Indian |
International |
Geographic Information Infrastructure
The Role of NSDI and Regional Cooperation for Sustainable GSDI – A Case Study of Australia
 Hetal A. Patel B. Tech. (Construction Technology) – CEPT, Ahmedabad M. Tech. (Urban Planning) – CEPT, Ahmedabad, Leicester School of Architecture De Montfort University Leicester, UK LE4 9BH Telephone: +91(0) 79 7485454 E-mail: hetaluk@yahoo.com 1. Introduction Geography serves as the common thread to address diverse issues. The emergence of spatial attribute of Geographic Information (GI) has increased its use for analysis, co-ordination of interventions and evaluation of impacts of policies at regional scale. The potential of spatial dimension of GI has opened-up increasing interest to access users need, formulate policy, monitor its implementation and evaluate its effectiveness. The increasing demand for better GI looks for quality, certification, consistency, harmonisation, interoperability and real-time attributes. The recognition of importance of GI has developed hand in hand with the increasing concern for sustainable development. In the light of sustainability, spatially referenced GI needs indicators such as environmental pressure, landscape diversity and strategic impact assessment. The increased emphasis on sustainability has also lead to efforts to assess the cumulative impacts of different sectoral policies in an integrated way (agriculture, transport and regional development, environment). This has promoted further the importance of accurate information and indicators, including Geographic Information for sustainable development. To overcome sustainability issues, regional co-operation and global collaboration are necessary for the future well being. In recognition of this, many countries have been developing national (or regional) spatial data infrastructure to exploit social and economic values of GI. The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) programmes are undergoing in around 50 nations and the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) initiative began with a conference in Germany in 1996 to work in the same direction. International market studies indicate that global expenditure on spatial information is in the order of estimated US$17 billion per annum and growing at a rate of 20%. The discussion above indicates that NSDI initiatives provide access to readily available and useable geographic information as a basis for sustainable management and development and thus hold vital importance. 2. The case study of Australia Historically, recognition of the importance of spatial information as a discrete economic input occurred in academia in 1950s and moved to public sector in the 1060s. To achieve cohesive ubiquitous spatial data, jurisdictions individually initiated coordination employing various mechanisms under the guidance of their lead agencies, which later reflected in the `Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure’ (ASDI). The Australia New Zealand Land Information Council’s (ANZLIC) vision is that economic growth, and social and environmental interests are underpinned by quality spatially referenced information. With this goal the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI) evolved from the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment. The ASDI comprises of people, policies and technologies necessary to enable the use of spatially referenced data through all levels of government, the private sector and non-profit sectors and academia. The underlying philosophy of ASDI development includes many innovative models, ideology, concepts and systematic approaches that provide driving force to the development. To mention some they are, interoperability specifications, cost/benefit of pursuing ISO standards, data availability and access guidelines, common vocabulary of terms, user need survey, governance model to suit public & private sector, etc. Adoption of these tactics and testbed approach to check its viability accelerates progress down to the desired goals of ASDI. The ANZLIC Committee recognises that some elements of ASDI are already developed, including policies, and guidelines, metadata records and institutional arrangements, however, the committee has a core role to play to improve institutional arrangements in support of ASDI. Page 1 of 11
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