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July 2003 |
Asia-Pacific Region and SDI activities
The Need for SDI Development
In order to respond to the above mentioned situations, development of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) can be an answer. SDI is an initiative intended to create an environment which enables a wide variety of users who require a jurisdictional coverage, to be able to find, access and retrieve the best available and consistent datasets in an easy and secure way. At a regional level for example, the roots for such an SDI are in the regional governments and their cooperation.
The concept of SDI can be defined as an integrated, multi-levelled hierarchy of interconnected SDIs based on partnerships at local, state/provincial, national, regional (multi-national) and global levels. This enables users to save resources, time and effort when trying to acquire new datasets by avoiding duplication of expenses associated with the generation and maintenance of data and their integration with other datasets.
With this in mind, every nation in this region undertakes to some extent the development of strategic national mapping and spatial data activities to meet their national planning and management needs. The accumulation of these activities over time has resulted in the identification of key linkages between institutional and technical aspects and occurring in a continuum of development strategies.
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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Current communications between the various countries and regional bodies in Asia and the Pacific is very complex. For the purpose of sharing data, organisations and member nations (users) must develop one-on-one agreement with each and every other user within the region. However, as illustrated in Figure 1, having a functioning Regional SDI, as an example, can reduce this complexity of communication. The establishment of a Regional SDI will form a fundamental framework to exchange data across many countries in a region. This will also provide a clear picture to support and improve existing or even new bilateral and multilateral relations and structures.
Fig 1 Reduced complexity through Regional SDI
Further, the development of an SDI can provide the institutional framework and the technical basis to ensure the consistency and the content of datasets to meet jurisdictional needs in the context of sustainable development.
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