An European Perspective on Geo-Information Infrastructure (GII) Issues
Technology and Society Backgrounds
During the last decade of the previous century, many new sensors types have become operational or into existence. Examples of such sensors are high-resolution airborne and spaceborne digital cameras (only bring to mind the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites), the Global Positioning System (GPS and Glonass), Laser Altimetry, and Interferometric SAR, which enable the collection of geo-data with a level of detail, accuracy, automation and collection rate never before seen in history. The accuracy and level of detail of the geo-data produced by these sensors, not only support the national economy in fields like agriculture, forestry, mining, water and coastal management, marine fisheries and sustainable development, but they are also very useful for large scale applications such as urban and infrastructure planning. This progress is accompanied by two other technological revolutions: computer technology and telecommuncation in general, and more specifically the rapid growth of the Internet and its use. These developments are still rapidly expanding.
From the non-technological point of view, we may witness that the needs of society are dramatically changing. This is because for many decades, an intensifying process of exploitation of the earth has been in progress. Today land is not only a source of wealth, as it was up to the 18th century, but also a commodity and a scarce community resource with environmental and social considerations tempering the historic economic or land market drive (Ting and Williamson, 1999). As a result, a strong intensification of land use occurs, with even multi-purpose use of the land and the sea, with as an arbitrary example precision farming. These developments induce the need for proper management, increased monitoring, and planning at the square metre level. Indeed, recent times have shown a multitudinous, sometimes tremendous, expansion in many aspects of our being on earth. When making a comprehensive, non-limited list of phenomena demonstrating massive expansion over the last Century, it would include: world population, mobility, local conflicts, size and number of mega-cities, communication, food production, energy consumption, exploration of natural resources and the sea area, and use of outer space. We may witness that because of the above massive expansion, the need for geo-data is steadily growing. Because of the peculiar need from society, we may readily expect that the emerging technologies will continue to have a huge impact on the way we collect, we access and we use geo-information.
As a consequence of the above developments, awareness is growing at many organisations, institutes, the private sector and citizens for the need of a national wide or even (sub)continental wide GII. The key to understand the impact of the evolving GII is to recognise that the relationships humankind has with respect to earth are rapidly changing. We have a strong awareness of the increasing pressure we are bringing to bear upon the environment. We are deeply convinced that we have to take care of the earth, because we have the technology to destroy the weak balances created through millions of years of evolution. This is a brand new paradigm, never before seen in history. As a result, we want to monitor and manage environmental processes and the effects of human activity on these processes.
Geo-Information Infrastructure Issues
This part of the article lists the main issues which may arise when one wants to establish a nationwide or even (sub)continental wide Geo-Information Infrastructure. First of all, we have a look at the users of geo-information (Section A). Their role is central and essential. Next, we have a look at the group of geo-information producers, which is becoming increasingly heterogeneous (Section B). Does the increase of accuracy and level of detail of the wide variety of geo-data products, emerged from a heterogeneous group of manufacturers, accordingly mean that the users are better served? In Section C we show that this is not necessarily so and that the emergence of proper geo-data products is crucial. Because it may be expected that the creation of a free-market place, regulated by legislation and controlled by government, provide the best conditions to arrive at greater use and better exploitation of existing geo-information, we pay also attention to the market place for geo-information (Section D). At marketplaces, producers and consumers of commodities come together. Since money is the lubricant of any transaction, we spend a few words in Section E on the complicated issue of price setting. Key decision makers have a huge influence on the success or failure of launch and completion of a GII. Therefore, we consider in Section F necessary actions to be taken to convince politicians about the benefits to be gained from introducing a GII. The easy access of data and the need to solve complex problems, induce the need for merging of different geo-data sets stemming from different sources. Combination of data requires standards. Accordingly, a proper interoperability framework is needed, subject of Section G. The last two sections of this part of the paper, discuss governmental policy and the importance of establishing communication platforms.
A. Identification of the Targeted End-users
Keeping the overarching goal of the establishment of a GII in mind, i.e. encouraging greater use and better exploitation of existing geo-information, one of the inevitable consequences of introducing a GII will be that the number of users will increase and accordingly diverge. Many users, like utility companies, designers of infrastructure works, health and fire services, real estate agencies and retailers, need geo-information products to support them to remain competitive on the market segments at which they operate. Since the user is central in this respect, meeting the specific requirements of the users is a necessity. Many will be occasional users and all of them will put different requirements on the information they want to retrieve.
It has been acknowledged (Brox et al., 2000), that many users are often not easily to satisfy. The one wants to have little detail while for the other the level of resolution appears to be insufficient. Understanding the user will give producers an idea about the alternative possibilities for their datasets (Krek & Frank, 1999). The increase of a diverging users group requires therefore the setting up of value-added services, which transfer the raw geo-data provided by the producers, to customised geo-information, in order to satisfy the wide variety of users. Before value-added services can be created, it is necessary that the targeted end-users have been identified, that the requirements they put on the data products and services are known, and that their experience, skills and system configurations have been recognised.
B. Heterogeneous Producers Group
Traditionally, geo-information has been produced by governmental organisations, such as National Mapping Agencies, which may have in some countries already a history of hundreds of years. In the past governmental agencies were also the main consumers of geo-information. The strong centralisation of the production of geo-information resulted in rather uniform but also rigid products. The provided services did usually not exceed the delivery of a very limited number of maps. Today, as a result of privatisation and market liberalisation the main difference when comparing now with the previous era is that geo-information is now produced and maintained by companies who want to make a living out of it, whilst in the past production was mainly financed by tax payers money. In addition, because of the digital representation of the data, the ease of digital processing, and the strong increase of different sensor types, a plethora of geo-data types and formats are being offered to consumers by a group of producers which is becoming increasingly heterogeneous. As a result, National Mapping Agencies have lost their position of power and authority. They are now in competition with other geo-data providers, like the organisations, which produce high resolution satellite imagery or those who produce high-resolution digital elevation models, often collected with advanced data acquisition techniques, like laser altimetry.