At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, a major resolution was passed to focus on reversing the impacts caused by environmental deterioration. The Agenda 21 resolution establishes measures to address deforestation, pollution, depletion of fish stocks, and management of toxic wastes to name a few. The importance of geographic information to support decision-making and management of these growing national, regional, and global issues was cited as critical at the 1992 Rio Summit, and by a special session of the United Nations General Assembly assembled in 1997 to appraise the implementation of the Agenda 21.
Geographic information is vital to make sound decisions at the local, regional, and global levels. Crime management, business development, flood mitigation, environmental restoration, community land use assessments and disaster recovery are just a few examples of areas in which decision-makers are benefiting from geographic information, together with the associated infrastructures (i.e. Spatial Data Infrastructure or SDI) that support information discovery, access, and use of this information in the decision-making process.
However, information is an expensive resource, and for this reason appropriate information and the resources to fully utilise this information may not always be readily available, particularly in the developing world. Many national, regional, and international programs and projects are working to improve access to available spatial data, promote its reuse, and ensure that additional investment in spatial information collection and management results in an ever-growing, readily available and useable pool of spatial information. This is true of many initiatives even if they are not actually labelled as "SDI initiatives". An example of this is the Environment Information System Program in sub-Saharan Africa (EIS-SSA). An emphasis on harmonising standards for spatial data capture and exchange, the co-ordination of data collection and maintenance activities and the use of common data sets by different agencies may also feature in such initiatives, although these activities by themselves do not constitute a formal SDI.
In regions characterised by an availability of geographic information, in combination with the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), decision support tools, data bases, and the World Wide Web and their associated interoperability, the way better-resourced communities address critical issues of social, environmental, and economic importance is changing rapidly. However, even in the new era of networked computers, the social habits of the past continue to prohibit users from finding and using critical geographic information. This can lead to either the abandoning of a proposed project, or to unnecessary - and expensive - recapture of existing geographic information.
There is a clear need, at all scales, to be able to access, integrate and use spatial data from disparate sources in guiding decision making. Our ability then, to make sound decisions collectively at the local, regional, and global levels, is dependent on the implementation of SDI that provides for compatibility across jurisdictions that promotes data access and use.
Only through common conventions and technical agreements will it be easily possible for local communities, nations and regional decision-makers to discover, acquire, exploit and share geographic information vital to the decision process. The use of common conventions and technical agreements also makes sound economic sense by limiting the cost involved in the integration of information from various sources, as well as eliminating the need for parallel and costly development of tools for discovering, exchanging and exploiting spatial data. The greater the limitation on available resources for SDI development, the greater the incentive for achieving alignment between initiatives to build SDI.
The development of a "cookbook" is envisaged as a means to clarify the SDI definition and to share the current experiences in building SDI implementations that are compatible at many scales of endeavour. This cookbook is intended to be a dynamic document available in printed and digital form, to include "recipes" or recommendations on developing these infrastructures from a local, even non-governmental, scale through global initiatives.
Scope of this Cookbook
This SDI Implementation Guide or Cookbook, through the support of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure community, provides geographic information providers and users with the necessary background information to evaluate and implement existing components of SDI. It also facilitates participation within a growing (digital) geographic information community known as the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI).
To enable builders of SDI to make use of and build on existing SDI components in a way which makes their endeavors compatible with the efforts of other SDI builders, this GSDI Cookbook identifies
Although proprietary or project-based solutions for information sharing continue to exist, the adoption of consistent geospatial data sharing principles will in general provide a better solution for information dissemination, through publishing geospatial data using the Internet and computer media. In an increasingly "global community", there is a need to ensure that trans-national implementations and common knowledge bases are available. Ultimately, these SDI activities should improve collaboration within the geospatial data industry and make the benefits derived from the use of geographic information part of everyday life for all.
Spatial Data Infrastructures
The term "Spatial Data Infrastructure" (SDI) is often used to denote the relevant base collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the availability of and access to spatial data. The SDI provides a basis for spatial data discovery, evaluation, and application for users and providers within all levels of government, the commercial sector, the non-profit sector, academia and by citizens in general.
The word infrastructure is used to promote the concept of a reliable, supporting environment, analogous to a road or telecommunications network, that, in this case, facilitates the access to geographically-related information using a minimum set of standard practices, protocols, and specifications. The applications that run "on" such an infrastructure are not specified in detail in this document. But, like roads and wires, an SDI facilitates the conveyance of virtually unlimited packages of geographic information.
An SDI must be more than a single data set or database; an SDI includes geographic data and attributes, sufficient documentation (metadata), a means to discover, visualize, and evaluate the data (catalogues and Web mapping), and some method to provide access to the geographic data. Beyond this are additional services or software to support applications of the data. To make an SDI functional, it must also include the organizational agreements needed to coordinate and adminster it on a local, regional, national, and or trans-national scale.
The creation of specific organisations or programs for developing or overseeing the development of SDI, particularly by government at various scales can be seen as the logical extension of the long practice of co-ordinating the building of other infrastructures necessary for ongoing development, such as transportation or telecommunication networks.
The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure
Just as SDI programs of necessity involve the alignment of scarce resources for achieving success, so too it is necessary to ensure that the SDI initiatives develop in harmony with each other in order to maximise the impact of these programmes. In reality, many initiatives are working in isolation, not necessarily developing in harmony with others and consequently unable to reap the benefits of working together.
Anyone who is involved in a project of which spatial information forms an integral part and who intends leaving a legacy of spatial data or tools to exploit the data that lasts beyond the period of funding for the project is, by definition, participating in some of the fundamental elements required by an SDI. As coordination between such organizations expands, these projects very often lay the foundations on which initiatives formally dedicated to the establishment of SDI can then build. See Chapter 9 for specific case studies.
At a global scale, the most prominent examples of formal SDI programs are on a national scale. Most of these are driven by the national or federal government (e.g. the NSDI in the USA, the SNIG in Portugal, Australia's ASDI, Malaysia's NaLIS, South Africa's NSIF, Colombia), but there are exceptions such as the Uruguay Clearinghouse and NGDF in the United Kingdom, which have largely been driven by the private sector. In most cases the need for wide participation in the development of lasting, useful SDI is acknowledged, and so private-public partnerships are encouraged. The beneficiaries of SDI are generally seen to derive from the public and private sectors, academia and non-governmental organisations, as well as individuals. Federal countries are often able to build their national SDI programs on SDI programs being driven by provincial or state governments (e.g. the ASDI of Australia). Transnational SDI initiatives often arise out of existing transnational structures (e.g. the Permanent Committee for
GIS Infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific was formed through the UN Regional Cartographic Conference for the Asia-Pacific region).
Distribution
This GSDI Cookbook is intended to be a "living" and dynamic document that can be updated as new principles and technologies are adopted. Distribution of this Cookbook is intended primarily via the World Wide Web, although electronic copies will also be made available on other physical media such as CD-ROM and printed copy for audiences that are not well connected to the Internet at this time.
Should you be reading this via the World Wide Web and wish to obtain a soft or hard copy, please contact the GSDI secretariat, at www.gsdi.org.
Contributors
Contributions to this GSDI Cookbook are indeed global and are intended to satisfy many different categories of participants. Contributors from around the world have nominated or been selected to organise and contribute to each chapter. This was a deliberate choice, in order to ensure that the Cookbook represented the distillation of different perspectives from all around the globe, to ensure both that the collective global experience and existing resources would be represented in the Cookbook, and that its applicability could truly be global.
Ongoing contributions to this GSDI Cookbook are welcomed, and indeed necessary. If you believe that you have something to contribute to the cookbook, please contact the GSDI Technical Working Group through www.gsdi.org.
To date, the following have contributed to the assembling of this Cookbook:
List all contributors will go here
Organisation
Each chapter is organised into three major sections that correspond to levels of detail and application:
Case studies are intended to provide for local or regional relevance and interpretation. The document style not intended to be overly technical, however contributors have provided references to more detailed and comprehensive technical information where possible.
Finally, no manual of this type can claim to provide all the answers to all the possible national spatial data infrastructure permutations that exist. This cookbook does provide a basic set of guiding principles that have been successful for establishing compatible Spatial Data Infrastructures, and are supported by the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure to promote successful decision-making for issues of local, regional, and global significance. As mentioned in the preceding section, if you feel that you have a contribution to make to the cookbook, or a question which you feel ought to be answered in the cookbook, please contact the GSDI Technical Working Group.
Working within a common framework of standards and tools based on these standards also makes it possible to maximise the impact of the total available resources for SDI creation through future co-operation -- e.g. we develop this, you develop that, and then we share.
Each chapter is approximately 10 to 20 pages in length with links to other relevant documents. Use-case scenarios and illustrations are featured in some chapters as inset boxes to further build understanding. Each chapter has a set of recommendations placed in a summary. Use of terminology is (will be) hyper-linked to Chapter 10 (Terminology) in the online version or is underlined as implied links to the terminology section in the printed version.