Keywords: Spatial Data Infrastructure
Abstract
With increasing demands for integrated spatial data set by various fields
of business, several countries have proceeded their plans for the public sectors
to develop such basic spatial databases. It is crucially important to clarify the
benefit and appropriate role of the governmental investment. The final purpose
of this study is to establish a methodological framework to find proper investment
level of national spatial databases. To achieve this, the author proposes a
method based on the estimation of economical benefits of spatial data infrastructure
and act analysis of spatial data production.
1. Introduction
With rapid increase of information technology,
an importance of information-related national
infrastructure (Information Infrastructure)
is growing rapidly in these days. Information
infrastructure consists of both
hardware-related infrastructures –– such as
glass fiber network or earth stations of satellite
networks–– and, software-related infrastructures.
There are two kinds of software-related
information infrastructures; one is strategic
standardization of data and services, while another
is a development of database itself as a
national data infrastructure.
When developing such information infrastructure,
there are many cases which require
some assistance of governmental sector like
conventional physical infrastructures; highways,
sewers, railways, etc... And, it is essential
to estimate social benefit of such infrastructures
to confirm an efficiency of projects.
In this research, the authors focus on national
data infrastructures as a common datasets or
databases created by a governmental sector.
Among several data infrastructure like patent
database, law database, or other national databases,
this paper is focusing on national spatial
database, which includes map-related information like roads, houses and so on.
The final purpose of this research is to establish
a methodological framework determine
appropriate service level and proper developing
procedures of national spatial databases.
In this paper, the authors focus to develop a
method to estimate proper service level of national
spatial databases.
2. Objectives of This Research
2.1. Social Requirements
In Japan, there is a project named National
Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) which is
initiated mainly by the National Land Agency.
Typical purposes of developing common
database of spatial information are as followings.
- To avoid redundant investment in
different databases with same data.
- To induce competition by decreasing
entrance cost of the market
- To accelerate reusing datasets by
developing one standard of spatial data
–– price of datasets using multiple data
sources will decrease ––
In this project, the investment will be provided
mainly by public sectors who have abilities of creating spatial databases. Generally,
for such public databases, the price will be
held cheaper because there should be many
users, compared to pure private projects.
However, some problems with NSDI project
are not solved yet precisely. For example;
what kinds of data should be included? How
to prioritize datasets to be included? How
accurate those data should be? How much
money can be spent for the project? Who
should be responsible for the development of
whole detaset?...etc...
These problems are caused by the fact that
techniques or researches of clarifying amounts
and objects of social benefits has not yet been
systematically.
2.2. Objectives of this research
In this paper, the purpose is to develop a
method to clarify (1) how much investment
should be done, and (2) what kind of data
should be included, for national spatial data
infrastructures.
3. Abstract of the Method
With proposed method, economical benefits
of spatial data infrastructure is estimated by
developing a model of spatial data market.
With the market model, we can formulate spatial
data suppliers' profit and consumers' benefit
when some data infrastructure has been developed.
As a result, we can estimate economical
benefits due to development of spatial data
infrastructure.
There are two essential sub models in the
market model. One is a demand sub model
and another is a cost sub model. In this research,
the author also mentions about how to create
these two sub models.
3.1. Outline of Demand Model Development
At first, we develop a model which represents
demands for spatial data. A method for
the model development aggregates for information
(includes information without any spatial
element) through all activities of the whole
business. This process consists of the steps
as shown below.
- Construct a model representing information
usages of business procedures
- Pick up demands for spatial information
among all requirements for information
derived from step (1)
- Survey detailed requirements for spatial
data : quality and required data items
- Survey maximum willingness to pay
(WTP) for a spatial database
- Survey elasticity of WTP with quality
of the data
3.2. Outline of Cost Model Development
Cost structure depends who or which institutions
develop database. In this research,
however, the authors ignore the difference in
development cost of database among different
institutions, as long as the database has the
same quality. Thus, to create cost model of
data infrastructure, the author extrapolates the
cost model representing cost structures of existing
private spatial data companies. Costs
of
each company will be collected by interviewing
to each company or by survey using some
questionnaire sheets.
