Spatial Data Infrastructure and Standards

Spatial Data Infrastructure and Return on Investment

Almost anyone involved in geospatial pursuits could make an argument for data sharing and data and services interoperability. But how do you explore the impact of creating this piece of the information infrastructure? How do you quantify costs and benefits, the return on investment (ROI)? That's the task that fell to the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Framework Definition Support (FDS) Working Group. The group of 35 contributors and several dozen stakeholder reviewers with the aid of contractor Max Craglia of Sheffield University (UK) put together a report answering those very questions in the context of a spatial data infrastructure for the European Union. The document, available online, presents an interesting process for examining these questions, along with some insightful conclusions.

The goal of this article is to consider the reasons for SDI and examine them in the context of OpenGIS specifications.

Reasons for SDI

The basic reasons for creating SDI are typically clear to geospatial professionals, but perhaps less clear to those outside the "geo" professions. Few outsiders understand the challenges associated with finding required data for decision-making or the gaps that exist in coverage and quality. Even fewer realize the hoops many public and private sector workers must go through to bring needed data together for analysis. The gap between this way of doing things and a process involving an SDI are today's "inefficiencies."

INSPIRE principles (and legislation that might follow) are built on five principles that address these inefficiencies:

" Spatial data should be collected once and maintained at the level where this can be done most effectively;
" It must be possible to combine seamlessly spatial data from different sources across the EU and share it between many users and applications;
" It must be possible for spatial data collected at one level of government to be shared between all the different levels of government;
" Spatial data needed for good governance should be available on conditions that are not restricting its extensive use; and
" It should be easy to discover which spatial data is available, to evaluate its fitness for purpose and to know which conditions apply for its use.

Where Do OGC and OpenGIS Specifications Fit In?

There's clearly quite a lot of discussion on policy, process and vision in exploring the impact of creating a 25 county-wide spatial data infrastructure. But, down beneath that, there are technical requirements. Work started at the end of 2001 with the preparation of the INSPIRE position paper on Architecture and Standards (AST). Although it is not clear yet how the interoperability requirement is formulated in the legislative framework, OpenGIS Specifications have the potential to have a major role in INSPIRE.

While there's no official notation that interoperability will enhance return on investment, it's quite clear that the idea underlies the five principles. So how did INSPIRE decide on OpenGIS Specifications for its implementation vision?

For one, European organizations have been involved with OGC from the start. These include public and private organizations including Ordnance Survey (UK), SICAD Geomatics (Germany) and IONIC (Belgium). Second, many European countries had been and continue to be heading down OGC/ISO-based paths by putting together data content catalogs and applications for geospatial information.

From a practical sense, it's clear that interoperability, in particular, OGC's vision of interoperability, support the five principles.

Collect once and maintain at the "most efficient" level - The OGC vision puts the power in the hands of data creators and maintainers by allowing them to use the best tool for the job, no matter which vendor, platform or data format is used. Even if those preferences should change over time, as long as the new ones adhere to the standards, there should be minimal disruption to the overall spatial data infrastructure.

Combine spatial data from different sources across the EU seamlessly and share it between many users and applications - In the past "seamlessly" was possible only if much work was done upfront to make different systems work together. OGC Web Services specifications lay out the interfaces needed for seamless sharing by solving data format, data projection, and data symbology issues to name a few. End users need never fight with incoming data to have it "match up" with local or other service providers data. This technology does not "correct" the data, but does insure that format, projection and symbology issues are consistent when data is integrated for use. That may help find the most efficient level for maintenance noted above.

Share at all the different levels of government - Data sharing involves some agreements and understanding of the benefit of sharing, but beyond that OGC specifications offer a solution to the underlying technology issues. In some sense all data is treated by specifications as "equal" but that doesn't mean that data can't be sorted or searched by quality or completeness or provider.

Be available on conditions that are not restricting its extensive use - The "conditions" in time must be agreed upon by the players creating the infrastructure. The job of the underlying technology is to reflect those decisions. Interfaces within operating systems and specifications can make data and services available to all, or alternatively, only to those with specific credentials.

Be discoverable and evaluateable - There are really two parts to making this possible. The first is good, up-to-date, complete metadata consistent with ISO standard 19115, from the providing organizations. The second is a means to explore that metadata, detailed in the Catalog Interface Specification, the "yellow pages" of data and service availability.

Conclusion

INSPIRE is perhaps the first multinational effort to move so far as to evaluate return on investment on NSDI and to begin identifying the open standards on which it will build its spatial data infrastructure. It most likely will not be the last.

About the Author Adena Schutzberg owns ABS Consulting Group, Inc. She writes about geospatial topics on behalf of the Open GIS Consortium and other clients.