GSDI reporting by GIS Development

Dear Readers,

Since its inception in 1996, GSDI had traveled a long path of six different successful convergences at various parts of the globe. It was in Cartagena, two years back, that India first offered to host the seventh GSDI meet and this offer was confirmed and accepted in Budapest last year. This important conference that aims at creating, enabling and facilitating a global database that can seamlessly be used for any local problem as well as be a tool to address issues of global concern, started off noticeably in Bangalore with all the relevant and eminent policy makers in place. The GSDI-7 conference has a theme of ‘SDI for a Sustainable Future’ .

GIS Development takes the pleasure to bring you a gist of the first few days of the significant event.

The GSDI 7 Conference also marks a very important stage in the evolution of GSDI. It is supposed to be the last of its kind of independent conferences and also is supposed to hold the first formal GSDI Association Council meeting where Board members are to be elected. The conference is organized by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India this year and had a good and interesting mix of plenary sessions and technical symposia.

The conference was another step (and this time perhaps a notable one) of moving towards stabilizing the organization, drawing action plans and deliverables in its 8th year of operation. Hopefully the convergence would address the question of finally moving on from ‘what and why’ to ‘how and when’. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

Happy Reading.

Warm Regards,
Ayon Tarafdar
Assistant Editor
GIS Development
Ayon@GISdevelopment.net

Inauguration

The conference inauguration programme took place on the 2nd February 2004 at the J N Tata Auditorium, National Science Seminar Complex, Indian Institute of Science. It started at 4pm in a packed hall re-affirming the global significance of the meeting in the arena of geospatial technologies and application.

The inauguration had distinguished persons on the dais as well as the floor. The dignitaries on the stage were – Dr Kasturirangan, member of the Indian Parliament, Prof Ian Masser, President, GSDI, Dr Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO, Dr Prithvish Nag, Surveyor General of India, Dr V Jayaraman, Director, EOS, ISRO, Dr R SivaKumar, Head NRDMS, DST and Mukund Rao, National Organsation Secretary, GSDI.

Dr V Jayaraman

The event started with a welcome address by Dr V Jayaraman, who emphasized mainly on the city of Bangalore and its evolution over the ages. He wished that the conference and all guests, successful outcome in the few days of their visit. He also touched upon the subject briefly, by drawing a clear linkage between information and decision-making.

Dr Kasturirangan

The ceremonial lamp lightening followed this. Dr Kasturirangan gave an elaborate Chief Guest address after that. His talk was significant and touched upon the aspect of the stark difference between the growth of population and socio-economic parameters in India. He stated that to stabilize both growth rates there has to be certain initial steps of integrated vision in collection, archiving, assimilation of information and specially geospatial information at various levels. He pointed out that it is important to remember that the data given out will generate commerce at some point. He also mentioned that without sharing or disseminating, the real value of the data generated remains untapped or one can say the efforts of data generation remains largely at waste. He also mentioned about the satellites Resorcesat, CartoSAT and the NSDI movement of India as positive steps already in place.

Mr S M Krishna

After the release of the conference proceedings and a CD, Shri Mukund Rao read out the message of S M Krishna, the Chief Minister of the state of Karnataka who was unable to make it to the venue. The chief minister’s speech talked of the growth of geospatial sciences in general and in the state of Karnataka in focus and mentioned that perhaps it is the correct time and place to discuss and build upon strategies towards the success of GSDI.

Prof Ian Masser

Prof Ian Masser followed with a detailed address that summed up the history and the work done in GSDI since its inception. He talked on the subject of SDI and the vision of GSDI as an association and as a concept. He mentioned that all the activities of GSDI ultimately aim at four components –

Maximize the use of Geographic Information (GI) assets of a nation

Lead the path towards a coordinated action within and beyond the nation

GI generation and use must be related to some form of decision making

The relevant development of human resource, technology and research to achieve the above

Mr Madhavan G Nair

Madhavan G Nair, Chairman, ISRO followed with another elaborate talk. Even though he was humble enough to mention at the start that he was new to the term of SDI and GSDI, his presentation touched on various minute details that talked of the operational as well as strategic models of making an SDI a near reality . He started from the basics of who form the actual market of spatial information. And then taking up each of these data users, he went into the vertical application uses that GI can offer and what type of these GI is already available. His talk brought out the fact that SDI is perhaps now more of an issue of integration, standards and a controlled operation. The tools are there, one need just to utilize them appropriately.

Dr Prithvish Nag

Dr P Nag, Surveyor General of India, followed with his speech where he read out the message of Secretary, DST who couldn’t make it to the occasion. The secretary wished success and progress in the 4 days of deliberation and briefly mentioned the resource and expertise already available in the country to help making SDI a tangible asset. Dr Nag also talked of his positive views in the field of SDI development and mentioned the Survey of India’s massive data assets already available.

The event ended with vote of thanks extended by Dr R SivaKumar . This was followed by a cultural programme and dinner to end the first inaugural day of the conference.

Sessions (Day One - 3rd Feb 2004)

The day had three main blocks of discussion and deliberations. The day started with keynote talks on the conference theme. After about 2 hours the discussion went on to a special session on international SDI initiatives. Finally after the lunch there was a plenary on national SDI activities. A poster session was also a part of the day.

Keynote talks

The session was chaired by Prof Ian and had three important presentations. Jack Dangermond of ESRI started the day. His presentation was lucid and conceptual. He emphasized on a number of issues relating them to the concept of sustainable development and SDIs. He stated that humans since generations have used ‘abstractions’ to communicate and develop. Abstractions are in various typologies – language, music, art, disciplines, maps, etc. Geography is one such important abstraction. It provides a framework as well as a language. GIS abstracts the disciples into 5 basic elements:

Maps and globes

Geodata sets

Workflow models

Data Models

Metadata

On this pretext, one now needs to understand the potential and use of spatial data and more importantly data infrastructures. He mentioned that GIS is evolving. It is no more a simple digital data representation but now demands connected flow of information that suits specific needs. He mentioned the coming days of ‘Intelligent GIS’,’Distributed GIS’, and GIS portals. He mentioned that thematic data models need to and are extending towards generic data models. The criticality of interoperability in any interconnected system was also touched upon.

The next presentation was by Mark Reinchardt of the Open GIS Consortium (OGC). His talk was mainly on OGC and GSDI – the commonalities of ‘building together’. He highlighted the similar goals and missions of both. He stated that GSDI or any type of SDI needs interoperability and standards as its basics.

The last presentation was by Preetha Pulusani, Intergraph . She put across the question to the floor of whether spatial interoperability is necessary for sustainable development. She emphasized that standards, interoperability and enterprise systems are key building blocks in SDI realization. She took numerous examples of NSDI experiences from countries across the world, touching upon the pros and cons of each. She mentioned that geospatial data is a part of every enterprise and needs to be internalized in the enterprise dynamics.

Session on international SDI initiatives

The session had a packed attendance and was extremely interesting as various organisations demonstrated the status and understanding of their individual SDIs that go beyond the national level. Presentations included those of Peter Holland, PCGIAP, Timothy Foresman, Digital Earth, Fraser Taylor, ISCGM, Milan Konecny, ICA, M A R Ibarra, PCIDEA and B R Shrestha, Nepal. The session was chaired and conducted by Vanessa Lawrence, Director General, Ordnance Survey.

The interesting part of the session was the many overlaps that emerged between these international organizations and their domains. Even though each has an area of jurisdiction and each has visions and missions differently worded, it was interesting to note the deliverables of each and their status, including that of GSDI.

Plenary Session : National SDI initiatives

This was the last session of the day and spanned presentations from across the world. We came to know of the status of SDI initiatives from Australia, Hungary, India, Spain, Mexico, Germany, Chile, Cuba and United States. Each presentation was unique in its own way and gave overviews. These were proof of endeavours happening at various parts of the world – endeavours that are attempts to consolidate the entire gamut of spatial data generation in manner that can serve varied disciplines in need of spatial data in a fast and effective manner.

The day ended with a warm cultural programme and dinner hosted by ESRI.