UN Millennium Development Goals:Relevance for Geospatial community
GRS will be increasingly more accurate
There is a strong and continuing trend for users to demand more and more accuracy from the Spatial Data Infrastructure in general (e.g. a more accurate Digital Cadastral Data Base or higher resolution imagery). This trend is unlikely to slow in the next decade. As the fundamental underlying framework for all spatial data, the Geospatial Reference System needs to be at least one order of magnitude more accurate than the requirements of the most demanding users. These high expectations of the Geospatial Reference System are especially true for users with so-called safety of life critical or liability critical applications, who expect accuracy with very high levels of reliability.
High levels of accuracy and reliability are also critical in applications with high levels of automation. All of these demands will require a commitment to continuous accuracy improvement in the Geospatial Reference System to meet the changing requirements of the most demanding users.
GRS will be more digital
The Geospatial Reference System will move from being delivered in an analogue way (based on Permanent Survey Marks in the ground) to more digital delivery mechanisms e.g. in real time via mobile phones.
This technology is in its early stages of evolution and over time a better understanding of orbits and atmospheric effects, along with many more satellites will allow more reliable, more accurate and more efficient positioning. In any case, future strategies for the Geospatial Reference System will need to balance this ongoing issue of an analogue approach of marks in the ground compared to a digital approach.
GRS will be more multi-dimensional
In the past the Vertical (1-Dimensional) and Horizontal (2-Dimensional) parts of the Geospatial Reference System have been considered as quite separate. This 1D+2D approach needs to give way to a truly 3D approach. Dealing with change in the time dimension will require further evolution from a 3D to 4D Geospatial Reference System.
Trends and directions in Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
The directions in the context of the GRS could also be usefully applied to discussion of the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) more generally.
The above trends could be expanded upon in the context of the SDI to also include, for example:
- SDI will be more mobile;
- SDI will be more live;
- SDI will be more intelligent;
- SDI will be more potentially intrusive
Governments worldwide are moving forward in relation to creating policies and initiatives which open up some of their information to the public. However, what is lacking is the ability for industry to engage directly with these whole-
of-government/cross-agency initiatives. There is a need to create an infrastructure or enabling platform that provides the link between government and private industry and from which applications and services can be leveraged and value added, and thereby providing the ability to grow the private sector and spatial information industry as a whole. This is in line with the vision of spatially enabling government and requires designers to appreciate the difference between data and information.
FIG and the global geospatial community need to be ready for such developments. FIG intends to meet that challenge through increased corporate efforts in the years to come.
FACING THE FUTURE
FIG is committed to both flying high and keeping the feet on the ground. By “flying high” I mean that we need to have a big vision e.g. in contributing to solving the global challenges especially with regard to poverty reduction and in responding e.g. to the Millennium Development Goals. As the leading international NGO on land issues this is our core global responsibility.
At the same time we need to keep our “feet on the ground”: we must serve the needs of our members associations and the individual surveyors and make sure that they get benefits from our global activities and from the work of our technical commissions.
We can promote this through providing an international forum for professional development and innovation in all aspects of surveying, and by terms of capacity building, events and publications, and standards and guidelines. The overall aim is to strengthen the links between the global agenda and the surveying grass roots.