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July 2003 |
Asia-Pacific Region and SDI activities
The results of these developments can be seen in the formation of many cooperative organisations such as: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Asian and Pacific Coconut Community (APCC), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO), as well as various innovative types of subregional cooperative ventures, such as the activities of Australian-ASEAN Economic Cooperation Programs (AAECP) at a country level. These regional organisations mostly work and cooperate with each other on different areas including development assistance; human resources development; economic development; science and technology transfer; political links; institutional linkages; and security issues.
The activities and functions under each of these areas were designed in some manner to give maximum return to individual parties of each cooperative organisation. Some of the regional interests that encourage different governments to cooperate with each other and to form different regional groups are: regional mapping, regional emergency management, regional security, regional access to health care resources, regional environmental monitoring and management, shared oceans surroundings, fishing, shipping and transport, agricultural and forestry management.
These regional interests are related to specific parts or whole areas of the region. Therefore, to achieve them, all the regional organisations need to access regional spatial data to identify regional spatial features and their characteristics to make informed decisions and to implement resulting regional initiatives. However, current research shows that in most cases all efforts by regional organisations face similar difficulties in accessing such datasets (Rajabifard and Williamson. 2002). There is currently a general lack of transparency in Asia and the Pacific region as to what (mainly national) data exist regarding the commercial conditions of their usage, scope and quality.
In this region, spatial data is traditionally collected and disseminated by a range of mandated national organisations according to a wide variety of national standards. Based on the results of the analysis of a technical questionnaire survey by authors in year 2000, there are large amounts of digital data with many common layers available at different scales in this region that could be useful for the creation of a regional dataset. But, a major difficulty in relation to accessing these data is a lack of coordination. National administrations do not systematically cooperate with their equivalents elsewhere. Due to this lack of coordination, different data structures, specifications and standards are used by member nations which does not facilitate data exchange. Although networking relationships exist between nations, based on individual arrangements and are not reflected in an operational coordination of activities.
The lack of availability and accessibility to the reliable datasets results in the duplication of effort to collect data, which exist, but is either unavailable or unknown to the current project. This is a waste of time and resources that developing nations can ill-afford. This situation is exacerbated when the national mapping and spatial data activities are the responsibility of a nation's military organisation because there tends to be a perception that sharing geographic information will affect national security. Although with the global advances in information technology, this concept is redundant with the availability of remotely sensed data from satellites and changes in military technology, but still, is the case in this region.
It is difficult to serve the growing diversity of users with new technology when data dissemination is hampered by narrow security restrictions and 'rent seeking' by holders of data. One of the fundamental problems is the lack of awareness of the value of spatial data and information and a wider definition of security that can include issues other than military ones, such as the need and use of spatial data for economic, educational, cultural, social and political systems. This lack of awareness has resulted in the lack of availability and accessibility of spatial data to facilitate regional cooperation.
This is one of the issues which was highlighted and demonstrated by Rajabifard and Williamson (2001) in the pilot trial on regional administrative boundaries which has been completed for the United Nations-supported Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific (PCGIAP). In summary, a fundamental problem underlying data sharing and distribution is the belief that one gains power and influence from withholding information and controlling it. In fact, true power is held by those who distribute the information and whose information is used by senior political levels. Once this leap of faith is taken, as it has been in several countries, data sharing becomes remarkably easy. Therefore, absence of culture for sharing spatial data and standards in Asia and the Pacific constrains the transparency and the necessary knowledge for decision-making and delays the regional spatial data users in finding information for their needs.
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