How others do it?

Many national governments throughout the world are involved in developing spatial data infrastructures that will better facilitate the availability access to spatial data for all levels of government, the sector, the non-profit sector, academia and in general.

H. J. Onsrud has conducted a global survey on behalf of Global Spatial Data Infrastructure GSDI on various national initiatives. The goal of this survey was to gather baseline information on the nature and characteristics of the national spatial data infrastructures (NSDI’s) currently being developed. The information being collected may be used

• to explore whether there are sufficient similarities among the national approaches being used to describe basic models of NSDI’s and their characteristics and
• to assess the need for a global co-ordination or facilitation mechanism.

Survey of has also responded to the questionnaire circulated by GSDI which is available at the website http://www.umesve.maine.edu/~onsrud/GSDI.htm. Many more documents on GSDI and other similar initiatives are available at http://www.gsdi.org/

We request our readers to visit the site and send their comments to us. We would be covering the details of GSDI initiatives in our forthcoming issues.