Moderator: Jeremy Shen, Taiwan

The International Coastal Atlas Network: An Emerging Spatial Data Infrastructure Initiative (77)
Dawn Wright, Oregon State University, USA; Ned Dwyer, Ireland; Yassine Lassoued, Ireland; Luis Bermudez, USA; Omar Boucelma, France; Roger Longhorn, Belgium

The International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) is a newly-founded initiative comprised of a partnership of over 30 organizations from more than a dozen nations. It aims to be a global reference for the development of coastal web atlases (CWAs), which are defined as collections of digital, web-enabled maps and datasets with supplementary tables, illustrations, and information that systematically illustrate the coast, oftentimes with cartographic and decision support tools. These atlases are playing an increasingly important role as elements of spatial data infrastructures at state and national scales, and in assisting regional decision- and policy-making across numerous themes including coastal vulnerability to climate change impacts and population presssures, coastal governance (boundaries, protected areas, etc.), coastal hazards mitigation, marine spatial planning, resource availability and exploitation,. Many of these atlases offer discovery, view and download services in line with the INSPIRE Directive. Another strategic aim of ICAN is to take advantage of the expertise of its members to find common solutions to CWA development, and to encourage and facilitate global operational interoperability between CWAs for enhanced data sharing, and the translation of coastal science to coastal decision-making. The paper describes the rationale and development of several products that ICAN has been developing for this purpose, such as user and developer guides, handbooks and articles on best practices, information on standards and web services, expertise and technical support directories, education, outreach materials, and workshops. The long-term goal of ICAN is to enable U.S. national and global-level operational interoperability between CWAs, based on the principle of shared distributed information, which will also provide a basis for rationally-informed discussion, debate and negotiation of sustainable management policies for regional governance. This will evolve as the ICAN community strives to increase awareness of the opportunities that exist for increased coastal and marine data sharing among policy makers, resource managers, and other strategic users of CWAs. The paper describes the experiences of and lessons learned by ICAN participants as they have developed the structure and governance of the organization, partnered with similar initiatives, and played leadership roles in forging international collaborations of value to their participating nations. A major long-term goal is to help build a functioning digital atlas of the worldwide coast.

The UK Marine Environmental Data and Information Network: Working to Deliver Improved Access To and Stewardship of Marine Data and Information (90)
Mark Charlesworth, British Oceanographic Data Centre, Terry Allen, David Cotton, Gaynor Evans, Lesley Rickards, UK

The management of marine data is uniquely important due to the large costs associated with resources such as ships used to collect it. Furthermore, because seas and oceans transcend international boundaries it places further emphasis on the importance of interoperability.
In the United Kingdom, marine data and information are collected by a variety of UK government, non-government, academic, private sector and other research organisations for many different reasons. This disparate structure causes inefficiencies and delays in all activities which require access to marine data and information from different sources, such as marine planning , environmental assessments, marine environmental monitoring.
The Marine Environmental Data and Information Network are working to address these issues, with a shared vision to deliver improved access to and stewardship of UK marine data and information. The network is built around Data Archive Centres (DACs), implementation of standards and a common interface to resources. The network will also maintain current applications, catalogues and resources including sending data to international data centres.
MEDIN is communicating with organisations within the network to increase awareness of the INSPIRE requirements and outputs from the INSPIRE drafting teams. Furthermore MEDIN is ensuring that the standards and practices developed for the UK marine community are compliant with those developed under INSPIRE. This paper will explore the knowledge and experiences gained from developing the marine SDI and its integration with INSPIRE.

One Feature One Time: Principles for Bringing Land and Sea Data Together (108)
Mark MacKenzie, CARIS, Andrew Hoggarth, Canada

This paper will focus on addressing issues encountered when attempting to merge land and marine geospatial data together. Much of the focus to date in spatial data infrastructure (SDI) creation and management has been on topographic, or land, data, but there is an emerging focus on the inclusion of marine data to complete the picture at the national, regional and global level. This desire to combine land and marine data is made more difficult because of the different data standards applied in these two areas.
Disparity between scale, symbology and datum causes various data integration issues when these data sets are integrated. Interoperability issues related to reconciling these differences are heightened where shore-based and sea-based datasets meet, in the coastal zone.
By combining topographic and hydrographic datasets, land and marine data integration issues can be addressed more easily. Bringing this data together can occur through the web from disparate sources or alternatively through a harmonized interoperable central database. A benefit of the central database is the ability to apply a "one feature one time" approach which allows the integrity of each specific dataset to be maintained with the added efficiency of storing objects only once. By storing multiple representations along with the individual objects, we can ensure that the data appears as expected and can therefore be used appropriately.
Successfully addressing the issues associated with merging land and sea data results in more efficient implementation of initiatives such as coastal flood visualization, disaster management and response, and/or Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM). It is envisaged that the management of other geospatial data like that used for aviation purposes could also benefit from this approach.

Seamless SDI Model - Bridging the Gap between Land and Marine Environments (281)
Sheelan S.Vaez, University of Melbourne, Abbas Rajabifard, Ian Williamson, Australia

With climate change, rising sea levels pressing harder year on year and the need to manage our resources more carefully in this dynamic environment, the inability to integrate land and marine base information is an increasing problem in many countries. The absence of a seamless spatial information framework prevents the execution of standard practice of locating and referencing spatial information across the land-marine interface where so much pressure and development is taking place. There is a growing and urgent need to create a seamless SDI model that bridges the gap between the terrestrial and marine environments, creating a spatially enabled land-sea interface to more effectively meet sustainable development objectives. This paper discusses drivers for integrating land and marine environments and proposes a seamless SDI model as an abstract level SDI and its associated components followed by issues and challenges that must be overcome in developing an overarching architecture for a seamless SDI that allows access to and interoperability of data from marine, coastal and terrestrial environments.

Tools for Coastal Marine Ecosystem-Based Management and Geographically Referred Data Integration - the Santos Region case study (344)
Silvia Maria Sartor, Anne Sartor Palm, Lia Palm, Eduardo Jun Shinohara, Jose Alberto Quintanilha, Sao Paulo University, Brazil

We witness today a growing interest and an increasing demand for endeavors to understand and explain the complex phenomena and relationships that characterize the environment. The information technology data explosion during the last two decades has increased disparity between the disciplines and their approach to the related issues.
As in other countries around the globe, there are big efforts done in Brazil today to efficiently integrate information from a variety of sources and thus improve the examining and monitoring of specific areas. This is critical to acknowledge what have already been studied and which are the possible gaps, for instance. Once put together this geographically referred data is used here to generate fresh information. This truthfully effective knowledge can then lead to better and well-supported decisions.
This paper reviews the state of affairs in Santos Basin Region, one of the most preeminent in South America for a variety of reasons. Santos is a densely populated conurbation in Southeast Brazil, with over 1.300.000 inhabitants living on its costal urban zone. This ecologically significant estuary ecosystem is place to the South America's busiest seaport, as well as a petrochemical complex and intense tourism and fishing activities. Recently, a huge amount of petroleum was discovered in the basin's pre-salt layer, so a significant increase in urbanization can be expected.
In the endeavor described here, the publications are being gathered for inclusion in the map. All what is available about vegetation, biodiversity, transportation links, hydrodynamic patterns, hydrography, housing, pollution and social resources is linked to geography, and acts as shared information bank that can be quickly accessed and managed.
As the final product is to be widely used not only by decision-makers and companies but also utilized openly by the general public, there's a great concern about the users' interface set-up. The material is planned to be accessed through interactive animation and graphically designed tools in an user-friendly environment.
The example illustrates how the integration of data has the ability to create a rich organizational information system, combining broadly different databases. It becomes clear that such effort towards finding universal relationships in data on the basis of well-understood and statistically robust methodologies has great potential and can directly benefits an entire society.

Parallel Session 6.4
Global, Multi-National, State and Local Experiences
Moderator: Rolf de By, ITC, The Netherlands

Spatial Data Infrastructure of La Palma Island (Canary Islands-Spain): A Proposal Based on Open Source Software (67)
Juan Antonio Bermejo Dominguez, Cabildo Insular de La Palma, Alvaro Anguix, Spain

The Corporate Geographic Information System (GIS) of La Palma Island, along with the introduction of the island's Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), is a medium-term project, progressing steadily, and aiming not only at publishing information according to the INSPIRE directive, but also at making the data from the SDI available to advanced GIS tools.
The local SDI of the Cabildo of La Palma is designed to provide service to both the Cabildo itself as well as to local governments and the citizens. The project uses open source technology (FOSS), directing the funds to ser-vices and avoiding, to the extent possible, the purchase of licenses. From the beginning of the implementation process the gvSIG software was used for management and analysis of geographical information, and it was de-ployed to all sites that utilize geographical information (about 40 PCs). In parallel we have signed cooperation agreements with other local entities and actively participate in the dissemination of this technology by organizing workshops, courses and seminars.
Initiated by the Cabildo Insular de La Palma and taking into account information requirements on the part of citizens, the public sector and businesses, various geoservices were created, providing free and open access to geographical information. Each of the individual services is based on certain user profiles and tailored to the specific requirements of the user.
The Geoportal: is a web tool developed with open source software and created for querying the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) of the Cabildo of La Palma. It provides free access to a variety of information and can be accessed through the URL www.mapasdelapalma.es. The geoportal comprises more than 70 layers of thematic information, grouped by topic maps
WMS & WCS services. Standard for publishing cartographic content on the Internet, based on specifications drawn up by the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium).
Currently we are working the discovery and view service with Geonetwork (http://213.172.37.189:8080/geonetwork/srv/es/main.home) and the Gazetteer with Degree (http://213.172.37.189:8080/deegree-wfsg/wfsg?)
LA PALMA 3D. Easy and intuitive to use, 3D Web viewers have gained a significant installation base and have led to widespread utilization of geo-information worldwide. The Cabildo Insular de La Palma offers its users two different 3D services: The Geoshow 3D viewer and gateways to KML GoogleEarth
DOWNLOADS. This service is further improves access for the public by facilitating the download of raw data in its original format and for free. The raw data can be downloaded in Shapefile (shp) or CAD (dxf/dwg) formats.
For more Information see WWW.SIGLAPALMA.ES

The Spatial Data Infrastructure of Sardinia Region (92)
Marco Melis, Regione Sardegna - Servizio Informativo e Cartografico Regionale, Rita Vinelli, Luca Corvetto, Luisa Manigas, Italia

The Territorial Information System of Sardinia (S.I.T.R.) is a federated architecture unitary system, based on the sharing of geographical, environmental, urbanistic, cultural, geo-referenced data of the whole territory of Sardinia Independent Region.
The S.I.T.R., according to the Information Society Development Strategy of Sardinia, represents a homogenous and integrated functional part of it; it grounds itself on the European Union's INSPIRE Initiative.
The partaking of geographic information develops through a tools & technology predisposition, which allows a shared knowledge of the regional area, moving towards a prior evaluation of the prospecting choices.
Hence, with this project, a continuous information flow will be transferred from the regional administration to the territory government, thus becoming available to local authorities and to private and public sectors who will be able both to exploit the SITR services and to give an important contribution to the information update.
The solution found in our system, the very first in Italy, is designed with affirmed information technology and interoperability techniques, and allows the regional administration to produce and distribute cartography, through which it is possible to set up a territory government policy, universally participated, and to reference every spatial areas.
Besides, a very important extension of the S.I.T.R. is the S.I.T. 2 COM. project, which is still on launching stage; it has the target to bring the informative territorial services developed in the SITR towards the Townships, so to make it possible to achieve an equally distributed and shared e-governance, and to promote the environment and territory development.
The S.I.T. 2 COM. project offers exclusive possibilities for the extension of the S.I.T.R. existing services, through the application of interoperability and applicative co-operation principles, utilizing hi-speed connections.
Sardinia Independent Region is aware that only through connected services between the central Regional Administration and the practically operating local Authorities, it is possible to accomplish a homogenous, shared, effective territory governance.

Implementation of Recent Metadata Directives and Guidelines in Public Administration: The Experience of Sardinia Region (215)
Luisa Manigas, Sardinia Region, Michele Beneventi, Luca Corvetto, Rita Vinelli, Marco Melis, Italy

Since 2006, the Region of Sardinia (Italy) has been developing its Geographic Information System and the related Spatial Data Infrastructure, known as Sistema Informativo Territoriale Regionale - Infrastruttura dei Dati Territorial (SITR-IDT). The aim of SITRIDT is creating and managing a spatial database and the technologic infrastructure, services and application needed for data access. This is in agreement with the principles of geographic data sharing and accessibility expressed by the INSPIRE Directive; for this purpose, metadata play a fundamental role. In SITR-IDT a high importance has been given to metadata definition, acquisition and management. Proper tools for metadata management, according to INSPIRE Implementing Rules (IR), are being developed. Both INSPIRE IR and the requirements coming from an appropriate daily spatial database administration have been considered in metadata organisation. In this article, the metadata organisation adopted in SITR-IDT for data of different typologies is illustrated. It presents the evolution of metadata organisation according to European Union Directives and technical guidelines. It also explains the switch from a quite rigid and constraining metadata schema to a more flexible and standards-compliant one. Different questions such as the metadata manager and the organisation of metadata for nongeographic data related to geographic data are discussed. The article presents a tool, the metadata manager, that should help to create, collect, and manage metadata at the appropriate levels of a Spatial Data Infrastructure.

Local Government - Understanding their Capacity to Share Data for SDI Development (372)
Kevin McDougall, Univ Southern Queensland, Australia

Local government was an early leader in the development, deployment and innovation in spatial information systems. The corporate wide spatial information portals within local government are now considered an essential element of the organisation's information infrastructure. Although these systems continue to expand and mature, their potential to contribute to higher level SDI initiatives remains largely unrealised. This paper explores local government SDI within Australia to assess their capacity across the various dimensions of SDI. The responses from over 100 local governments to a comprehensive survey on their SDI capacity and collaborative initiatives is analysed to identify factors that contribute to their successful contribution to state and national SDI development. The findings of the survey indicate due to the significant variation in size and capacity of local governments different approaches are often required when data sharing partnerships are being established. It was also found that higher level SDI policy initiatives often do not permeate down to the local level. A significant level of variation was found amongst the local government attitudes and their capacity across a range of issues. The implications of the findings on SDI development are discussed and some suggestions for further research are presented

Review of Local SDI in France (45)
Francois Salge, Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning, Elise Ladurelle-Tikry, Lucie Fourcin, France

The eSDI-Net+ project is about establishing "a European Network on Geographic Information Enrichment and Reuse". The Network is for the promotion of cross border dialogue and exchange of best practices on Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) throughout Europe. It is about to get SDIs officers together. It meets the need to build a forum for the many initiatives and SDI stakeholders across Europe especially acting on local level.
A guideline for common parameters useful to assess SDI initiatives has been developed under the EUROGI leadership. National and application oriented SDI will be characterised accordingly. The focus will be on common issues, usability and socio economic impact of SDI and will address the issues of integration between SDI's and e-government policies. The methodology identifies several key SDI questions that each sub-national SDI, identified by the national level, will have to elaborate on. Seven categories are proposed: SDI identity card, SDI usage, networking people, socio-economic impact analysis, organisational aspects, coping with legal aspects and Technical functionalities-facilities-components
Each national study will serve identifying what is happening sub-nationally in the member states, what are the sub-national SDI's, what are the underlying business models, the organisational model etc.
This method is currently applied to describe 50+ SDI being implemented in France either at a thematic or local government level. The paper will briefly present the method and will largely draw the picture of these French SDIs, draw the differences and similarities. It will conclude on further research that may emerge.

Parallel Session 6.5
Founding the International Geospatial Society
Moderator: Abbas Rajabifard, University of Melbourne Australia

The purpose of this meeting is to explore the creation of an active individual membership arm of the GSDI Association and to discuss the purpose, goals, objectives, benefits and challenges of such an organization. Discussions will occur in the context of constructing a formal set of bylaws.


Parallel Session 6.6
INSPIRE National Stories
Moderator: Mauro Salvemini, President EUROGI

Inspiring the Netherlands: implementation as a joint effort (85)
Sandra van Wijngaarde, Geonovum, Yvonne Verdonk, Ruby Beltman, The Netherlands

The implementation of INSPIRE in the Netherlands is - as everywhere - a joint effort of many organizations, each playing their own specific parts and carrying their own responsibilities. In order to implement INSPIRE successfully it is essential that all parties involved are committed to the same goals and individually put in the necessary efforts at all levels and aspects. For INSPIRE is so much more than just a technical operation.
By order of the Ministry of Environment (VROM) Geonovum coordinates and facilitates the implementation of INSPIRE in the Netherlands. Geonovum would like to share views and experiences on the way we:
- raise awareness on INSPIRE at strategic, tactic and operational levels;
- disseminate and exchange the knowledge on INSPIRE and the implementation;
- shape the co-operation between public and privates parties and involve the Dutch end users of INSPIRE.
Means to raise awareness and spread the word on INSPIRE in the Netherlands include a checklist for organizations to self assess the impact of INSPIRE for their organizations, the INSPIRE-award for best practice, organizing various (inter-) national conferences and workshops targeted at specific audiences and much more.
Participants in this workshop will be challenged to discover, create and most of all share sources of inspiration to truly "INSPIRE" all parties concerned in Europe.

The United Kingdom's Spatial Data Infrastructure Programme (378)
Stefan Carlyle, UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Ray Boguslawski, Keith Murray, Ian Greenwood, U.K.

The paper will describe the latest preparations in the UK of relevance to INSPIRE implementation, including:
- transposition of the INSPIRE Directive in the UK;
- implementation of the UK Location Strategy; and
- developments in the UK SDI Programme led by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) who have the Government policy lead on INSPIRE.
The paper will describe the latest developments in the UK in transposing the INSPIRE Directive and the challenges faced in meeting the 15th May 2009 for transposition. These are not trivial, particularly as the necessary Implementing Rules will not be available by the transposition deadline. The UK cannot make ambulatory legislation and the paper will give the latest position in light of this challenge.
The paper will give the latest position in implementing the location strategy, which was published on 25th November 2008. It is entitled: Place Matters: the Location Strategy for the United Kingdom. The first action was to set up a new government advisory group called the Location Council, which met for the first time on 27th and 28th November 2008. The Location Council will address 5 strategic actions to ensure that the UK exploits the full value of its information the Location Strategy. The actions are designed to ensure that the United Kingdom:
1. knows what data we have, and avoid duplicating it;
2. uses common reference data so we know we are talking about the same places;
3. can share location-related information easily through a common infrastructure of standards, technology and business relationships;
4. has the appropriate skills, both among geographic professionals and among other professional groups who use location information or support its use; and
5. has strong leadership and governance to drive through change including the implementation of this Strategy and the implementation of INSPIRE. (We term this the Location Council)
The vision for the UK SDI Programme is:
"When this programme is completed in 2012 the UK will have an operational spatial data infrastructure that meets the mandatory requirements of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive and the recommendations of Place Matters - The Location Strategy for the United Kingdom. As such the programme will deliver a step change in data management, data interoperability and data access, supported by better integration with mainstream ICT services and new levels of professional skills across the industry. People from all walks of life will have ready access to the information they need to go about their daily lives, whether at home, in business, in research or in government."
The paper will also describe the latest position in implementing the UK SDI Programme to deliver this vision and set up an operational Spatial Data Infrastructure for the UK.
It will also show how the programme is working in close co-operation with the Devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in transposing the INSPIRE Directive, implementing the UK Location Strategy and in setting up the UK SDI.
Finally, the paper will describe how the programme is working to achieve the considerable efficiency savings set out in the INSPIRE Extended Impact Assessment .

Implementing INSPIRE in real life: The French Case (126)
Marc Leobet, Conseil national de linformation geographique, France

The French situation is characterised by a major multiplicity of public authorities (40 000) superimposed on several levels and endowed with strong autonomy, by old equipment of the territory in geographical data at large scale of very variable quality (since Napoleon), by a wide territory encouraging average scales in the French logic of continuous public service on the national territory, by a major means disparity between the official authorities, some having of great volumes of data on very variable scales.
This situation is marked by with the different needs according to the sizes of the territories concerned and by the different agilities, which lead to difficulties in the trade and asymmetries. SDIC and LMO French are very few. At the same time, signs of dynamisms are apparent, like the creation of the Forum OGC France or the creation of national and regional portals strongly connected to INSPIRE. This complexity is at the same time a source of wealth and of potential blockings, and was an opportunity to set up specific operating modes intended to mobilise the actors, in particular in preparation for the implementation of the specifications of Annexe III themes.
The presentation will aim at showing the method implemented, the results obtained and the hoped for consequences. It will show that, in the French case, the INSPIRE implementation will bring major evolutions in the field of : - clarification and organisation of geographical data production, in particular between the local and national levels. That covers the organisation of the pooling and data-sharing, collaboration between the producers or even the co production, the relations between producers and users, and relevance for public finance to have updated data of quality, and maintained in the time.
- the implementation of the Directive INSPIRES in the field of coordination, that means help, information dissemination and of training to be set up.
- the analyse, the clarification and the management of the impact of the Directive on the economic operation in the geographic sector, with, among the issues, the development of the services, the associated procedures (licences...), the model coexistence where data is free with other where it is paying.

Implementation of Inspire in Denmark - How we do the job! (229)
Olav Eggers, National Survey and Cadastre, Denmark

The implementation of Inspire has been central task for the National Survey and Cadastre (KMS) for the last 5 years at least. As the national focal point for Inspire and authority for spatial infrastructure in Denmark, KMS has an important role to play when it comes to the realisation of Inspire, whether concerning legal implementation or technical infrastructures. This December Denmark will pass the law on "Implementation of geographical information infrastructure" - which sets out the legal basis for the Inspire implementation in Denmark - but also entails some enhancements to the Inspire Directive, which in many ways will enable Denmark to adjust the content of "Infrastructure datasets" in Denmark - in the years to come.
KMS has to large extent built the technical developments on the existing national infrastructures, which in relation to metadata has meant that the national metadata service "Geodatainfo" is going to be developed further to align with the requirements from the Metadata IR and the Discovery IR.
The approach taken to review the data specifications, comprises a combination of participation in the actual working groups, national review meetings - and testing through the participation in the ESDIN project (European Spatial Data Infrastructure with a Best Practice Network).
On the organisational level, coordination is taking place in several established forums - with different stakeholders from state to municipal level and also embracing private industry. The frequent meetings in these forums have proven important to ensure national understanding and support to Inspire, as well as capacity building to implement the IR's.
The Danish NSDI is moving forward in a close partnership with the national eGovernment initiatives. This gives opportunity for a synergy of great potential - since the use and integration of geographical information in many governmental processes still has a way to go.


Parallel Session 6.7
Master Class: SDI Theory and Practice
Moderator: Prof. dr. ir. Arnold Bregt, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

SDI from Theory to Practice
Prof. dr. ir. Arnold Bregt, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, Prof. dr. Henk J. Scholten, Professor of Spatial Informatics, VU University Amsterdam and CEO of Geodan, The Netherlands, Prof. Antônio Cãmara, Faculty of Science and Technology at the Lisbon University and CEO of YDreams, Portugal, Dr. Eduardo Dias, Researcher at VU University Amsterdam and Geodan, The Netherlands, Steven Fruijtier, Geodan, the Netherlands

Part 1 of the Masterclass consists of interactive lectures by two professors who are each chief executive officers of their own companies as well. Professor Antônio Cãmara and Professor Henk Scholten will relate spatial data infrastructures to innovative and promising technologies and will share use scenarios now and in the future:
- Sensor Networks
- Micro-geography
- Collective Intelligence
- Virtual and augmented worlds

This Master Class is part of the Geo Youth Capital program, especially organised for bachelor and master students interested in geo-information and SDI developments. During this all day event students may participate (for free) in master classes offered by innovative professors and industry leaders. Further, students are able to meet their potential future employers and discover cutting edge technology. Register at http://www.geoyouthcapital.com/masterclasses

SDI Practice: A Best Practice ExampleI
Henk J. Scholten, Professor of Spatial Informatics, Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands


Parallel Session 6.8
INSPIRE Projects
Moderator: Hans Dufourmont, DG ENTR, JRC, European Commission

Building a Soil Information Portal for Europe Based on the PortalU® Technology (56)
Stefanie Uhrich, Coordination Centre PortalU at the Lower Saxony Ministry of Environment and Climate Protection, Martin Klenke, Fred Kruse, Germany

The availability and accessibility of environmental information has become a key concern for public and private bodies within Europe in the recent years. The European Environmental Information Directive (EEID, 2003/4/EC), the Directive for establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information (INSPIRE, 2007/2/EC) as well as further initiatives of the EU like the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) emphasizes the European-wide need to improve the access to environmental information. Especially the web-based supply of the huge amount of spatial environmental data deserves particularly attention because high organisational efforts and financial expenses are necessary to improve the access to this kind of data. While INSPIRE and its Implementing Rules (IR) give the framework to establish a European spatial data infrastructure, vital obstacles in reference to harmonization and interoperability of data and services as well as in reference to the organisational structure are not removed yet.
The project GS Soil aims to make a contribution to remove these obstacles by establishing a European web portal for soil information (GS Soil Portal). Within the project 35 partners from 17 European member states are involved. As technical base InGrid®, the technology of the German Environmental Information Portal PortalU®, will be used to build up the GS Soil Portal, where all decentralized distributed soil data are bundled. In the GS Soil Portal all soil related information from web pages, over data bases to data catalogues will be made available and accessible. Search results will be ranked and listed in shared result lists and spatial soil data from OGC compatible Web Mapping Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) will be visualized in a map viewer.
As a fundament for harmonizing different kinds of soil data, basic information about the data sets have to be made available in the form of methodical metadata, which describe the underlying data models in depth, and which comply with a generic framework for developing application schemata for the relevant data. Therefore a schema for describing spatially linked soil data and database services to comply with the INSPIRE Directive will be developed, which meet the needs of data users for a harmonised, interoperable EU-wide, national and regional soil data infrastructure.
The project results will enter in a best practice guideline for soil data specification development under INSPIRE. For all tasks within the project the GS Soil Portal will be used as platform for an improved access to the soil data.

EuroGeoNames (EGN) - A European geographical names data infrastructure (181)
Antti Jakobsson, EuroGeographics-Association of the European National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies, France; Pier-Giorgio Zaccheddu, Germany

EuroGeoNames (EGN) is a pan-European gazetteer service which aims at being compliant with the INSPIRE gazetteer application schema [DoW] [D2.5].
Technically, EGN is a European infrastructure of differently organized geographical names data sources and has set up an interoperable cascading Web Feature Service (WFS) architecture compliant to open standards [ISO] [OGC]. A so-called "EGN Central (WFS) Service" accesses the distributed "EGN Local (WFS) Services" at each data provider (NMCAs) to query the EGN data network and return standardized result sets (in XML) to the inquirer [D6.5].
A database of exonyms and other variant names (EVN-DB) comprises important names of geographical features in the official languages of the participating countries of the EGN project, not maintained by the National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCAs). It is a supplement database to the EGN Central Service and is linked to it by unique identifiers.
The EuroGeoNames (EGN) project started successfully on 1st September 2006 and the EU-funded period (eContentplus programme) was completed after 30 months in February 2009. Within the EU-funded project duration the "critical mass of content aggregated", as requested by the eContentplus programme, has been fulfilled by aggregating data for at least 10 European countries - comprising also EFTA countries - by connecting their national databases in the EGN infrastructure. About 23 languages may be supported. As for the graphic user interface (reference application), the text content of it will be displayed in at least 4 languages (English, German, French, Spanish). The current status of the EGN infrastructure will be presented.
After the EU-funded period, phase 2 - the implementation phase 2009-2012 - has been started under the umbrella of EuroGeographics (association of the European NMCAs) with the aim to extend the EGN infrastructure to "EU 27".
The unique selling points (usp) of the EGN infrastructure and services for Europe and its quality are that,
- EGN provides the primary source of official geographical names data, their different spellings and alphabets;
- EGN provides the most up-to-date source from the national data collectors;
- EGN provides the most detailed and comprehensive information;
- EGN facilitates quality control through official national cooperation on European level;
- EGN is based on state-of-the-art European standards and incorporates, amongst others, the Unicode standard.
EGN is targeted primarily at value added resellers (VARs) and service providers to develop specific applications for their customers and deploy value-added GIS products by using the EGN Central Service. The end user has access to this information at least through the reference application which will enable searching in all official European languages, including officially recognized minority languages.
Further information about the objectives and findings of the EuroGeoNames project are available through the website: www.eurogeonames.eu

MedIsolae-3D: Mediterranean Islands SDI & 3D Aerial web-Navigation (214)
Giacomo Martirano, EPSILON, Italy; Marc Bonazountas, Greece; Joerg Schaller, Cristina Mattos, Germany

MedIsolae-3D delivers for 100+ European Mediterranean islands and via state-of-the-art webGIS technologies: (i) a spatial database structure (SDI) based on INSPIRE; (ii) a 3D-aerial flying-over application for island-navigation as a virtual-visiting tool; (iii) a dynamic portal for island's information, 3D aerial-navigation and other spatial data services, potentially linked to web-geoplatforms like Google Earth™, MS Virtual Earth™, and ESRI ArcGlobe™; and (iv) a commercial portal enabling a service portfolio. The project is co-funded by the EC/eContent RTD Programme (2008-2009) and is carried out by 14 partners from seven EU Member States.
MedIsolae-3D addresses the need of islands to promote & strengthening their information technologies via the Internet, including their SDI, and assist islands to overcome barriers such as: gaps and duplication of spatial data, poor quality of datasets; seldom use of data standards; lack of metadata; lack of interoperability of existing geographic information services; organizational issues, incompatibility of different GI initiatives; lack of data sharing and re-use; different motivation and interests in SDI use; procedural, legal, financial and institutional barriers between public and private bodies related to the access & use of geodata. MedIsolae-3D stimulates the user's demand for spatial data uses for sectors such as tourism, transportation, health, socio-economics, environment, statistical analyses, planning, and policy-making.
Results obtained so far (Nov. 2008) include the 3D geodatabase created and managed with ESRI technologies, and based on readily available data owned and delivered by the project partners, harmonized and standardized according to rules set by INSPIRE. Data include satellite images, topographic & thematic maps, elevation data, landmarks, and POIs of islands from Greece, Cyprus, France, Italy, Malta and Spain. Available is a 3D-GIS application for Santorini, seeking to integrate Google Earth™, Virtual Earth™ and ArcGIS Explorer™ technologies into the portal www.3d-islands.eu.

INSPIRE - Putting theory into practice (248)
Jorgen Hartnor, Lantmateriet - National Land Survey Sweden; Pierre Nouaille-Degorce, Dave Lovell, France

We have an ambition to build the European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI) on a 'backbone' of reference data available from the national mapping, land registry and cadastral agencies.
INSPIRE as the legal instrument mandates that the ESDI will be based on the National Spatial Data Infrastructures in Member States but without a clear understanding of the requirements of the users of the ESDI our ambition may be met however our customers may remain disappointed. That is why the eContentPlus project to Underpin the European Spatial Data Infrastructure with a Best Practice Network (ESDIN) has as its most important objective: to satisfy users' needs with the data they require, when and where they require it on terms they find acceptable.
The ESDIN project is focusing on helping the Member States, candidate countries and EFTA States to achieve the interoperability of their geographical information, between data themes, across borders, for different applications and at different scales, to make the ESDI a practical reality.
To achieve our ambition there will need to be services capable of transforming data and providing access to the data, such as; transformations to European data specifications, providing common semantics, support for multi-lingual aspects, transformation of coordinates to common coordinate reference systems, generalisation, from 'large' to 'small' scales and edge-matching to address inconsistencies at national borders.
The project aims to develop a sustainable best practice network, improve aggregated information for a number of INSPIRE Annex I data themes, provide interoperability services and support the ongoing development and testing of INSPIRE Implementing Rules and Data Specifications.
It will address the twin challenges of technical and business interoperability by implementing a services approach to the National Mapping and Cadastral information which exist across Europe. It will facilitate effective management of intellectual property rights whilst providing access to data through simple data licensing in a 'rights management' environment to provide fast and easy user access to data.
Quality of data is also a prime concern of users and this will be addressed by establishing a standard approach to reporting data quality for a range of data in a manner understood by users.
ESDIN is an ambitious project but only by having the courage to try to do what seems impossible do we have any hope of achieving our ambition.
ESDIN is an eContentplus project, more information is available at www.esdin.eu

NESIS - a Network to enhance a European Environmental Shared and Interoperable Information System (287)
Giorgio Saio, GISIG - Geographical Information Systems International Group, Italy

On February 2008, the European Commission published the communication "Towards a Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS)" aiming at: improving availability and quality of information needed to design and implement Community environment policy; reducing administrative burden on MS and EU institutions & modernise reporting; fostering development of information services and applications profitably usable by everyone
The scope is integrated and sustained environmental information management to improve data sharing within Europe and beyond, and improvement of the quality and use of environmental data/information.
NESIS promotes the uptake of ICT solutions for the Authorities providing information for monitoring and reporting environmental impacts and threats. Supporting the streamlining of monitoring and reporting systems, NESIS supports also the SEIS creation and provides a coherent roadmap to consolidate existing best practice.
The Network leverages the potentiality of the EIONET community of stakeholders. By reviewing the EIONET state of play of ICT monitoring and reporting, and the requirements for enhancing the existing infrastructure and ICT deployments, NESIS develops a shared action plan for SEIS and an ICT roadmap towards a distributed, standards-based infrastructure for environmental information, on the principles of shared access rather than centralized reporting; so reflecting the latest developments of the ICT domain and of the evolving legal framework.
The NESIS Network, also proposed as an INSPIRE SDIC, is expected to bridge the gap between the ICT domain and the authorities mandated to create, manage and exchange environmental information. Its outcomes, are focused to foster the mutual exchange of information between authorities, opposed to the current flow from the Countries to the EU.
The project will run along two years and a half: the first one is mainly devoted to the national level with the collection of practice done by the EIONET NFPs, to provide coherent input around a common template and then a synthesis prepared on the collected material.
The second year is dedicated to the definition of the ICT roadmap for SEIS implementation, one of the most relevant project outcomes grounded on the analysis of the current practice and validated by the partners and stakeholders from different Countries.
The final phase is devoted to the preparation of the follow-up, with the stakeholders' involvement and a roadmap impact assessment at national level. The exploitation policies of the Network are also defined, aligned with the SEIS implementation and its operational adoption.
The NESIS anticipated impact is to create a collaborative framework to share ICT Best Practice for a better use of the SEIS framework, starting from the roadmap to, as mid-term perspective, the test and use of SEIS. Then NESIS can accompany the SEIS implementation, as its "human and organisation" component
The paper introduces the first outcomes of the project, from the analysis about the state of play in data management at national level made over more than twelve Countries and to a comparative analysis at a European level, focused on data sharing policies, adopted technologies and organisational practices, basic issues for the SEIS success.
The structure of the ICT Roadmap is also presented.


Parallel Session 6.9
Rotterdam Geo Youth Capital 2009: Youth Program
Moderator: Tim Favier, PhD student, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This youth program is organized for high school and vocational students from ages 14 through 19. The VU University Amsterdam has organized this event together with the educational institutions of these youth to create awareness about the fascinating world of geo-information. In the Netherlands, the traditional geo-study programs are coping with fewer and fewer enrolling students. At the same time, employers are increasingly seeking spatially skilled graduates. Students will follow a full-day program in which they discover and experience what geospatial information and communication technologies (geo-ict) are all about and what the domain could mean for their own future.
In the morning session, selected professionals will provide interactive short presentations about how they use geo-ict in their work. Speakers come from different perspectives ranging from the gaming industry, spatial planning in Dubai, the multimedia industry, fire brigade and disaster management, space science and more. Moreover, the Award for the winner of the 'Share Your Virtual Earth' Contest will be recognized by the professional jury making the award. To keep updated about the latest program and contest rules, visit http://www.geoyouthcapital.com


Parallel Session 6.10
Geospatial Industry Open Roundtable
Moderator: Carmelle Terborgh, ESRI

This session is hosted by the Industry Advisory Committee of the GSDI Association which advises the organization on matters of interest to the commercial community and has an official seat on the Board of Directors. All industry members are welcome to attend this open meeting whether or not your organization is currently a member of the GSDI Association. Likely to be discussed will be the organizations draft strategic plan and how industry can continue to influence and expand its role in responding to pressing world problems including stimulating the economy.


Parallel Session 7.1
SDI Applications
Moderator: Bruce McCormack, Irish Organisation for Geographic Information, Ireland

GIS/SDI for Collaborative Health Services Planning (114)
John Thompson, Lower Hume Primary Care Partnership, Abbas Rajabifard, Australia

It is now universally accepted that an effective primary health care system plays a crucial role in managing the rapidly increasing demand pressures on the acute and residential sectors of the health system, as well as improving the general well-being of individuals and communities. Furthermore there is considerable evidence that partnerships and collaborative action are very important in the planning, coordination and delivery of primary health services and facilities.
The Victorian Government, Australia has adopted better primary health care as an important priority and adopted a Primary Care Partnership Strategy to develop this cooperative and collaborative approach. There are 31 Primary Care Partnerships across Victoria in which more than 800 service providers have established voluntary alliances called Primary Care Partnerships (PCPs). The Lower Hume PCP brings together four hospitals, two community health services, two local government authorities, two family care services, a mental health agency, and a range of local community service providers. Its geographic area is within the shires of Mitchell and Murrindindi, rural areas totalling 6,735 sq kms and a population of 45,000 across two municipalities.
The health sector is data rich with extensive data collected and submitted by the agencies. However, the agencies do not have common data systems and, even within some agencies, the data systems are fragmented and differently formatted. Although spatial information is available, very little use is made of it. The LHPCP has been collaborating with the University of Melbourne to develop a spatially enabled platform to develop and maintain consistent data systems that will assist in health planning, operations and reporting for this region. A spatial data system was seen as a strategic driver to strengthen the partnership and to address the long-standing data issues.
The two local government authorities operate GIS and have good demographic and physical data systems. The LHPCP/University of Melbourne project has built on this resource and extended it with a large number of health and community services data sets. The development of efficient SDI to enable ready and effective access and use of these data and technology assets by the collaborating agencies and the general community is a prime objective of the project. Privacy is a key issue that is currently being considered by the project team.
The LHPCP has given priority to two initial investigations to demonstrate the potential of GIS/SDI; analysis of home-based health services and relating supply of health services to needs in a particular town to access to health services.
The GIS/SDI project is being monitored by the Victorian Government as it may provide a model for effective area planning of health services by the large number of health and community services within a particular area. This paper focuses on the strategic use of GIS/SDI to (1) cultivate cooperation in evidence-based primary health services planning and to (2) make more effective use of the vast collections of under-used health data that are currently held by health and community services agencies.

The Role of Standards on Effective Spatial Data Sharing: A Health Perspective Research Study from Mozambique (242)
Zeferino Saugene, Eduardo Mondlane University, Esselina Macome, Mozambique; Marcia Juvane, Norway

The need to support decision-making to address the multiple health issues creates a growing need to organize data across disciplines and organizations through development of spatial data infrastructures (SDI). Studies from health sector in Mozambique has shown that, the ICT users within the health sector, including the ICT users from Ministry of Education and Culture, National Institute of Statistics, among others, and as well as the community, despite the diversity of needs, all share the requirement for a common set of geospatial information. This shows that, effective spatial decision-making requires information on various aspects. This information is not easily obtained, especially in developing countries, unless there is a collaborative effort, for instance, each of the parties taking responsibilities for collecting spatial information of their interest and sharing them to be accessible for others. In this regard, standards are an appropriate framework to facilitate such collaboration in managing spatial data. However, a major challenge that can be seen in this situation is to make information more accessible and useful to decision makers. This paper is primarily based on the experience gained through three case studies carried out between 2004 and 2008. The first and third case studies were carried from 2004 to 2005 and 2007 to 2008 respectively as part of ongoing action research undertaken by the Health Information System Program (HISP), a global research and development network on health information systems coordinated by University of Oslo in Norway in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Mozambique. While the second was carried from 2006 to 2007 as part of a research project undertaken by a group of researchers from Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique in collaboration with Ministry of Health. Given that study in all cases were designed around an existing set of work processes that involved structured interactions between numerous personnel - both within and between organizations, research methods which includes observation, interviews, document analysis, surveys or questionnaires, and participation in meetings were used. These methods, each had contributed to the formation of a rich, comprehensive picture of the social structure, and reveal both opportunities and constraints on GIS adoption. The main constraint related to GIS adoption that we found in all the three cases were related to the critical need of standards. The institutions dealing with spatial data (collection and processing) needs to establish common standards as part of SDI. By building these common standards, the institutions will have access to data in the form of services with standardized interfaces.

Evaluation of Spatial Information Technology Applications for Mega City Management (95)
Hartmut Mueller, FH Mainz University of Applied Sciences, Silke Boos, Germany

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the results of a comprehensive internet search concerning the use of Spatial Information Technology in the world's currently existing mega cities. The search starts from a nationwide view on the execution and the progression status of SDI's in the home countries of mega cities and zooms in to the specific aspects of spatial data management in the metropolitan areas of special interest. As a result we come to the conclusion, that current SDI development in mega cities covers the whole range from first stage conceptual ideas up to an almost complete operational SDI availability.

Facilitating Urban Management through Local SDI-Case Study: The Municipality of Tehran (115)
Hamed Olfat, Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Iran; Abbas Rajabifard, Australia; Seyyed Abdolhadi Daneshpour, Iran

Nowadays, integrated and sustainable management of cities is one of the most important issues in many countries like Iran. On the other hand, spatial data is one of the important and key elements for decision making, planning and management of a jurisdiction such as a city. In this regards, in order to have sustainable management and planning there is a need for managers and planners to have access to reliable, seamless and accurate spatial data.
Base on current situation in urban management in Iran there is a need for an agreed platform that facilitates access to and sharing of spatially related data, services and other resources among different disciplines within any jurisdiction. This platform should also address characteristics such as standards and specifications for data collection, management, maintenance and distribution of spatial data. Having said that, in order to facilitate this situation and respond to the needs, many countries are developing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) which is a concept for facilitating and coordinating of sharing and integrating of data through different political and administrative levels. SDI can be developed at different levels ranging from local to state/provincial, national, regional and global.
An SDI is a dynamic, hierarchical and multi-disciplinary concept, that at a local level it includes people, data, access networks, institutional policy, technical standards, and human resources that aims to facilitate and coordinate the exchange and sharing of spatial data between stakeholders such as municipalities and utilities (eg. water and sewage, gas, power and electricity, tele-communication, post, etc.) in an urban area. SDI as a platform can help to reduce the duplication and save resources in data collection which usually occur due to unknown information about availability of data sets among different urban organizations. In addition organizations involve in urban planning can have access to a comprehensive dataset of the interested area like a city to achieve sustainable urban planning.
This paper discusses the importance and benefits of developing SDI as an enabling platform for urban planning and management based on a case study of Tehran Municipality and using challenges and issues in accessing and sharing spatial data in this jurisdiction. The paper then presents and discusses the process and experiences of developing an SDI Roadmap for this municipality.

State of Play of the Operational and Legally Bound Spatial Planning SDI in the Netherlands (129)
Arie Duindam, Grontmij, Ron Bloksma, Hennie Genee, Jeroen van der Veen, The Netherlands

In the period 2000 to 2006 much work was carried out to prepare an SDI for spatial planning information in the Netherlands. From 2006 onwards the implementation of this infrastructure has taken place by means of a dedicated E-Government programme. The SDI will be implemented at three governmental levels and will be completely operational by the end of 2009. This paper gives an in-depth overview of crucial aspects of this thematic SDI.
The first area of interest is the position of the spatial planning data infrastructure in relation to the national SDI of the Netherlands and Inspire. The spatial planning data infrastructure is implemented as a thematic SDI at local, provincial as well as national level. National and regional SDI's may benefit from the specific operational characteristics of a thematic SDI as an important driver for their own realisation.
The second area of interest is the development of new national legislation as a supportive fundament of this SDI. The new Spatial Planning Act forces national, provincial and local governments to publish digital geographic datasets as authentic sources of information. An remarkable novelty in this legislation is the legally binding use of GML. Furthermore, the general access policy to these data sets is also laid down in this legislation.
The third area of interest is the standardisation process that has taken place in the field of spatial planning in the Netherlands over the last nine years. The spatial planning standards comprise an information model, comparability requirements and infrastructure demands. A crucial force underpinning the success of this process was the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders over a sustained period. As a result, the spatial planning standards have come to the maturity level required to implement an SDI, and these standards have been laid down in legislation as well.
The fourth area of interest are the legally supported national spatial planning facilities. First of all a web portal and a set of web services have been implemented to provide aggregated and cartographic information as well as an interface to the national SDI of the Netherlands and Inspire. Furthermore, a national validation service based on the spatial planning standards has been developed to assure true interoperability from the ground up. The position of these facilities in relation to the SDI data sources, in relation to the publish-find-bind pattern and in relation to public-private partnerships are good examples of the necessary collaborations to make the infrastructure work.
For each area above, crucial success factors as well as the most important lessons learned are described. There is a strong focus on operational requirements: what must be done to make the infrastructure really work? The knowledge accumulated over the last decade could greatly benefit other SDI initiatives.


Parallel Session 7.2
SDI Future Perspectives
Moderator: Ingrid Vanden Berghe, National Geographic Institute, Belgium

Changing Notions of Spatial Data Infrastructures (375)
Ian Masser, Robin Waters, UK

The paper examines some of the changes that have taken place in the notion of SDI during the last 15 years. The discussion will be divided into five parts. The first of these considers the impacts of technological innovations during this period on the nature of SDIs. The second examines the changes that have taken place in the conceptualisation of SDIs while the third discusses the changing nature of SDI implementation in the context of the concepts of multi level governance that have developed by political scientists. Underlying this discussion is the realisation that SDI development and implementation is very much a social process of learning by doing. This process is explored in the fourth section of the paper with reference to the experience of the State of Victoria in Australia. The concluding section of the paper considers the cahllenges facing SDI implemntation and identifies a number of dilemmas that have yet to be resolved.

SDI Research, What Next? (134)
Arnold K. Bregt, Wageningen University, The Netherlands; Joep Comprovets, Belgium; Erik De Man, Lukasz Grus, The Netherlands

Gradually, the character of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) initiatives is changing. Initial initiatives were mostly about designing predominantly technical possibilities whereas contemporary initiatives are generally placed within current practices and developments in the exchange of spatial data between multitudes of diverse societal stakeholders. The purpose of the paper is to explore this trend and to anticipate its possible impact on the SDI research agenda. Future research on SDI will likely address questions like How to assure SDI (self) sustainability and continuous development? What makes SDI distinctive from other information infrastructures? What are the dilemmas related to the abundance of spatial data and information that come with these developments?
Literature reflects the multi-faceted and dynamic nature of SDI. Like any other networked infrastructure, SDIs are subject to different and often conflicting forces that propel their growth as well as their collapse, fragmentation and segregation at the same time. It follows that with the implementation of the SDI initiative comes inevitably the need for continuous support to assure its operation and functionality. In addition, adaptation to changing demands is a crucial ability for any sustainable SDI initiative. Research related to resources assurance, self-organization ability, and new strategies for SDI are likely to become significant.
The nature of the SDI concept is changing as well. Initially, the concept was conventionally restricted to identification, access, coordination and sharing of spatial data. Recent trends, however, suggest the inclusion of data collection when needed (geo-sensors) without necessarily storing the ad-hoc collected data after use. Moreover, SDI may gradually loose its distinctiveness and become part of general information infrastructures (e.g. SDI will coexist with or become a part of e-government).
When an SDI initiative meets its objectives of making more data accessible to more users, at least two dilemmas emerge. First, the many possible data sources also bring the need to choose; the initial scarcity of available data is traded for the scarcity in the ability to select. Second, the ability to communicate with more-and-more people (network externalities) also brings diverse and often mutually conflicting worldviews and perceptions of reality. In the literature, structuration and institutionalization are emerging themes in dealing with such dilemmas.
Broadly speaking, the impact of the evolution of SDI initiatives on research is two-fold. First, initial SDI research was at relative distance from the object of study whereas nowadays it needs to be carried out amidst the hectic of an unruly practice. Second, initial SDI research mainly focussed on (technical) artefacts whereas nowadays its focus is on societal context dependency. Consequently, future research on SDI initiatives has to address a variety of dilemmas like long-term versus short-term influences, generalization versus the ad-hoc and particular, standardization versus multiple perspectives of reality. It would follow that such research agenda will be characterized by trans-disciplinary (including socio-technical perspectives), case studies, and ethnography. Additionally, as SDIs become more mature and institutionalized an increase in demand for research and application of SDI monitoring and evaluation methods can be expected.

Geo-ICT and the Role of Location within Science (177)
Henk J. Scholten, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Rob J. van de Velde, The Netherlands; Niels van Manen, UK

Globalisation has not led to the ‘death of geography’. Intensified relations between communities in different parts of the world have only highlighted the need for understanding and managing phenomena on a variety of geographic scales. From global warming to credit crunch, and from epidemics to terrorism, causes and solutions are sought on local, regional, national as well as inter-continental levels. With the advent of geographical information and computer technology (geo-ICT, or Geospatial Technology), scholars, policy makers and entrepreneurs have valuable tools in hand to proceed.
This paper offers the first systematic account of the science behind this mental and technological revolution.
Tracing the adoption and dissemination of Geospatial Technology in a range of disciplines, it examines the impact this technology has had, and is likely to have, on the explanation of spatial behaviour, phenomena and processes. At the same time, stressing innovative usage, it explores scientists’ contributions to technology advancement.

Broadening Perspectives on Spatial Data Infrastructure Research (266)
Francis Harvey, University of Minnesota, USA; Yola Georgiadou, The Netherlands; Gianluca Miscione, Norway

A weakness of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) studies has been the limited uptake of research outside of positivist and scientific-technological perspectives. To put it simply, a study of a SDI without considering other philosophies of knowledge will be greatly constrained to technical and administrative organizational dimensions. The ontological uniformity underpinning the majority of SDI studies is unnecessarily restrictive. While valuable in a narrowly defined framework of project, SDI studies should consider the larger set of interactions involving actors in political, administrative and socio-technical domains. We review the development of information system research approaches and consider key positions from its diverse ontologies (positivism and interpretivism) and theories (strategic alignment, interactionism and social construction). We point to possible ways to consider these positions in SDI research.

Future Directions for SDI-Assessment (93)
Joep Crompvoets, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; Abbas Rajabifard, Australia; Bastiaan van Loenen, The Netherlands; Tatiana Delgado Fernández, Cuba

Over the last years development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) have become an important subject in Geo-Information Science to facilitate and coordinate the exchange and sharing of spatial data between stakeholders in the spatial data community. Its significance was demonstrated by numerous initiatives all over the world at different jurisdictional levels. Large sums of money have been invested into SDI-initiatives over the last few years. Given this expenditure and society's interest in the proper and effective use of public funds, it is imperative that these SDI initiatives should be assessed. The assessment of SDIs can help to better understand the issues, to find best practice for certain tasks, and to improve the system as a whole and therefore it plays a crucial role in the management of our spatial data and that pertaining to the administration of our societies. In addition, SDI assessment is increasingly attracting the attention of both public sector bureaucrats seeking justification for providing public sources to SDI, and SDI practitioners requiring a measure of success of their SDI strategy.
From a body of knowledge and experiences relating to assessment activities in the public sector (e.g. public health and social security), it appears that certain temporal patterns or sequences are quite common that might be also applicable for SDI-assessment. It is likely that SDI-assessment will become a 'performance' focus for public management and policy. However, the way in which SDI-assessment will be performed is uncertain. Will there be a way that is the most dominant? How are the strategies in the different countries evolving? On the basis of literature and experiences relating performance management activities in the public sector we might expect various combinations of all of the following:
- Culturally-shaped paths. The administrative culture may shape how assessments are used or indeed whether they are used at all. In countries such as Australia, Canada, USA SDI-assessments are widespread and aggressively used linked to various types of incentives and sanctions, meanwhile in other countries they do not exist.
- Steady, incremental development. This refers to gradual assessment shifts of focus on inputs and processes to outputs and finally outcomes. The Geoconnections Logic Model (Canada) is one of the first SDI-assessment examples that already include outcomes in the assessment.
- Patterned alternations. This refers mainly to regular changes within the indicator sets of the approach. Sometimes the changes are small (the technical definition of an indicator is changed slightly) or bigger (indicators are dropped altogether and new ones introduced). Either way, such changes degrade the possibility for time series. An example of this change happened in the INSPIRE State of Play approach which introduced two new indicators in 2006: Transformation services and Middleware services.
This paper will explore developments in performance management in other public domains and apply these to SDI assessment. It is likely that what is valid for performance management in other public domains might also be applicable for SDI-assessments. Being aware of this validity, SDI-assessment will have developmental trajectories over time. Some approaches and their indicators will wear out, or become obsolete, for a whole variety of reasons. Behaviours will adapt to the presence of particular assessment regimes, not only to game with them, but also by learning to live with them.


Parallel Session 7.3
Applications
Moderator: Paul Kelly, Spatial Strategies Pty Ltd, Australia

Legal Simcity:Legislative Maps and Semantic Web Supporting Conflict Resolution (334)
Rob Peters, Tom Engers, Rinke Hoekstra, Eric Hupkes, University of Amsterdam

For many reasons citizens, businesses and civil servants need access to regulations. The traditional approaches to provide access to these regulations are not satisfactory to these users, who have to cope with vast amounts of often interfering regulations. Normal questions like "where will I be able to do this kind of activity" or "will this activity be allowed here" are hard to answer in traditional web-based services environments. There are many attempts to create one-stop-shop front-ends to eGovernment, but these are seldom built from the perspective of the user. The Legal Atlas offers an innovative approach that has already shown it can be beneficial. It resembles Participatory GIS (PPGIS) but it is claimed here that Legal atlas is a powerful addition to these kinds of conflict resolution tools. This paper describes a number of prototypes that have led to the set-up of the real life application. The Legal Atlas approach has been designed to follow semantic web standards and object oriented legislative drafting to enable negotiations and conflict resolution in the Dutch Province of Flevoland. The claim of the research is that INSPIRE based map layers may be counter productive to conflict resolution because of the tendency to be too general or too specific with no dynamic adjustment possibilities based on flexible regulative parameters. By linking maps to their legal base and providing easy access to the application area's of the regulations the relevant actors may see more of each others negotiation space. The alternative system described here is designed to support INSPIRE environmental policy implementation, where qualified map layers can help to avoid conflict polarization.

Building SDI Bridges for Catchment Management (162)
Dev Raj Paudyal, University of Southern Queensland, Kevin McDougall, Armando Apan, Australia

This research paper discusses the importance of spatial data and Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for catchment management. It reviews four SDI theories as hierarchical spatial theory, diffusion theory, evolution theory and principal-agent (P-A) theory and discusses their characteristics and values for catchment management. As catchment management issues are characteristics by multi-level stakeholder participation in SDI implementation, the theory of hierarchy and the P-A theory may assist in exploring in greater depth the context of building SDI at catchment level. Based upon the existing SDI theory, it explores two conceptual frameworks and their implications for more effective development of catchment SDI. Both frameworks have advantages and limitations. The first framework is based on hierarchical theory which investigates the community government interaction between catchment levels and administrative/political levels for building various forms of SDIs as farm enterprise, sub-catchment, catchment and basin level. This framework is complex having potentially many levels. Further, cross-jurisdictional linkages will be required to implement this framework within the existing administrative/political SDI framework. The next framework is developed using P-A theory from stakeholders' perspectives. It provides a more simplistic framework that is user/stakeholder centric in nature but may not easily align with the catchment authority's goals on national/state government priorities. Both frameworks provide challenges for SDI development at catchment level, but it is essential that alternative perspectives are explored and evaluated in order to improved catchment level SDIs.

Spatial Database Infrastructure (SDIs) and Emergency Planning and Management: Challenges and Motivations for Local Government Organizations (326)
Ashoo Anand, University of Waterloo, Robert Feick, Canada

There is a general agreement within the planning community that open and easy access to current and reliable geospatial information is the key to managing disaster and catastrophes. Emergencies and disasters do not follow administrative jurisdictions. Thus it is highly imperative that there are effective mechanisms in place to share and exchange geospatial information without any barriers and impediments. Our ability to make sound and effective decisions to combat emergencies and disasters is clearly linked with the availability, open access, integration and interoperability of high quality spatial data at all levels of governance. Evidently there is a rise in multi-tier, multi-stakeholder community of geospatial data producers and consumers. The SDIs provide platform for collaborative initiatives between national, provincial/state, regional and local organizations to develop technical, institutional and management frameworks that seeks to promote open access and exchange of spatial datasets. The representation of LGOs in developing and participating in SDI initiatives to facilitate emergency planning and management is highly critical and challenging because they operate at the first line of defense in times of disasters and catastrophes. Events such as 'Hurricane Katrina' in New Orleans, and wildfires in California, are continuously demonstrating that several planning issues go beyond respective municipal jurisdictions requiring LGOs to build collaborative initiatives and partnerships in spatial data development and management. It is becoming incumbent upon LGOs to integrate and coordinate their efforts to achieve greater accessibility, sharing and wider use of geographic information for emergency planning and management issues and SDIs can provide the fundamental framework for that. However, on the one hand, participation of LGOs in the state and national SDI has been particularly low; on the other hand, there are weak linkages between all levels of SDIs with regards to policies, standards, access networks and people. There are significant gaps in our understanding of the adoption, implementation and effectiveness of SDIs within LGOs for - improving data sharing practices, developing data standards, producing metadata standards and procedures and using centralized geospatial infrastructure. For emergency planning and management in particular, there are significant issues related to the geospatial data development, exchange, access and usage in organizations. This paper will identify the existing barriers and opportunities in the use and implementation of SDIs, highlighting some of the strengths and weaknesses associated with the multi-organizational environment and collaborative initiatives involved in geospatial data sharing practices within LGOs, particularly for emergency planning and disaster management. It will generate appreciation for local SDIs in facilitating regional planning issues such as natural disasters or catastrophes that cross administrative boundaries and require cooperation and input from more than one municipality in the management of spatial data information and services. It will identify the role of SDIs frameworks and related imminent geospatial services in generating spatial data for emergency preparedness and disaster management.

Facilitating Urban Planning and Management at Local Level through the Development of SDI (349)
Faisal Qureshi, University of Melbourne, Abbas Rajabifard, Australia

Role of urban planning and management at local level is becoming more and more crucial due to the dramatic increase in urban population and allied urban problems. However, absence of appropriate information and its limited sharing is one of the important factor affecting planners and decision makers' ability to deal with urban problems. Effective quality of life can not be achieved without appropriate spatial information. Realising importance of spatial information, developed countries have started to develop Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for efficient information sharing. Developing countries like Pakistan should learn from their experience and develop SDI according to own institutional, political and culture background. It is expected that improved information sharing and application through Local SDI can help experts in achieving better urban life through improved urban planning & management. This paper aims to explore the role of SDI in better urban planning and management through effective & efficient information inegration and sharing.

Web-Based GIS Decision Support System For Paddy Precision Farming (225)
Abdul Rashid Mohamed Shariff

A national centre for geospatial data has been put in place in Malaysia under the custodianship of the Malaysian Centre for GeoSpatial Data Infrastructure (MaCGDI). Within this backbone of national infrastructure, several secondary infrastructures are being planned to serve a multitude of users. This paper addresses one such application which is targeted at the farming community. Although web based technology has revolutionized the way information is traded or shared across the internet while e-commerce and information dissemination activities have brought great benefits, there are communities that have been left out due to their inability to purchase commercial web mapping software. One such community involves the semi-literate farmers in Malaysia. Thus, there is a need to provide and affordable solution while narrowing the knowledge gap between developers and users. A potential solution is through the use of open source technology which is generally accessible to all people in the world, any time, anywhere without the need to purchase and install additional software. This study explores the use of open source software, Minnesota Map Server, Hypertext Preprocessor, Apache Web server and MySQL database. The study area selected was in the state of Selangor in Malaysia. The web-based system developed in this research allows the farmers access to the information about rice cultivation in their area. The system allows variable rate fertilizer application maps to be printed for the farmers. Farmers are aided by the historical data about yield per paddy lot and fertilizer application in the previous planting seasons. This information helps farmers to analyze and reflect on the best strategy for the coming growing season. The benefits of this work is that it allows information sharing among farmers especially on recommendations of fertilizer, and to provide equal access to web-based information from end-users to policy makers for improving the productivity and efficiency of rice production through precision farming.


Parallel Session 7.4
Spatially Enabled Government
Moderator: Hans Dufourmont, European Commission, DG Enterprise, GMES Bureau

Indicators for Assessing Spatially Enabled Government Services (329)
Chukwudozie Ezigbalike, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa; Abbas Rajabifard, Australia

In order to deliver a greater range of services and information to users across jurisdictions, the concept of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) is beginning to progress towards the development of an enabling platform, helping to link services across jurisdictions, organisations and disciplines. Spatially enabling government is now part of the objectives of countries in the Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. Australian governments have moved in a similar direction to promote spatial strategies and information as a vital tool for policy development and public sector decision making. The combination of strategies in the spatial enablement of government and mainstream e-government are now an emerging trend in Australia and many other parts of the world. However, there are still no accepted methods for assessing progress towards spatial enablement.
This paper aims to introduce and discuss various challenges and issues associated in the new vision of spatially enabled government and society. It also discusses the importance, role and value of benchmarking government services and the level of their spatial enablement and proposes methods for selecting indicators for measuring and comparing different aspects.

patially Enabling Northern Ireland - The Story So Far (123)
Suzanne McLaughlin, Land and Property Services, Cormac McConaghy, UK

Northern Ireland was the first region of the United Kingdom to devise a Geographic Information (GI) Strategy in 2003. The strategy identified barriers to the uptake of GI in Northern Ireland and set about overcoming these.
In 2008, five years after the strategy was devised, a review took place among the stakeholders to examine the current position of the strategy. The review also facilitated the creation of a new GI Strategy for Northern Ireland as it acknowledged that many technical and policy developments such as the EU INSPIRE Directive have taken place during the last five years.
The new Strategy has been endorsed by the Northern Ireland Executive, and is currently being implemented in Northern Ireland. This paper sets out to question what have we learned about the use of GI in Northern Ireland during this time? What impact did the previous strategy have? What is the new strategy going to concentrate on? and finally are we on the way to making Northern Ireland a spatially enabled society where government is using GI as a decision making tool, businesses are using GI to increase efficiency, and the public are actively using GI - all on a daily basis?

A Strategy Framework to Facilitate Spatially Enabled Victoria (167)
Elizabeth Thomas, Victorian Spatial Council, C/Spatial Information Infrastructure, Ollie Hedberg, Bruce Thompson, Abbas Rajabifard, Australia

Spatial Information is at a critical turning point in its development. More people are using it for a wider range of purposes, including social networking, technology is changing the way we communicate with each other, there are new ways of thinking about 'location', big corporate players are entering the market, and are starting to drive standards, etc. At the same time, all levels of government, business and the community face significant challenges in producing and using products and services in environmentally and socially sustainable ways. Spatial information has an integral part to play in developing solutions to these challenges. But this cannot be achieved without a clear strategy and a framework that harnesses everyone's skills and expertise.
Victoria is fast being recognised as a leader in many aspects of State SDI development in Australia and Internationally. In this regard, Victoria through its Victorian Spatial Council (VSC)- which is a peak body that provides a coordinated approach in the areas of policy, and development and management of spatial information- painted the emerging landscape for spatial information in Victoria. The VSC has recently developed the Victorian Spatial Information Strategy 2008-2010 which is a framework that presents some of the changes occurring in spatial information and technology, and sets out the key challenges they pose. The Strategy sets the broad themes for facilitating the whole spatial information community's participation in that landscape. This strategy is a base for delivering spatially enabling Victoria. At the same time, the strategy considers that spatial information should be seen as part of the wider information resource created by and available to society. The strategy presents a challenging agenda and the strategic framework set out in the Strategy lays the foundation for fulfilling the promises that are held out by the developments it describes.
This paper aims to present and discuss the spatial information strategy in Victoria, its development process and role in connecting all levels of government, private sector, utilities, academia, professions and a wider community from a spatial data perspective. The paper starts with a discussion on the importance of having a spatial information framework in the context of spatially enabled society and then discusses the central role that this strategy plays in facilitating the spatially enabled vision in Victoria. The paper then highlights a range of activities and processes to be created across all disciplines and jurisdictional levels in order to facilitate framework design and development. This includes aspects of design, creation, governance and processes involved in development of an enabling platform and the overall relations between different challenges to facilitate spatial data activities. The results and lessons learned from the development of this strategy can also be used and applied in other jurisdictions levels such as national and global.

Enabling Spatial Data Sharing through Multi-source Spatial Data Integration (170)
Hossein Mohammadi, Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructure and Land Administration, Univ. Melbourne, Abbas Rajabifard, Ian Williamson, Australia

The dynamic and complex environment of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) and the involvement of diverse stakeholders present uncertainty for involving organizations. This pushes organizations to focus on cooperative data sharing relationships to deliver their objectives. However, spatial data sharing goes beyond simple data exchange and requires the provision of usable datasets.
One of the most significant and demanding characteristics of usable datasets is the readiness of spatial datasets for integration with other datasets. However it is often difficult or even impossible for users to sensibly integrate datasets from different sources. This is because of the diversity of data standards, specifications and arrangements which have been utilized by organizations. Therefore, multi-source spatial datasets are associated with technical and non-technical inconsistency and heterogeneity.
In order to facilitate the integration of multi-source spatial datasets, the investigation of the data integration process, potential barriers and challenges of spatial data integration and possible enablers and solutions is necessary.
This paper aims to provide an investigation on the spatial data integration as a compelling reason for spatial data sharing. The investigation approach is based on a case studies investigation approach. The case study investigation has highlighted and identified a number of technical and non-technical barriers and issues for multi-source spatial data integration. The paper also capitalizes on the analysis of the case study investigation to identify the possible tools, solutions and enablers which can be utilized to facilitate the integration of multi-source datasets.
In this regard, the paper presents a spatial data integration toolbox which consists of a number of components, spatial data validation and integration, associated guidelines; and data integration metadata and data specification documents. The paper focuses more on the design and development of the spatial data validation and integration tool and associated guidelines have also been presented in the paper.

LYNX: The Information Infrastructure Facilitating Collaboration and Delivering Capability Cross the Governments of Australia (336)
Dan Paull, PSMA Australia Limited, Australia

PSMA Australia Limited is an unlisted public company wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments, established to coordinate the collection of fundamental national geospatial datasets and to facilitate access to this data. PSMA Australia is a collaborative mechanism used by the governments of Australia to build, maintain and provide access to fundamental national datasets.
PSMA have established a national framework over a period of more than a decade to focus the combined mapping resources of Australia's governments. The organisation manages this crucial supply chain by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets that deliver significant economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia.
Underpinning this framework is LYNX. LYNX is PSMA Australia's internationally awarded supply chain infrastructure, and is at the forefront of international technological advances in the spatial information industry, representing the next generation in geospatial data management.
PSMA Australia's business is all about building and managing relationships and access arrangements with disparate data custodians, and the business processes and workflows to enable the development and maintenance of the national reference datasets. Consequently, LYNX consists of three major conceptual components:
1. A collection of web services and workflow management tools to automate business processes;
2. A network connecting together each of the data custodians in each Government; and
3. A harmonised, extensible, ISO compliant and highly normalised data model.
PSMA Australia's business lifecycle poses many challenges. In response to these challenges, Phase 2 development of LYNX has begun, prompting revolutionary changes to fundamental concepts that include:
- A Services Orientated Architecture that enables LYNX to automate business processes by building specific services and then chaining them together.
- A network that enables access to:
- Large numbers of custodians' data holdings by PSMA Australia;
- Web services for use by members of the LYNX network in their own applications and business processes;
- Third party web services for use by all members of the network.
- Leadership of a world class SDI and spatial services network within an architecture and model that encourages participation through the delivery of mutual business benefits
- Collaboration - access to data can be exchanged for access to services within a distributed SOA architecture connecting all Governments
- Delivery of consistent services across Whole of Government and across governments
- Promotion of a modern framework enabling public private partnership growth; and
- Cost effective platform for transfer of data between Governments.


Parallel Session 7.5
Complementary Activities among GEOSS, OGC and GSDI
Moderator: tba

This session will address progress and updates in services and facilities being provided by GEOSS, OGC and GSDI to serve professional constituencies and will explain how these organizations are pursuing complementary approaches in serving geospatial specialist communities.

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS): An Update
Ivan DeLoatch, Federal Geographic Data Committee, USA

The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) has been developing a collaborative "system-of-systems" concept called Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) to facilitate access to and use of Earth observation data of all types in support of integrated analysis and decision support. Although the focus was initially on providing access to satellite or aerial remotely-sensed data, land/water-based sensor networks and terrestrial data and maps are considered within the scope of this effort. Based on most of the same standards embraced by the GSDI and SDIs, GEOSS has defined and deployed core resources (a standards registry, registration of system resources and services, a Best Practices wiki, and a common search facility across all registered catalogs, exposed through standardized GEO Web Portal solutions. This presentation provides updates on the status of GEOSS core capabilities, the results of the most recent Architecture Implementation Pilot, and identifies how national and regional SDIs can participate in the effort.

The OGC Registry and Services: An Update
Mark Reichardt, President, Open Geospatial Consortium, USA

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is a not for profit international voluntary standards development organization dedicated to the development, testing, and implementation of open standards that make is easier to publish, discover, access, fuse and use geospatial information. Government agencies, businesses, consumers and citizens from across the globe use OGC standards to improve the use of location based information to make better decisions. OGC standards have been widely deployed in the marketplace and are a underpinning of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) best practice worldwide. OGC standards are also increasingly being defined in organizational, national and regional policy and programs to assure interoperability of geospatial information contributed by a variety of public and private sources. This session provides an overview of the interoperability "architecture" enabled by OGC Standards, and includes examples of implementations, policy positions and associated benefits of using OGC standards. Current areas of OGC standards development will also be discussed with emphasis on the implications of this work to SDI goals and objectives.

The SDI Best Practices Implementation Designation Program
Harlan Onsrud, Executive Director, GSDI Association

The GSDI Association in cooperation with OGC and GEOSS personnel and working groups has developed a set of Requirements for Best Practice Implementations and has established a process by which this designation may be acquired by agencies and other organizations implementing spatial data infrastructure. This presentation will discuss the requirements as established to date, illustrate the process for initially assessing an implementation through the GIK Network form filling process, and discuss the potential value of acquiring the designation. You will notice that rather than duplicating efforts, the GIK Network leads software developers to the OGC registry to report on and update the standards with which their software versions comply and leads SDI and system developers to the GEOSS registry to report the components (e.g. web services, data offerings, etc.) offered by their organizations. These updates are then drawn back electronically to the GIK Network to be reported along with additional institutional and contact details about organizations and their offerings. While the OGC site is primarily about standards efforts and the GEOSS site is about component registries and finding and distributing data, the GIK Network is about personal networking among geospatial organizations and specialists at all levels across the globe. All three organizations serve different but overlapping audiences yet all are working towards global interoperability in order to expand and enhance access to geospatial processing capabilities for all people in all nations.


Parallel Session 7.6
INSPIRE National Stories
Moderator: João Geirinhas, Secretary General, EUROGI

Achieving a national infrastructure for addresses and streets across government in England and Wales using standards and sound information management principles. (231)
Kate de Groot, Intelligent Addressing, Zoe Britt, Steven Brandwood, UK

This paper presents a description of how, using standards and sound information management principles, a national infrastructure for addresses and streets has been developed and implemented across the whole of local government in England and Wales.The two major national data-sets behind this infrastructure are the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) and the National Street Gazetteer (NSG). These datasets provide an intelligent, comprehensive and up to date database in England and Wales, the NLPG for land, property and address data and the NSG for street data, both compiled to common specifications and quality standards. They are both part of a wider integrated process that ensures the use of data from source which is stored once and used many times, thereby reducing data duplication and generating cost savings in processing and data management.
The solution is based on sound information management practices. The NLPG is a centrally managed database of all land and properties. It is maintained from Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs), which have been created at source by all local authorities with a statutory street naming and numbering function. They provide regular (daily, monthly) updates to the national datasets which makes them the most up to date address and street datasets in England and Wales. The NSG is a central record of streets each identified by a geographical description in textual format with street geometry data. The NSG underpins, and is supported by, highway related legislation including the Traffic Management Act, 2004 and the Street works Act, 1991.
Through the use of standards a common specification was designed for both the national and the local implementations. This is based on ISO 19112 and the British Standard based on it, BS 7666:2006 which provides a standard for spatial referencing using gazetteers and unique identifiers for geographic information. It has been implemented in the schemas of the national and local datasets and also in a standard data transfer file (DTF). The dataset and processing software also use other standards such as xml, the UK Metadata standard which is currently being updated for INSPIRE and a set of national standard Data Entry Conventions. This provides a framework for sharing and integrating data from a range of local and cross government applications using a unique key - the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and the Unique Street Reference Number (USRN). The NLPG/LLPG data model is enriched with attribution of additional related land and property information while the NSG/LSG data model is enriched with further street associated data.
The development of these databases, through a four year management contract, is now seen as the most innovative and most successful e-project in Great Britain providing a common address and street framework across the whole of local government. The paper also identifies the plans for future development of the national infrastructure to include the introduction of new technology and the integration of the emergency services, and central government, and wider European initiatives.

Directive/02/2007 - INSPIRE: Transposition in Bulgaria - Current State (233)
Ivan Filipov, ASDE, Bulgaria

In the paper are discussed the following topics:
Premises:
- Directive 2007/2/&#1045;&#1057; - published in EC OJ on 25 April 2007, in force since 15 May 2007.
- Resolution of BG Council of Ministers on 19 April 2007
- E-governance Act accepted by the BG Parliament on 30 May 2007 (S.G. &#8470; 46/12 June 2007)
- Order by the BG Prime Minister (17 September 2007) to form Inter-ministerial work-group
- Resolution of BG Council of Ministers on 31 January 2008 for approval of ACTION PLAN for INSPIRE DIRECTIVE (SPATIAL DATA) implementation
- Resolution of BG Council of Ministers on 22 February 2008 - nominates SAITS as an institution responsible for transposition and implementation of the Directive INSPIRE.
Done till now
- formed work-group which elaborated a draft program (Action plan) for integrated spatial data bases
- formed Inter-ministerial work-group which approved the draft program, considered some templates of questionnaires, selected one, and asked the governmental institutions, spatial data holders, to fill and return questionnaires back
- Implementation of the Action plan started. Urgent task is forming special body with duties to implement the plan ( in the administrative structure of SAITC)
- Collection and analysing the questionnaires returned back and spatial data templates - the first analyses should be done by the Inter-ministerial work-group members
- Development and approval of legal acts and norms required by the Directive and monitor/report them. Legal frame for the domestic juristdiction is under preparation
- Definition and development of frame projects and programs concerning:
1. analysis of national legal framework and its conformity to INSPIRE spatial data framework
2. preparation of National INSPIRE Geodata Gateway infrastructure
3. preparation of infrastructure for national Metadata registry related to INSPIRE topics (as listed in ap.1,2,3)

D.I.V.A. - Spatial Information for Environmental Assessments (301)
Monica Pasca, Universita' di Roma "Sapienza", Bruno Agricola, Antonio Venditti, Claudio Mariotti, Daniele Benotti, Italy

Environmental knowledge is an essential requirement for plans and projects in respect of sustainable development. Although many institutions throughout Italy provide a plenty of environmental information on their websites made available by download or/and web services, there still is a need for user-friendly access to a system of information focused on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC).
The EIA directive requires that ".....the assessment must be conducted on the basis of the appropriate information supplied by the developer, which may be supplemented by the authorities and by the people who may be concerned by the project in question".
The Italian Ministry of Environment and Protection of Land and Sea, in collaboration with Invitalia S.p.A. (Sviluppo Italia Aree Produttive S.p.A.), has set up a project called "DIVA" - Italian acronym of Data Information for Environmental Assessments - that aims to put in place environmental frameworks to ensure that public and private developers will be provided with common and free information. Analysing, validating and, gathering together all the needed information in the same repository will cut costs and waste of time both for developers, carrying out environmental studies, and for competent authorities, taking decision about plans and project. The database will be built using a client application (OpenGIADA) which is both a metadata editor and GIS viewer with some basic editing tools. The spatial information will be available for both on-line use and download.
At the same time, the Italian Ministry of Environment, in collaboration with ANCI - National Association Local Municipality, has also set up a system of projects, among which the one called "Ambiente in Comune" which will provide both a national catalogue service for searching spatial datasets and services and a view service, which includes WMS and WFS tools, tested with INSPIRE geoportal. All these services have been designed according to international OpenGis standards. The aim of these projects, apart from the infrastructural part, is to spread the knowledge and practical use of spatial information and spatial data infrastructures to small municipalities which are very often the source of the spatial information needed for projects and their environmental assessment.
The system, made of the different projects together with other tools already implemented, is designed within the framework of the INSPIRE Directive, in compliance with the Implementing Rules, in primis the Metadata one already approved by the INSPIRE Committee, in order to be a piece of the Italian infrastructure and to make practical use of spatial information in environmental policies and assessments.

Towards INSPIRE in Germany: State of Implementation in 2009 (319)
Martin Lenk, Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, Germany

The German SDI Initiative, called GDI-DE, started in 2004 with the ambitious goal to integrate existing SDI activities on federal, state and local level. In 2008 GDI-DE was officially and legally recognized as the responsible coordination structure for technical implementation of INSPIRE data and services in Germany. The Steering Committee of GDI-DE and its office are also administrating the tasks of the National Point of Contact for INSPIRE. This also includes designing, controlling and operating the INSPIRE Implementing Rules.
In 2009 there will be already an operational technical SDI network of GDI-DE to carry out national tasks as well as the first INSPIRE services. This includes a nationwide coordinated Metadata Search, called Geocatalogue-DE. Furthermore it is already possible to access distributed Web Mapping Services though a centrally controlled cascading network. As an example the GDI-DE coordinating office and its partners are running a pilot project for allocating protected area site information. In this project there are 20 contributors from the Federation and the 16 States (Länder) who are providing protected area sites out of their administrative responsibility. All contributors are following a common framework of technical rules including harmonized use conditions. The result is a harmonized nationwide internet map of legally protected area sites which includes all national protected areas as well as areas of international conservation status. The user doesn't notice that the map itself is composed out of distributed web services unless he gets the information out of the meta information.
The project is being carried out with the available requirements of the INSPIRE directive. With the expected Implementing Rules for Data Specification Annex I the existing feature catalogue of this national project has to be adapted to the demands of INSPIRE. This has a strong impact on SDI architecture in Germany. It might be necessary to create new transformation services which have to fulfill all other INSPIRE requirements like Metadata and Network Services.
Another main activity of GDI-DE in 2009 will be the development and establishment of a central registry. The GDI-DE registry will operate as a horizontal service, just like the Geocatalogue-DE. All GDI-DE and INSPIRE data and services will be described through this components so it obvious that those horizontal services will provide technical coordination and transparency for the national SDI. Furthermore they will enable the GDI-DE office to carry out the INSPIRE tasks for monitoring and reporting.


Parallel Session 7.7
Master Class: Current Research issues in the SDI Domain
Moderator: Prof. dr. ir. Arnold Bregt, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

This Master Class is part of the Geo Youth Capital program, especially organised for bachelor and master students interested in geo-information and SDI developments. During this all day event students may participate (for free) in master classes offered by innovative professors and industry leaders. Further, students are able to meet their potential future employers and discover cutting edge technology. Moreover, the Award for the winner of the 'Share Your Virtual Earth' Contest will be handed out by a jury of professionals. More information is available at http://www.geoyouthcapital.com

Legal Issues and Geoinformation
Jaap Zevenbergen, Associate Professor Geo-information Studies, TU Delft, The Netherlands

The collection, sharing and use of geo-information (GI) is surrounded by an extensive web of legal provisions. Some are GI-specific, others apply to all information (e.g. privacy, copyright) and yet other legal provisions are even wider in their scope (e.g. contract law, fair competition rules). An overview of legal provisions is supplied. Each of these laws has its own (policy) goals, and often even comes from a different unit within government. The political processes in which laws are made do not necessarily create optimal or even efficient solutions from a 'technocratic' perspective. The aim of this Master Class is to raise awareness for this multitude, and raise understanding why such legal provisions might be contradictory to (geo) policies and even each other. Focus will be on the European context, with prime examples from the Netherlands, but the underlying notions and this kind of contradictions can be found in any jurisdiction.
Laws are intended to regulate certain behaviors in society, and often have unintended effects as well. On the other hand good ideas can nearly always be implemented if one keeps the legal provisions in mind from the start. Nevertheless laws are regularly abused to prevent certain ideas from being implemented, but other reasons not to want to do it are usually behind this then. In summary, topics to be included in this session include legal provisions that might effect the collection, sharing and use of geo-information, their backgrounds and the effects these legal provisions on realizing good (GI) ideas.

Using Geo-information: From a Market to a Polis Perspective?
Yola Georgiadou, Professor of Geo-information for Governance, ITC, Enschede, The Netherlands

The use of geo-information and associated technologies encompasses three aspects: (i) people's actual practices in decision & policy making, in inter-organisational sharing, in participatory processes, (ii) the values to which users aspire: efficiency, equity, legitimacy, privacy, security, etc, (iii) the rules—policies, principles and global declarations of professional & academic associations—that either legally prescribe or just encourage optimal use. The study of geo-information use shifts the centre of gravity of GIScience research towards human agents and their relationship with geo-information and associated technology.  It forces us to make explicit our assumptions about the nature of fundamental concepts: human agency, geo-information and geo-information technology. These fundamental concepts can be modelled from two perspectives: the market and the polis. This session will illustrate the implications of adopting either perspective in the study of geo-information use with real world examples from practices (sharing and spatial policy making), perceptions of values (efficiency and equity) as well as the influence of policies and global declarations on geo-information use.  Also discussed will be emerging new practices, new value contests and the need for rules in geo-information voluntarism: the new social system now emerging for geo-information production.  I argue that a polis perspective may help us explain both familiar and new phenomena of geo-information use.  I suggest that because the stakes are now so high, even skeptics of a polis lens should welcome every form of prosthesis to tackle familiar and new use challenges.

Assessing SDI Performance In Practice
Prof. Joep Crompvoets, Associate Professor, Public Management Institute, Catholic University Leuven, Belgium

This session extends from "The Theory of SDI Evaluation" by Yola Georgiadou. The main objectives of this master's class are to present operational methods to assess SDIs (such as SDI-Readiness, INSPIRE State of Play and National Clearinghouse Suitability) and their application results, to interpret the validity of the results and to explore possible future direction for SDI-assessment. The session will involve both lecture and discussion. The basis of this class are the main outcomes of the project "Development of a framework to assess Spatial Data Infrastructures" funded by the Dutch innovation program Space for Geo-information and  the book "Multi-view framework to assess Spatial Data Infrastructures" edited by Joep Crompvoets, Abbas Rajabifard, Bastiaan van Loenen, and Tatiana Delgado Fernàndez. In summary, primary topics to be covered by the session include SDI-performance, methods to assess SDI-performance, assessment of SDIs, and future directions for SDI-assessment.


Parallel Session 7.8
INSPIRE European Initiatives
Moderator:Hugo de Groof, DG Environment, European Commission

ESPON: A Portal for Spatial Data on Territorial Development and Trends (259)
Marjan van Herwijnen, ESPON 2013 Programme, André Mueller, Luxembourg

The ESPON Programme was set up to provide European-wide comparable data and facts, analyses and scenarios on the development of the European territory, its regions and cities. The main aim of the ESPON 2013 Programme is to increase the general body of knowledge about territorial structures, trends, perspectives and policy impacts in an enlarging European Union. One condition for doing this is to produce comparable and reliable datasets at different geographical levels. These European datasets can then be used to support (applied) research projects and policy decisions at a European level. Therefore, in Priority 3 (see below), a spatial database, indicator sets and a territorial monitoring system are being developed. These three actions are essential for serving the ESPON projects, the research community in general, the policy makers at various levels as well as the wider public. To stimulate the use of the data and provide easy access to it various tools will be developed.
The ESPON 2013 Programme will carry through activities within 5 priorities at programme level, which reflect the programme strategy and overall objectives defined. The 5 programme priorities are the following:
1. Applied research on territorial development, competitiveness and cohesion: Evidence on territorial trends, perspectives and policy impacts
2. Targeted analysis based on user demand: European perspective to development of different types of territories
3. Scientific platform and tools: Territorial indicators and data, analytical tools and scientific support
4. Capitalisation, ownership and participation: Capacity building, dialogue and networking
5. Technical assistance, analytical support and communication.
The target analysis projects within Priority 2 are a new type of projects with the ESPON 2013 Programme. Special within these projects is that the users of ESPON results, i.e. the stakeholders, work together with the transnational project groups. The stakeholders are involved with the generation of project ideas as well as the implementation of projects. This means that these projects will provide an opportunity to stakeholders for (1) enhancing their understanding of the larger territorial context, (2) making comparisons to other territories, regions and cities, and (3) hereby providing a European perspective to considerations on the development of their territories.
Another activity to bridge the gap between research results and policy makers can be found in the Capitalisation Strategy (Priority 4). One of the actions foreseen to be implemented here are Transnational Networking Activities. These activities aim to contribute profoundly to the capitalisation of results by raising the awareness on ESPON findings. This will in particular be done by involving national and regional policy makers, practitioners and scientists in transnational dialogues on positioning their area in the European territorial context.
Summarising, the ESPON 2013 Programme has integrated various activities with the aim to bring together policy makers, researchers and practitioners from different activity levels in the field of territorial development.

SEIS: From concept to information services (318)
Stefan Jensen, European Environment Agency; Denmark

The European Environment Agency (EEA) is a key provider of environmental services, information and data in Europe. The concept of the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) calls for better outreach to an extended group of users providing a distributed architecture, more integrated information and data and new forms of services.
Key elements of the EEA's SEIS implementation is a networking approach initially involving the 32 European member countries as data providers and users. This network is been expanded to cover social networks and citizen based approaches and is supported by new spatial information services.
These services build on a spatial data infrastructure focussed on the need to support the EEA's five environmental datacentres on air, biodiversity, climate change, landuse and water. Stepwise, a common architecture is built to allow integration between these thematic areas in support of increasingly complex assessment needs. Examples will be provided from these thematic areas.
To better include member state data and information, a common distributed architecture has been defined and is stepwise implemented. Technical challenges arising from this will be presented and discussed. These applications and web services are underpinned by open standards and aim to follow closely the guidance of the INSPIRE legislation. Because of this ambition, they have a clear pilot function for the INSPIRE implementation in general and benchmark their feasibility in many aspects.
To complement these more "classical" information system approaches, public participation is encouraged through a spatially enabled citizen observatory which uses new ways of channeling the communication and allows several new ways of user interaction. Initial results of this project will be discussed.

Development and demonstration of technical IT solutions for data exchange and reporting under the CAFE Directive using INSPIRE services (321)
Ana Grossinho, NovaTel Systems; UK

CAFé directive (2008/50/EC) requires that procedures for data provision, assessment and reporting of air quality are developed to enable electronic means and the internet to be used as the main tools to make information available.
Currently, each member state collects and publishes air quality monitoring and assessment data using different systems, designs and formats and their methods for reporting and data publishing strategies reflect specific national mechanisms for air quality estimation and data sharing decisions.
Under previous reporting and data sharing legislative requirements data produced did not easily allow inter-comparison among different member states and interoperability within the air quality theme and or across other environmental thematic areas (e.g. water, waste, biodiversity, noise) was limited.
This paper reflects the work the Institute for Environment and Sustainability is taking the lead on, via the Joint Research Centre, in regards to linking current and future environmental legal reporting obligations under the corresponding 'thematic' Directives with the INSPIRE Directive requirements. The current project (EC contract n° 2008/S 62-083188) contributed to further develop the SEIS pillars as a solid foundation for environmental policy-making and implementation by putting forward a methodology which significantly contributed to the implementing provisions of the CAFE Directive to integrate INSPIRE requirements.
The overarching objectives of the current work were:
1. Pilot data services, expose potential deficiencies, optimize provisions and find common solutions;
2. Support a thorough renovation of existing national practices on handling air quality information;
3. fulfil the requirements of the draft Implementing Provisions for the CAFE Directive integrated with the applicable requirements in the INSPIRE Directive and draft INSPIRE Implementing Rules in the field of air quality to obtain practical experience of making data and information available;
4. Provide feedback from different geographic areas and levels of governance that can be used by the Commission, DEG (Data Exchange Group), EEA (European Environmental Agency) and Member States to support the implementation of the CAFE and INSPIRE Directives.
Addressing two legislative frameworks (2008/50/EC and 2007/2/EC), the focus of the current research was the creation of a) metadata and discovery services making it possible to locate spatial data sets and services on the basis of the content of the corresponding metadata and to display the content of the metadata; b) transformation services, enabling spatial data sets to be transformed with a view to achieving interoperability; and c) download services, enabling copies of spatial data sets, or parts of such sets, to be downloaded and, where practicable, accessed directly. Slovakia's national air quality system was used as a case study and the services prototyped for this specific Member State.
It is expected that the results of this project will contribute to future implementation of the CAFé Directive in line with INSPIRE requirements to produce an effective European Air Quality Information System, which will enable a) information on ambient air quality to be available to the Commission; b) provision of an efficient exchange information on ambient air quality; c) easy and efficient access by the Member States and the public to air quality information; and d) compilation and comparison of information on ambient air quality on a European scale and support efficient public access.

Development and prototyping of INSPIRE technical specifications for air, water, waste and biodiversity Environmental Monitoring Facilities (337)
Dr Ana Grossinho, Bureau Veritas, Ian Gray, Lubor Kozakovic, UK

The INSPIRE Directive defines the technical framework for the development of metadata, data and services upon which the European Commission vision of a Shared Environmental Information Systems (SEIS) will be built and implemented.
This paper presents to the scientific community the methodology, results and recommendations of JRC's project Development and prototyping of INSPIRE technical specifications for air, water, waste and biodiversity Environmental Monitoring Facilities (Contract notice No. 2007/S 140-172514 of 24/07/2007). The work presented was undertaken by the Consortium INSPIRE Air, Water, Waste and Biodiversity Environmental Monitoring Facilities (INSPIRE AWWB EMF) formed to deliver the contract involving four Member States: Austria, France, Slovakia and the UK.
This European project aimed to develop and prototype harmonised specifications (data and metadata) and services (discovery, view, download, and invoke) for Environmental Monitoring Facilities and their associated data covering the fields of air, water, waste and biodiversity. The objective of defining these specifications and services was to demonstrate the ability to encode and disseminate the various types of Environmental Monitoring Data acquired throughout the whole policy lifecycle: from collection of source observations at Monitoring Facility level through to generating environmental quality status reports required to meet the various European environmental legislation reporting obligations.
The project used therefore the framework provided by the INSPIRE Directive to demonstrate how its principles can be used to achieve the Community vision for Shared Environmental Information Systems (SEIS). The work developed addressed the development of a common infrastructure, rules and tools for data sharing to ensure that data can be easily located, accessed and exploited by a wide range of users. While providing valuable insights for both the data acquisition and reporting components, the project aimed to prototype a common infrastructure for data sharing by:
a) preparing metadata and data specifications for the INSPIRE data theme "Environmental Monitoring Facilities" (EMF) related to the environmental acquis in the areas of waste, water, biodiversity and air;
b) implementing and demonstrating INSPIRE Network Services based on the INSPIRE metadata, data specifications and service standards; and
c) prototyping possible automatic report generation based on the implemented INSPIRE services.
The outcomes of this project will be used to inform the basis of the Implementing Rules for Environmental Monitoring Facilities data, which form a major component of all Shared Environmental Information Systems and of the 2007/2/EC Directive.
The prototype specifications were validated through the development of reporting and alert applications which illustrates the benefits that can be gained by making data available through web services (such as the development of streamlined e-reporting applications e.g. exceedence of acceptable environmental quality levels, etc).
The paper is divided in eight sections addressing the main work packages of the research program undertaken by the Consortium. Each section is structured to address a) a brief description of the work package; b) its tasks, methods and results, and c) issues, challenges and implications for implementation of the services prototyped.


Parallel Session 7.9
INSPIRE: Stategic Chance for Regional Governments in Europe
Moderator: Marcel Hoogwout, ZenC, the Netherlands

This session is about the strategic and non-strategic aspects of the INSPIRE implementation process and change challenge. Experience teaches us that these types of processes are only for a small part (about 20%) technology driven. About 80% of all efforts deal with softer aspects of managing change: organising, work processes, cooperation, knowledge transfer, willingness to share, ability and courage to change, etcetera.
In the session we will address questions that deal with the softer aspects of INSPIRE. Which organisational and tactical aspects does INSPIRE bring forward? Where are chances and how do data providers deal with these chances in the Netherlands and abroad? We will specifically zoom in to the regional administrative scale, which are the Provinces in The Netherlands.
This session is meant to discuss and exchange ideas and opinions in an international perspective. Interesting for everybody in Europe who deals with the phenomenon INSPIRE!


Parallel Session 7.10
left purposefully vacant


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PLENARY SESSION 1

SDI Convergence: Building Bridges in Support of Local to Global Challenges
Bas Kok, President GSDI

abstract

<presentation title forthcoming>
Jacqueline Cramer, Dutch Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment

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<presentation title forthcoming>
Janez Potoanik (tentative commitment), European Commissioner for Science and Research

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PLENARY SESSION 2

Spatially Enabling Society through e-Government: A Political Imperative
The Honorable Gary Nairn, Business Consultant and former Australian Special Minister of State & e-Government Minister

In a world seemingly totally focused on either the current global financial crisis or climate change, Governments are struggling to find more efficient ways to deliver better services at a lower cost while at the same time needing to invest in technology to combat or cope with climate change effects. Increasingly many of those services are being delivered electronically, thus the terminology, e-Government, has become a standard in administrative vocabulary.
But to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of e-Government services, government data must be spatially enabled. In Australia, between 80 and 90% of our national legislation has a spatial element, so developing e-Government in isolation to spatial information would be counter-productive and would in fact be a very poor use of taxpayers' funds.
Similarly, whether it be dealing with sea level rise, floods and droughts or carbon storage and trading, spatial information is fundamental to any solutions.
The establishment of an Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure is a vital cog of e-Government but on current progress it may not be completed until the global financial crisis is being talked about in historical terms. Projects to ensure consistency in standards and interoperability of data held by various Federal, State, Territory and Local Governments were commenced three years ago but still remain uncompleted.
Why the delay? The answer lies in a general vacuum of spatial understanding in the current political and senior bureaucratic levels of government.
It has been demonstrated globally in recent years that to achieve giant steps towards spatially enabling society, political "champions" are needed. And if we are to address these many issues on a global basis, we will have to start identifying "Global Political Champions".

<presentation title forthcoming> (12:15-12:45)
Chris Steenmans, Head, SEIS Program, European Environment Agency

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PLENARY SESSION 3

SDI Convergence: Progress, Visions and Bridging Across Global Efforts
Chair: Harlan Onsrud, Executive Director GSDI

The GEO/GEOSS Convergence Vision
Jose Achache, Director, GEO Secretariat, Geneva

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The UNSDI Covergence Vision
Dozie Ezigbalike, Secretariat, African Centre for Statistics, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)

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SDI Convergence: Progress, Visions and Bridging Across Regional Efforts
Moderator: John McLaughlin, President and Vice-Chancellor University of New Brunswick

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Panel Members:
1. South and Central America: Santiago Borrero, Secretario General, Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia (IPGH)
2. North America: Ivan DeLoatch, Director, Federal Geographic Data Committee, USA
3. Africa: Dozie Ezigbalike, Chief, Geo-information Systems Section, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
4. Europe: Alessandro Annoni, Joint Research Council, European Commission
5. Asia-Pacific: Greg Scott, President, UN Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific


PLENARY SESSION 4

INSPIRE: A European Answer to Global Challenges
Chair: Alessandro Annoni, Joint Research Council, European Commission

abstract

<presentation title forthcoming>
Professor Denise Lievesley, Head of School, King's College, London

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<presentation title forthcoming>
Dr. Pirkko Saarikivi , Managing Director, Foreca Consulting Ltd.

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Discussion and Questions

PLENARY SESSION 5

INSPIRE: Building the European SDI
Chair: Daniele Rizzi, EUROSTAT, European Commission

abstract

INSPIRE: The European Spatial Data Infrastructure
Massimo Craglia, DG JRC, European Commission

In Europe a major recent development has been the entering in force of the of the INSPIRE Directive in May 2009, establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe to support Community environmental policies, and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment. INSPIRE is based on the infrastructures for spatial information established and operated by the 27 Member States of the European Union. The Directive addresses 34 spatial data themes needed for environmental applications, with key components specified through technical implementing rules. This makes INSPIRE a unique example of a legislative "regional" approach. The degree of freedom for the European Member States to develop their own NSDIs makes INSPIRE an interesting best practice to develop other Regional SDIs. INSPIRE focus on interoperability of MS NSDIs and on a minimum harmonization level through common specifications for data, metadata and services. This presentation will present some examples of different implementations in Member States and on some lessons learnt during the INSPIRE preparatory phase.

INSPIRE in the European Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS)
Hugo de Groof, DG Environment, European Commission

The European Sixth Environment Action Programme (6EAP) confirmed that sound information on the state of the environment and on the key trends, pressures and drivers for environmental change is essential for the development of effective policy, its implementation, and the empowerment of citizens more generally. As the environment is a public good that belongs to everyone, it is equally essential for this information to be widely shared and available. SEIS is a new approach to modernize and simplify the collection, exchange and use of the data and information required for the design and implementation of environmental policy . Its overall aim is to maintain and improve the quality and availability of information required for environmental policy, in line with better regulation, while keeping the associated administrative burdens to a minimum.

Discussion and Questions

PLENARY SESSION 6

Acceleration of SDI Opportunities and Innovations: Public Sector meets Science and Industry
Chair, Dorine Burmanje, Chair Executive Board (Dutch) Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency

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SDI Opportunities and Innovations in Rotterdam
Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of the City of Rotterdam

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Official Opening of Geo Register
Peter Welling, Former Deputy Secretary-General Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment

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The Netherlands: on it's way to a Climate Proof and Sustainable Delta Society
Cees Veerman, video speech, Chair of the Delta Commission and former Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality

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The Netherlands: on it's way to a Climate Proof and Sustainable Delta Society
Bart Parmet, Secretary of the Delta Commission and precursor Deltaplan

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A Response
Prof. Eelco H. Dykstra, Professor of International Emergency Management at the George Washington University Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management

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PLENARY SESSION 7

Mark Frequin, Director-general Energy and Telecommunication, Ministry of Economical Affairs

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Peter Woodgate, CEO Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information Australia

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Nick Chrisman, Scientific Director Geoide Canada

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Cor van Tilborg, Chairman of Ruimte voor Geo-Informatie (Space for Geo-Information)

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The Dutch Trade and Pioneer Spirit in Geo Information

Paul Bosman, CEO Cyclomedia

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Henk Scholten, professor of Spatial Informatics and director of Geodan

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Jos Anneveld, director Fugro Inpark

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Rob van Essen, vice president Research & Development TeleAtlasabstract

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PLENARY SESSION 8

Corporate Sector Visions and Perspectives: Local to Global Participation
Return on Investments for end users, governments, industry and the next generation: organizational, financial and economical SDI-opportunities

Chairs: Dave Lovell, Executive Director EuroGeographics and Rob van de Velde, Director Geonovum Organized by the corporate sponsors of the conference.

Building Bridges - Visualizing your surroundings
Use case presentation
Kathleen van Brempt, Flemish Minister of Mobility, Social Economics and Equal Opportunities (invited by Cyclomedia)

abstract

Building Bridges - Collaborating to deliver capability across governments
Best practice presentation
Dan Paull, Chief Executive Officer, PSMA Australia Limited

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Building Bridges - From effective delivery to business benefits
Business models presentation (10:05-10:20)
Berik Davies, Global GIS and Spatial Coordinator, Shell International E&P

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Building Bridges - The future of Spatial Data Infrastructures
Moving forward presentation (10:20-10:35)
Josef Strobl, Centre of Geoinformatics, Salzburg University

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Stimulating Strategic Participation Debate: Ensuring a reasonable return on investment (10:35-11:00)

• How we can encourage collaboration between governments, the private sector, academics and researchers, and stimulate the involvement of citizens?
• The best way of promoting the needs of governments at the local, regional, and global-level to motivate the private sector to invest and vice versa?
• Who can encourage planning, organizing and financing of SDI opportunities.
• Which existing and what new parties, perhaps in other industries such as energy and transportation, might help?
• How we get the need for the next generation of employees to be spatially-skilled 'up the agenda' in formal education?
• How we make the geospatial industry as a career option exciting and attractive to young people?

Panel:
Dan Paull, Chief Executive Officer, PSMA Australia Limited
Kathleen van Brempt, Flemish Minister of Mobility, Social Economics and Equal Opportunities (invited)
Berik Davies, Global GIS and Spatial Coordinator, Shell International E&P
Josef Strobl, Centre of Geoinformatics, Salzburg University


PLENARY SESSION 9

Closing Session on Spatial Data Infrastructure Convergence: Building SDI Bridges to Address Global Challenges
Chair: Martien Molenaar, Rector, Directorate ITC

Summary Reports
Global (GSDI Assoc)

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Europe (INSPIRE/EUROGI)

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National (Geonovum/RGI)

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Conference Awards, Next GSDI Conf, etc.

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