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GSDI 11 - Special report


The 11th edition of the annual Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference opened here in Rotterdam on the 15th of June. The theme of this year’s conference is Spatial Data Infrastructure Convergence: Building SDI Bridges to Address Global Challenges. The opening day saw a series of workshops on a range of topics relating to SDI.

An early morning work workshop discussed the ‘Legal Issues of Geoinformation: A short introduction to IP, Privacy and Liability’. The proceedings were conducted by Drs Colette Cuijpers and Maurice Schellekens, Assistant Professors of the Tilburg University of Law, Technology and Society. Dr. Schellekens covered the concept of copyright as applicable to digital geospatial data. He illustrated the differences in approaches across countries and these sometimes even happen between lower and higher courts in the same country. He looked at different aspects of data ownership and the contentious issue of copyright of data collected with public funding. He closed with a discussion on free access versus cost recovery and the issues related to data enrichment by third parties.

Dr. Cuijpers then took up the issue of liabilities. She concluded that simple issues can get exacerbated due to internationalisation (loss of territorial borders due to the Internet access). Digitisation also results in loss of paper traceability and can give rise to malpractices. Turbulence caused by disruptive technologies also affects the issue of liabilities. Finally, the issues boiled down to:
  • How to ‘price’ damage
  • Difficulty in tracing the wrongdoer
  • Difficulty in assigning responsibility
  • Different legal regimes leading to difficulty in assigning quantum of accountability
She ended with a question: How far can we pursue liability before we start hampering innovation?

The second workshop was on ‘Best Practices in SDI’ by Roger Longhorne. The popularity of the topic could be judged by the fact that there was standing room only! Beginning with the ambiguity of defining an SDI, he illustrated that SDI was not just data but much more. He defined six maturity levels beginning with 0 (no SDI) through 1 (ad hoc SDI), 2 (SDI aware), 3 (refined SDI), 4 (quantitatively managed SDI) and finally 5 where the SDI is optimised to give best service. He stressed the need for information audit. If you do not know what information is there you may end up duplicating information or not collecting required information. SDIs need to be monitored on indicators of performance, one of which could be the cost-benefit analysis of actual usage. He closed with an eight point SDI Readiness Index and the caution that best practices also depend on the size of the organisation, its budget, its mandate and its primary nature of work.

The third workshop on ‘Interplay of Budgets, Accountability and SDI’ was anchored by Kate Lance, NASA and two speakers, Sylvain Latour from NRCan and Floris de Bree from Netherland Geolpgical Survey. The third speaker did not show up due to a misunderstanding about dates! Kate remarked in her opening remarks that budget and accountability are never given importance in an SDI. In government vertical silos are funded but SDI requires horizontal funding across divisions and this requires a policy of carrots, sticks and sermons to push it through. Sylvain Latour and de Bree then gave examples from their organisations. In Canada funding is used as a carrot while the Treasury ensures that the ‘sticks’ are also prominently visible. Kate gave the example of the US where the OMB has no measure of accountability but is fast catching on.

De Bree also gave examples of accountability by using number and types of users are measurable metrics as well as data types and volumes. He also enumerated performance measures such as data delivery time, data quality, etc.

Another workshop was on ‘Capacity Building and SDI’ anchored by Frank Hosmuller of ESRI, Europe and the speakers were Martin Molenaar, C J Terborgh, ESRI and Col. Juan Vidal of the Chilean Military Survey. Dr Molenaar highlighted the need for different models of capacity building and the need to use local resources and the Internet for reaching out to a large number of beneficiaries. Dr Terborgh highlighted ten suggestions for Capacity Building which included policy framework, standards and the importance of networking. Col Vidal gave examples of the efforts made by Chile to establish an SDI. The discussions that followed were lively but the topic of capacity building got lost in the discussion on how to realise an SDI. Clearly, this remains the fundamental question in peoples’ minds.

Thus ended day one of GSDI 11.

DAY 2 June 16 2009 - Building Bridges Between Technologies

The second day of GSDI 11 conference on Spatial Data Convergence: Building SDI Bridges to address Global Challenges got off to an excellent start at the Rotterdam Hall of the World Trade Centre. Introducing the theme Dr Bas Kok, President GSDI, said that bridges need to be built between technologies and across boundaries. He exhorted the participants to explore, investigate, share, learn and imagine what SDI has done and can do to solve the problems of society.

The Minister, Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment could not attend and was represented by Noud Hooymann, Head, G I Policy Unit of the Ministry. The minister’s speech, as presented by Mr Hooymann, explored the challenges in areas like Public Health and Environment and concluded that there is a need to find solutions with international cooperation. The Dutch effort, GIDEON was mentioned and the political backing of the European SDI effort, INSPIRE was highlighted to show governments’ desire to find solutions using technology. He said that geographic information was now on a high speed train with the goal to reach a sustainable and safe world.

The next keynote speaker, Leen Hordijk, Director, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, JRC, European Commission, stated that environmental challenges like climate change are global but have local impact. He also pointed out that social sciences should not be overwhelmed by environmental sciences. Global databases must bridge both worlds. In a futuristic view, he highlighted the importance of citizen’s participation. He said that both top-down and bottom-up efforts are needed to be brought together to maximise benefits from the SDI.

A lively question and answer session followed during which the protagonists of neo geographers and the conventional thinkers voiced their opinions. On the one hand too much of data could leave us floundering; on the other hand citizen volunteers provide data which we can use because it relates to their needs. The solution seems to be that while governments need to create a well-maintained core data set, communities can be encouraged to create data sets in their areas of interest.

In the second plenary, Gary Nairn, former Special Minister of State and e-Government, Australia spoke on ‘Spatially Enabling Society through E-Government: A Political Imperative’. He began by outlining the political landscape and showed how it differed from the community landscape. He went on to show how the roles of governments have remained unchanged for over a 100 years but issues like the financial crisis, climate change, environment and border security are forcing rethinking about the roles. Spatially enabled government can play a role delivering better outcomes through timely and better decisions. SDI is essential for this. He concluded by saying that SDI should facilitate rather than manage. This needs political ‘champions’. Politicians need to be convinced that SDI is good politics that can help overcome social exclusion, tackle issues of climate change and financial crisis and facilitate economic development.

Chris Steenmans, Head, SEIS Programme, European Environment Agency spoke on ‘The Future of Environmental Information Sharing’. Shared information system for environment information is the need of the hour. It is not sufficient to just get reports but to share them online. The trend is to move from data consumers to active data participants. 40% of Europeans feel that they are poorly informed about environmental issues. This is why SEIS, with an SDI backbone, is needed to improve knowledge base for policy and reduce costs. There is a need to integrate in situ and spatial data. Sensor enablement and its integration to the SDI is important. Citizens can be very good ‘sensors’ and to this end citizen generated data is important.

The third plenary had two speakers and a very interesting panel discussion. Ivan DeLoatch, Director, FGDC, USGS spoke in the place of Jose Achache who was unable to be present. He presented the GEOSS convergence vision. Mankind has become a geophysical parameter. Geophysics has become a political issue and therefore earth observation is needed for informed decisions. He then went on to highlight the efforts to bring GEOSS standards in line with the GSDI goals.

The next speaker Chukwudozie Ezigbalike, Chief, Geo Information Systems, UNECA, spoke on the convergent vision of the UNSDI. He stressed that an SDI is not a project but a system. However, to management this has to be presented as a series of deliverables so that they appear like projects, thus, the framework can be put in to place. He too stressed the need for a bottom-up approach beginning with a set of nodes represented by each UN unit.

The panel was chaired by John McLaughlin, President and Vice Chancellor of the University of New Brunswick and one of the founders of GSDI. The panellists were Santiago Borrero, Secretary General, IPGH, Ivan DeLoatch, Chukwudozie Ezigbalike, Alessandro Annoni, JRC, EC and Greg Scott, President, UNPCGIAP. The panellists had to respond to three questions. What are the three primary achievements in your region in building SDI? What are the three goals to make SDI meet the societal needs of your region? What are the three key actions or goals for enabling working across regions?

The responses showed that there is a positive move towards SDI though the degree of movement varies from region to region and is dictated by regional concerns and imperatives. To make SDI more socially relevant, there is a need to improve access, reduce unevenness in development and enable maximum usage of data. On building bridges, the responses were more diffuse and were presented as problems to be overcome. The challenges are to be more flexible in definitions and concepts, to reach out to society with services not policy, reach out to people outside the geospatial world.

DAY 3 June 17, 2009 - Data sharing issues

The third day of GSDI was the opening of the 3rd INSPIRE Conference. In keeping with the theme of building bridges, after the first day which covered global issues, the second day covered regional issues dealing with Europe and its massive effort to come up with a European SDI – INSPIRE. The conference opened with two keynote talks and then went on to INSPIRE specific papers.

In the first keynote delivered by Denise Lievesley, Head of the School of Social Statistics, King’s College, London the topic chosen was ‘Information is Power: Overcoming Obstacles to Data Sharing’. She covered the situation of three types of datasets: statistical, data produced for other purposes and research data. In recognition of efficiency data should be collected once but used many times. The use must be ‘informed’ use which is responsible and sensitive to privacy concerns. The benefit of such an approach is the development of a durable research base and greater utilisation of data. However, the decision to make data pay for itself, concerns about loss of ownership and the pressures to perform in the context of personal growth militates against such sharing. She welcomed the creation of metadata as a first step towards sharing and concluded that considering the diverse data that is created, a system of archiving and audited distribution could be the next direction of progress.

Pirkko Saarikivi, Managing Director, Foreca Consulting Ltd, a company conducting weather forecasting was the next speaker. She spoke on ROADIDEA: Ingredients for Innovative Transport Services. She began rather provocatively by contending that meteorological data, though available, was prohibitively expensive and perhaps even Bill Gates would not be able to buy the entire dataset on offer! She drew comparison with the US where data is freely available or available at the cost of reproduction. She welcomed the fact that some changes were happening and said that such changes were needed if innovative use of the data is to be encouraged. Giving examples of such innovative use such as fog warning systems, port management and mobile road friction monitoring she said that while technology was not a problem, the bottleneck was access to data and lack of standards.

In the next session on INSPIRE: Building the European SDI Massimo Craglia, Director General, JRC, EC gave an overview of the INSPIRE efforts from conception to the present and said that this, the third conference was actually the 15th meeting since inception. The current focus is on data discovery and viewing metadata. Technologies addresses were network services, QoS, multilingual support, among others. He said that member state were responding favourably and were keen to take on more than the targets set. Stressing on collaboration and partnership he concluded by saying that it takes a lot of time and effort but it is worth it as it helps to achieve a shared sense of ownership of both processes and outcomes.

Hugo de Groof, DG Environment, EC, spoke on INSPIRE in the European Shared Environmental Information System. He described the SEIS and showed the manner in which this effort was integrating itself into the INSPIRE effort by adopting as well as contributing to the development process. He also showed that SEIS did more than what was envisaged under INSPIRE as it was also focussed on delivering environmental services to European users.

DAY 4 June 18, 2009 - Dealing with national issues.

The fourth day of the conference was focussed on national issues in Geonovum and RGI Plenaries. The session was entitled Public Sector meets Science and Industry and was chaired by Dorine Burjmane, Chair, Executive Board of the Dutch Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency. The Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb spoke on the SDI opportunities in Rotterdam after which the National Geo Register of the Netherlands was formally declared open. The ceremony was performed by Peter Welling, former Deputy Secretary General, Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. The opening consisted of the online demonstration of the register in an innovative augmented reality visualisation. This was followed by a video presentation on how Netherlands is on its way to a climate proof and sustainable delta society. This theme of ‘delta society’ and the ability to life in a world dominated by water was the focus throughout the session. The session was attended by a Geo Youth Panel to sensitise youth about the issues and get their views.

Bart Parmet, Secretary of the Delta Commission spoke on how a living land builds its future by working together with water. He drew a quick geomorphological picture of Holland and showed that without its dykes and other structures two third of the country would be below the sea. The Delta Plan was to meet the possible consequences of global warming and resultant sea level rise such that Netherlands would not have to worry for a 100 years. Such an enormous plan called for transparent and participative decision making and GIS can help with joint fact finding and the creation of ‘Dialogue Support Systems’. GIS will also help in searching for integrated solutions which can be win-win solutions for all sectors.

Eelco H Dykstra, Professor, International Emergency Management at the George Washington University Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management, in his comments on the work of the Delta Commission in an international perspective, delineated the roles of prevention and recovery in disaster situations. He pointed out that situations of high risk associated with low probability of occurrence need insurance but situations of high risk and high probability of occurrence need to be eliminated. He spoke of the goals of the International Katrina Project to prevent the kind of collapse of infrastructure as seen during the Katrina disaster. These presentations were followed by a panel discussion with the two speakers and Martin Molenaar of the ITC. Martin Molenaar sought to integrate the efforts of the Dutch committee with international groups to see how the degradation processes can be slowed down. He warned that the impact of European floods would have the highest impact on Netherlands. Dykstra felt that the European plan of preventive action needs to be integrated with the American plan of operational action. Molenaar pointed out that the experiences of other deltaic regions like the Ganges and Nile delta also needed to be studied. Bart Permet stressed that the focus should remain on the Netherlands. Dykstra felt that we do not need more science but more ‘stories’ about disasters and their effect and mitigation. Such stories should be part of high school and college curricula to trigger thinking among youth. Parmet supported this idea but stated that while Netherlands has a good education system, a good government and a vibrant industry yet 700 jobs were going vacant because of lack of young professionals. This has to be addressed.

In the next plenary mark Goedhart, Board of Geonovum was in the Chair and a keynote was delivered by Cor van Tilborg, Chairman, Space for Geo-information. He spoke about the need for a viable geo-industry, effective government and the need to connect business, government, research to develop an SDI. The RGI network seeks to do this through 31 R&D institutions, 35 industries, 18 knowledge organisations, 63 government bodies, 32 universities and 99 companies. The key is co-financing of activities in an interactive manner. Peter Woodgate, CEO, Australia Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information gave the example of cooperation in Australia in which 70 organisations are involved in establishing Virtual Australia. The stress is on positioning, automated mapping, visualisation, education and SDI and remote sensing. There are several international alliances. Nicholas Chrisman, Scientific Director, GEOIDE, Canada spoke on Canadian efforts at international networking. He gave the example of joint projects with RGI on mobility. He felt the future lies in a network of networks. The presentations were followed by a panel discussion.

The last plenary for the day covered Dutch Trade and Pioneer Spirit in Geo-information. Four industry representatives outlined their activities and future plans. Paul Bosman of Cyclomedia said collaboration was the key and there is a need to ‘dare to share’. Jos Anneveld of Fugro outlined his companies’ vision. Rob van Essen, Teleatlas described how community participation in data gathering was being effectively used by Teleatlas. Henk Scholten presented the unique concept of Geodan, a collaboration tool and showed how it was effective in disaster management.

DAY 5 June 19, 2009

The last day of GSDI 11 began with the corporate sector visions and perspectives: Building Bridges to Stimulate Participation. The session was organised by the platinum sponsors: Autodesk, Cyclomedia, ESRI and EuroGeographics. Dave Lovell, Executive Director EuroGeographics and Rob van de Velde, Director Geonovum chaired the session. Four use cases were presented. The first by Greta Remy, Coordinator Traffic Safety, Belgium spoke on the use of spatial information for traffic sign management and safety related attributes. Mobile mapping is being used to update traffic zones depending on different situations. Dean Paull, CEO, PSMA Australia stressed on collaboration to deliver capability. PMSA is an unlisted public company owned by the Australian government but without any funding. It positions itself as a relation management company connecting users to the government as a one-stop shop. It maintains six data sets: Transport and topography, Addresses (G-NAF), Cadastral information (Cadlite), Points of Interest, Post Code boundaries and Administrative boundaries. These are updated every 90 days. Berik Davies, Global and GIS Coordinator, Shell International Exploration and Production brought out the diversity of data needed by the energy industry. He opined that standards are necessary but need to be responsive to user needs. Sharing and collaboration is needed to meet global requirements. Finally, Dr Josef Strobl, Professor, Centre of Geoinformatics, Salzburg University talked about the future of SDI. A discussion on the problem of attracting students to geoscience subjects was discussed briefly but inconclusively.

Well that is all from Rotterdam. It was a hectic week running from session to session to hear the papers I wanted to attend. However, it was a great experience and a great opportunity to network and to learn what is happening in the geospatial world.