Achieving Interoperability
From the viewpoint of a value added service provider the issue of interoperability takes on an added dimension. It is not enough to be a remote sensing industry or a GIS industry. Geospatial technologies and IT are converging to provide services at various levels. Initially these were government to government, G2G, government to Business, G2B and business to government, B2G. Of late the importance of business to business, B2B, business to citizen, B2C, government to citizen, G2C and citizen to citizen, C2C has also grown. Table 1 best illustrates the change in business model for a data producing industry. The clients of such an industry will look for solutions rather than isolated data sets. Thus the onus falls on industry to provide the best and most comprehensive solution to its client. To do this it must necessarily enter into partnerships and look at convergent/integrated solutions.
Table 1 Changing Business Models3
| Traditional Image Data Provider | Information Age Company |
Produces data
Satellite data only
Isolated
Limited pricing and access policies
Knows data only
Only collects, processes and disseminates data |
Produces information
Multiple data sources
Partnerships
Flexible pricing and access
Oriented on customer needs
Integrated into broader geospatial/IT marketplace
Vertical market expertise |
At the third level the community of users can be sub divided into the formal users like decision-makers, managers and administrators and informal users like individual citizens. The formal group is addressed by the various interfaces discussed above. At the level of the individual we can see two path-breaking efforts at interoperability. One of them is Google Earth which has not only put high resolution remotely sensed data on the desktop of an individual user but has enabled them to customise the display with personal information which may be shared within a wider group of individuals. While Google Earth needs its own browser, the second effort, www.wikimapia.org, works off a standard browser and provides high-resolution imagery from Google Maps. Wikimapia also provides user interactivity that is fully sharable - in the tradition of Wikipedia - though it is not connected to the Wikimedia Foundation, only 'inspired' by it.
These examples show that interoperability has different meanings for different users but the underlying principle remains the same: easy access using common tools. The Web has emerged as the preferred platform and the tools are built around web services. The International Standards Organisation Technical Committee, ISOTC 211 has developed several standards for interoperability while the Open Geospatial Consortium; OGC has developed tools and processes to implement these standards. However, in spite of these efforts the proliferation of interoperable systems is still a far cry. One reason could be the difficulty in understanding the ISO standards and OGC implementation schemas. In this context, an extremely useful document prepared by the Geospatial Applications and Interoperability Working Group of the US Federal Geographic Data Committee is the Geospatial Interoperability Reference Model, GIRM.4 This document puts the plethora of standards in the context of mechanisms for effective cooperation between software elements. It is a consultative tool to help determine which standards and procedures are applicable in a given context. The model is aligned with the US NSDI but it does give a template for others to follow in their own country contexts.
While the GIRM addresses the technical issues there are policy and managerial issues that need to be addressed as well but there are no models to fall back upon. The Return on Investment study1 lists the possible risks to effective implementation of interoperability. These are stakeholder resistance, industry resistance and government policy.