Towards a Geographic Information Infrastructure for Sri Lanka
Peter Bitter
Dept. of Geography
University of Zurich - Irchel
Switzerland
Sarath Jayatilaka
Survey Department
Sri Lanka
Abstract
Many GIS installations in developing countries are realised within the framework of development cooperation, i.e. they are tied to the life cycles of 'projects' which typically last a few years only. Quite often, little of the efforts remains operations after the projects end. As a counter position to this, the concept of a national geographic information infrastructure (GIIS) is discussed in this paper, and it will be pointed out why it is important that future GIS projects can operate within the environment of such an infrastructure. Institutional as well as technical components of the GIIS are identified. The we go on to present two types of initiatives that are being proposed in Sri Lanka to create this infrastructure: 'institutional initiatives' are taken to create the necessary bodies to set standards and define policies in the fields, while 'production initiatives are undertaken to provide the data itself.
1.The concept of a geographic information infrastructure
It is common ground nowadays that 'data are the fuel of GIS'. In other words, any GIS project can meet its objectives only if the appropriate data is available. Standard computer hardware and GIS software can help us to produce customized products, even it we don't have a deep understanding of geographic data of cartographic processes. However, they will help us only if we feed the correct data.
Moreover, data are usually the logiest-living part of any GIS implementation: Computer generations are typically outdated in two or three years, software vendors keep on asking us to by 'new' versions every couple of months, but geographic data are there to stay. This, of curse, doesn't mean that no updating will take place, but this will typically affect far less then 5% of the items in a database.
On the other hand, the initial acquisition of the necessary geographic data commonly accounts for about 80% of the total cost of an average GIS project. Maintenance of the data (updating) will later add to the cost. Therefore it seems quite later add to that cost. Therefore it seems quite logical to try to cut on the cost of data acquisition, but, as we said, if that means that the necessary data is not available at all or at least not in any useful form (scale, accuracy, etc.), the success of the GIS project will be endangered.
The solution to the dilemma lies in the keyword 'infrastructure'. Basically, infrastructures are things tht can be used by anybody without having to play the full price of it's establishment. The price can be measured interms of money, but also in terms of waiting time. We use transport and communication infrastructures every day, but no one could afford to found a road or a telephone network personally, and no one realizing a journey. So what we really need to ralsise GIS projects efficiently is a "Geographic Information Infrastructure".
We think it is helpful to consider geographic data as an important part of this infrastructure that allows GID to function efficiently in terms of cost and time. However, the data itself is only one part of the infrastructure. It is the part which corresponds to the physical aspects of common infrastructures, e.g. the roads or the telephone lines. Quite obviously, there are other aspects which make up the infrastructure: for telephones to be useful, rules about signal transmission,
numbering schemes etc. are needed - in short, technical standards are absolutely required to avoid chaos. In the days where access to most telephone networks was controlled by a single Government corporation, setting and enforcing standards was relatively easy to accomplish. However, the regard to the proliferation of geographic data, we clearly live in a world with many different providers and users with different needs. The conclusion from that is that is that is that common standards (e.g. common vocational reference, common attribute definitions, data exchange standards, data documentation standards) are required for users to be above to efficiently use data from different sources.
In addition to the just mentioned technical parts of the Geographic information infrastructure (he data itself and the data standards), institutional or organizational elements are required too. These are:
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A consistent copyright legislation which also includes digital data. It is quite obvious hat no potential provider, exp. From private sector, is interested in producing and selling digital geographic data if he has n means to reasonably protect his investment. Since thee are no practical possibilities to protect data through technical measures (such as software keys), the only way is to protect data by means of contracts. The legislation also has to protect the interests of the creator of original documents, e.g. Survey Department Topographic maps. A survey of the situation in Europe can be found in [EUROG].
- Next to copyright, a consistent pricing scheme at lest for data provided by Government agencies is not an absolute must, but very helpful for potential users outside the administration. Also the question whether commercial and non commercial users should be rated alike has to be resolved. In either case, the price must not be prohibitive - otherwise, potential data users will find it cheaper to capture the data by themselves (and thus duplicating efforts), to use other, inadequate data (e.g. of too small scale), or take the risk of illegal copying. Thus the geo information community will never develop. The extreme example is that of the US who consider data produced by Federal Agencies as public property which must be available at the nominal cost of reproduction.
- Co-ordinate efforts for education, research and development are needed to build up a critical mass of people with various GIS capabilities, and to Crete certain capacities for applied research. With constrained research budgets, the top priority will not be on fundamental research to create new data structures and algorithms, but rather on solving some specific application problem.
- Last, but not least part of the Geographic information infrastructure are something which could be called "Entry points to the GIS worlds": This includes for instance Metadata such as data catalogues and data dictionaries, but also a responsive customer serve by the providers. Quite often, the first steps of potential would - be users of without much experience, they have to specify and find what they exactly need, and they have to fight their way through a maze of officers, rule & regulations which they have to fight their way through a maze of offices, rule & regulations which they barely understand to eventually get what they want. Quite likely, they will give up their project somewhere. Halfway, or find it cheaper to re-gigitize the data they need. (this situation is by no means specific to Sri Lanka - it is a very common situation also in industrialized countries). The contrary would be situation where the available dataset are well documented in publish data catalogues, and inexperienced users can get assistance. Experience from Switzerland and suggests that users are quite prepared to pay a price four such advice, it is competent and responsive.
Further reference to such institutional aspect can be found in [PSP], [FOX], [YEH].
To conclude this part of our paper, we would like to draw the attention on some thoughts on who could create such a geographic information infrastructure :
It is quite clear that multitude of players will take part in the game: it is usually Survey Departments who provide the locational reference and the topographic base data, Department of Census who provide statically data, perhaps Geological Departments to provide geological maps in digital form, international satellite image distribution, private companies providing value added cartographic and statistical data, and, last but not least, the users (who are often at the same time producers of certain datasets) with their won expectations. The conclusion from that is that an infrastructure which is useful for (almost) all players has to created under the leadership of a broad - based committee with a certain powers to issue guidelines and directives which are compelling at least for Government Departments. In other words, backing by Governments. In other words, backing by Government or specific legislation is essential.
The second through is on the question, whether a geographic information intrastate can be crated through foreign-funded aid project
It is obvious that the creation of this infrastructure is a long-term goal. Coordination can be extremely tiring and time-consuming, and the risk that the final compromise will not meet ones own expectations is rather high. Moreover, building the infrastructure should be perceived as a continuous process which will not end after a certain number of dataset have been digitized. Existing datasets have to be updated, new demands will arise, technical possibilities will change. Thus what is required to set this process in motion and to keep it alive is unlimited political and finical commitment to it-unlimited meaning here 'not temporally limited".
Contrarily, most foreign funded aid projects have a clearly limited life-cycle of typically two or three years, sometimes with options for extension. In their lifetime, projects have to achieve clear-cut results. Building a digital geographic database for the project area may well be such a result, disbursing certain amounts on GIS hard-and software may be another expected result. However, the project will inevitably end some day, and the chances that the counterpart can (or even wants to ) maintain" his" GIS past that day are rather small. There are numerous examples of that kind in Sri Lanka. Moreover, donors like their counterparts often have a habit of 'fencing in their garden' and not tetting anybody trespassing, which of course inhibits coordination within the framework of a common infrastructure. This means that aid projects works under conditions fundamentally different from what is required to create a coordinated geo-graphic information infrastructure.
For the stated reasons it seems unwise to expect a foreign-funded project to create a national geographic information infrastructure. This doesn't mean that external projects can't help in the process, e.g. by supplying consultants, training, also hard- and software, and supporting certain specific tasks such as the creation of specific datasets. However, this must always be compatible with the directives and technical standards of the national geographic information infrastructure. Otherwise it will be pretty useless for the country as whole, through it might still be useful for the limited purpose of the particular project at hand.
