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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
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.
3. Institutional arrangements
In traditional set-up each government agency collects data they need individually, which leads to costly duplication of data and inconsistency between data sources. Instead of that data collected by individual agencies and shared by various stakeholders avoid duplication of efforts and provide consistent data for decision-making. The Australian set-up comprises a network of agencies that maintain standards, policies and cooperative arrangements to allow the sharing and integration of a wide range of geographic information held by various government agencies. The Australian approach to spatial data management aims to improve access for various stakeholders such as government, academia, industries and citizens. An important feature of ANZLIC is that it represents an extensive community of coordination arrangements in the public sector. ANZLIC comprises ten members representing the Australian Government, the New Zealand Government and each of the State and Territory Governments of Australia, representing their spatial information co-ordinating structure. Some jurisdictions have formalised these arrangements by creating coordinating bodies. This paper review best practices adopted by these coordinating bodies, in particular some aspects of:
4. Regional Co-operation
The Commonwealth Government coordinates the spatial information activities of its agencies though the Commonwealth Spatial Data Council (CDSC), a member of ANZLIC, and more broadly though its lead agency for spatial information - AUSLIG. The ASDD is also hosted by the Commonwealth on behalf of ANZLIC and is managed by a group of Commonwealth agencies headed by AUSLIG. The Commonwealth’s spatial data policy consist of three tier coordination agreement (as illustrated in figure - 1) between senior executive policy group (CSDPE), a technical management committee (CSDMG) and a small project office (OSDM) for regional cooperation.
Figure - 1 Roles and responsibilities of Commonwealth agencies
The coperation mechanisms between the Commonwealth, States and territories creates croos-portfolio spatial data coordination artrangements between following key spatial custodians:
To ensure effective use of huge government resources, metadata is used to raise awareness by describing content, currency and availability of data. The data collected and maintained by custodians at local level under standard metadata guidelines, which provides compliance with regional, national and international standards. The custodians are responsible for ensuring the reliability of their data and services component including conformance testing, performance monitoring, node status reporting, data and metadata quality. Furthermore, it is a liability of node administrator to supply dataset description to all network clients including scale and resolution of the data at free cost after getting authority to publish from the data custodians.
The Western Australian Government coordinates the land and geographic information management of its agencies through the WA Land Information System (WALIS). The WALIS Metadata Policy has defined metadata requirements under Metadata Guidelines of ANZLIC for dataset’s inclusion in the WALIS Land Information Directory. ANZLIC metadata gudielines are available online for data custodians to assist them in creating, sorting and distributing core metadata. To ensure the benefits of sharing, cooperation and collaboration, Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) have been developed to identify commitment required and benefits received by sharing fundamental datasets in WALIS. The fundamental datasets and base level specifications in WALIS were identified and developed in 1995 with time-to-time additions since then. The fundamental datasets under Commonwealth spatial datasets are categorised under following subject areas:
5. ASDI implementation
The ASDI comprises the people, policies and technologies necessary to enable the use of spatially referenced data through all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors and academia. The spatial data infrastructure facilitates access to information using a minimum set of standards practices, protocols and specifications to promote the concept of a reliable and supporting environment of data sharing and exchange. The term “spatial data infrastructure’ is often used to denote the relevant base collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitates the access to availability of spatial data.
For the implementation of ASDI, Autralian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD) is one of the main component, which provides platform for integration of data from various sources. The ASDD is based on the ISO 23950 standards for search and retrival which offers interoperability with other networked directory system such as Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI). The systematic approach of spatial data directory specifies geographic extent of document collection, gives a name to that metadata repository and provide node connection details such as server hostname, server port and concern contact or maintaining organisation. At the end of June 2003, there were 25 repositiories within the ASDD with a total of 33,173 datasets for search and retrival. Following are some ASDD nodes that suggests that a divesiry of spatial data is avaialabel form ASDI:
The ASDD Quarterly report suggests that many poorly configured or invalid XML metadata creates configuration issues, however, they aim that in first stage all nodes should be able to respond to a request for XML, HTML or SUTRS (Simpel Unstructured text Record Syntext) syntax quaries. It is anticipated that later when all nodes have established a full-fledged document collection based on XML metadata (i.e. ANZMETA DTD V1.3+), users will have option to request XML record syntax via WWW browser or HTTP-239.50 gateway. At present the ASDD gateway simply transfer relavant quaries to concern nodes, and do not carry-out any traslation of quaries, however other gateways to the ASDD such as Australian Atlas requests structured quaries which are being translated and concerned metadata is presented in a consistent lay-out. This system architecture also offers interface of ASDD nodes to any other external gateways such as US Geospatial Data Clearinghouse and vice versa.
The Geoscience Australia publishes web statistics and repository records in its quarterly technical reports to monitor progress of ASDI. The table above provides statistical comparison between two quarters, which suggests increase in visitors and usage of repositories. The reliability of repositories shows encouraging results of average 96% accuracy of data with ten repositories having 100% valid records for the period 01-04-2003 to 30-06-2003. Furthermore, monitoring of statistics such as top 20 pages, top 20 visitor domain, etc. provides vital information for deciding ASDI’s future strategies. In order to meet cross-portfolio need for the creation of consistent and reliable socio-economic datasets three staged strategies are considered for the development of ASDI:
Short-term : To develop concordances between postcodes and the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) system to increase access to vast amount of socio-economic data.
Medium-term: To encourage agencies to geocode their data using more appropriate geographic tool such as the ABS National Location Index instead of using postcodes as defacto tool to aggregate micro level data.
Long-term: To adopt the geocoded National Address File (G-NAF) for coding all area and classifying data into any boundaries without the need for concordances.
The above strategies intents to coordinates various aspects of ASDI development discussed here:
In order to facilitate access to spatial data in a meaningful, consistent and efficient manner, the Australian government has adopted three online principles of –
Figure - 2 Basic Spatial Data Access Model
The basic access model proposed under the present policy is illustrated in figure - 2 that provides features such as “single point of entry”, choice for access methods, metadata search engine (ASDD), links to endorsed portals / Gateways, distributed spatial data holdings, support for e-commerce and value added-services.
5.2 System architecture
In 1999, AUSLIG envisaged a conceptual architecture for the ASDI clearinghouse by demonstrating feasibility of gaining on-line access to distributed spatial data held by several agencies. The ADSS architecture depicted in the figure - 3 provides access to WWW clients to ASDD datasets by creating interface between http and Z39.50 gateway. The Z39.50 server are linked to ASDD nodes and data custodians, which provides access to relational databases, XML documents and HTML text as metadata. The metadata documents also link to other network resources such as further HTML information, GIF locality, data demo, online database, down load facilities and order forms. Furthermore, other information gateways are also validated and linked in the system architecture by creating browser link to the Z39.50 server. This system architecture provide direct access to the Z39.50 server as a true Z39.50 client as well as other applications can also interrogate the Z39.50 server for various mapping layers and glean metadata to present information in a WWW mapping interface.
The search under Z39.50 protocol, confirming ISO 23950, broadcast quarry generated by the client to various nodes and generate interface with spatially located databases within ADSS and returns the set of results. The search protocol, Z39.50 (ISO 23950), developed in client-server architecture on the World Wide Web (WWW) provides a gateway to simple method of searching, discovery and retrieval of spatial data. The gateway creates interface between client and various nodes.
Figure – 3 System Architecture of ASDD
5.3 Spatial information supply chain
The Queensland Government has identified five factors; capture, data management & access, distribution, value-adding & data integration and business integration, required to develop service charters in order to provide clarity within the spatial information supply chain. The service charter initiatives already operate successfully in the UK, US, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Singapore and Australia have significant impact on NSDI with open and responsive data suppliers to enhance spatial information supply chain. The Queensland Spatial Information Infrastructure strategy (QSIIS) guidelines outline service charters binding organisations involved in Queensland Spatial Information Supply Chain to assist development of spatial information products and services. In order to achieve consensus the Queensland government has developed a template MOU under the QSIIS Business Framework to be executed between cooperating entities for maintaining uniformity in data licensing, copyrights and Intellectual Property rights. The QSIIS is adopted to support ASDI development in cooperation with all spheres of government and private sectors using three-pronged approach (figure - 4) to facilitate use and access to spatial information.
Figure – 4 Three pronged approach
The generalised model of spatial information supply chain in figure - 5 represents bubbles with different business roles. The different supply chain is a particular set of paths of business arrangements through such a network of relationships adding value to the raw data to transform into end products. The stage wise transformation of raw data from fundamental datasets with custodians to value integration at the stages of resellers, distribution brokers and end-users is illustrated in different coloured arrows. The supply chain approach helps participating organisations to understand the typical business framework for the value adding and resale of spatial information. Furthermore, it helps to assess impact of decision made at one point in the chain to other participants along the chain. The QSIIS aspires to achieve a collaborative business environment characterised by efficient supply chains that provide easy access to spatial data, value added products and services. The business integration process is facilitated by QSIIS information office with different sets of licenses that take care of intellectual property rights.
Figure - 5 Spatial Information Supply Chain
To enhance spatial information supply chain QSIIS has evolved a business framework taking care of business environment, principles, arrangements and licence agreements. The QSIIS Business environment supports spatial information supply chain and various actors using Custodian Licence, DVA Licence, VAR Licence, Distributor Licence and End-user Licence as illustrated in figure - 6. The reorganisation to integrate various actors in the effective supply of spatial information seek higher involvement of market developers in the business case to provide interoperability with least government intervention in the supply chain.
A recent Western Australian Government report suggests that 97.4% of users would adopt a single on-line discovery mechanism for all land administrative issues. The figure - 7 also indicates transition and effectiveness to search and access spatially referenced data from desktop PC to web-enabled wireless approaches. Giving due considerations to that ASDI focuses on on-line data inquiry and access mechanisms.
Figure - 6 Frameworks of licences
Figure - 7 Transition in ICTs
An Internet-based public access system is proposed and under development within the framework of the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure. The extension of ASDI for web services model includes services that support data, styling (rendering), place name finding (gazetteer), address look-up (geocoding), user authentication etc. using registries of metadata and services having standard data models, vocabularies and styling rules (figure – 8). Furthermore, the vision is to integrate remote sources to thin clients such as plain web-browser to thick desktop (GIS) application on a distributed network.
Figure - 8 Web service model of ASDI
5.4 Pricing policy
In the public interest, all fundamental datasets under ASDI are available at three pricing points: free, marginal cost of transfer and full cost of transfer using three forms of data delivery – online, packaged and customised. The pricing policy is premised on the view that all fundamental spatial data should be freely available at marginal cost of transfer in order to maximise the net economic and social benefits arising from its use. The policy envisaged that as datasets become accessible over the Internet the marginal cost of transfer becomes zero and therefore all fundamental spatial datasets will eventually be made available free of charge. Accordingly, the government is investing in necessary technology to accelerate the move to free, online data and to maximise benefits. Furthermore, the pricing policy specifies that distribution of fundamental spatial data as customised products should be made available at a price not exceeding the full cost of transfer. There is no restriction on commercial use or value-added activities related to these datasets except custodians right for restrictions or royalties for customised products.
For commercial and non-commercial use of spatial information in WALIS, recommendations given in the Treasury Pricing Review are adopted, which are summarised in figure – 9. The Treasury Pricing Review suggested that uniform application of one set of pricing principles would not maximise community benefits in distribution of spatial information, where many factors create heterogeneity. Hence, considering set-up characteristics of cooperative and quid pro quo arrangements some flexibility in determining prices of spatial information in accordance with the particular circumstances are allowed in WALIS.
Figure – 9 The pricing review Strategy
The Pricing and Transfer Policy in WALIS categories use of spatial information within government and outside government in two categories – commercial and non-commercial use based on these categorisation cost recovery mechanisms are targeted to recover production and maintenance cost, extraction and distribution cost or a commercial value. The extraction and distribution cost are based on the average cost of transfer, which include direct cost (for example: media, computer processing and freight) as well as an estimated pro rata share of all overhead costs in providing the distribution service (for example: labour, capital equipment, and promotional facilities). The innovative approach for pricing and data transfer policy in WALIS has suggested revision of extraction and distribution costs to include the cost of providing offices, facilities, equipments and consumables necessary for staff to perform their functions of delivering data to customers. The above pricing policy not only minimise transaction costs but also maximise net economic benefit by use of spatial datasets.
A successful approach taken by some Australian Open GIS Consortium (OGC) members is to pool their resources and direct R & D budget into collaborative OGC pilot projects and test bed projects. The estimates from the CANRI DIY manual suggests that for approximately $5,000-$10,000 for an agency can establish and populate an OGC-compliant web map service or an ASDD node assuming some computing infrastructure is already in place. Indicative costs for establishing ASDI web service catalogue would be in the order of $50,000 - $75,000. An integrated collaborative approach such as this indicates possibility to gain benefits from much larger projects with relatively minimal investment. Recent studies by Price Waterhouse have confirmed that land and geographic data usage in Australia has yielded substantial net gains in the order of $4.5 billion for the period of 1989-94.
6. The GSDI Intitiative
The sucessful initives of NSDI lead to the conception to establish a network of regional and national datasets at global level. The Golbal Spatial Data Inftastructure (GSDI) approach is a unified approach to integrate spatial data all over the world, where the power of geographic information in conjunction with web technologies and other ICTs allow integration of geospatial data from various sources to support decision-making. The GSDI encompasses the policies, organisational arrangements, data, technologies, standards, delivery mechanisms, and financial and human resources necessary to ensure information sharing amongst their global partners. The GSDI is evolving in cooperation with regional organisations in Asia/Pacific, Europe, Americas and Africa. In the Asia/Pacific region, nearly 55 countries are working on a single platform called the Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific (PCGIAP). However, there are number of issues involved in integrating geospatial data from these organisations. The case of Australia and the PCGIAP suggests that shared experience of cooperation generate synergy required to achieve basic aim of the GSDI.
7. The emerging strategy for NSDI development
The arrangements to facilitate technical feasibility of NSDI suggest that technology has not been the inhibitor but evolution of government mechanisms to provide information to the end-users has been a problem. Therefore, there is a need to consider public-private cooperation to envisage business working model of NSDI in order to enhance overall economic growth as shown in figure - 10. The business model of NSDI in Australia has envisioned large royalties back to government and funding for the development of ASDI. The public-private business model of NSDI advocated here provides affordable and accessible spatial data considering private sector as catalyst for NSDI development and economic growth.
Figure – 10 Role of private sector in NSDI
To reconcile various NSDI development and management approaches discussed in this paper following stage-wise implementation plan is suggested. The emerging spatial data access model suggested here based-on ASDI and regional cooperation is depicted in figure - 11.
Figure – 11 Emerging spatial data access model
The model suggested here address to institutional arrangements by identifying roles and responsibilities of participants in regional cooperation. There is a need to tackle various issues of transfer protocol, format specification, licensing, copyrights, intellectual property rights in the delivery and distribution of spatial data in a collaborative approach. The identification of fundamental datasets in collaborative approach should consider standard spatial data framework and metadata directory to overcome sharing and interoperability issues. The distributed network of NSDI should be advocated using on-line data directories and value-added services by employing various ICTs to give shape to the first version of NSDI business model. A effective business model should provide easy, efficient and economic access to spatial information to citizens and industry through various gateways. The appreciation of such initiatives can only be realised when one considers web-mapping and customised data extraction techniques through on-line services in e-governance environment. There is an immense potential in integration of regional and national endeavours in this direction under the GSDI framework that provides valuable economic benefits.
8. Conclusion
Sustainable development is a process that effectively incorporates economic, social, political, environmental and resource factors into decision-making. The potential role of Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can only be realised when the community has easy, efficient and equitable access to spatial data in an environment where technology requirements, data formats, institutional arrangements and contractual conditions between them do not inhibit its use. The challenges of balancing these competing tensions in decision-making require a sound network, National Spatial Data infrastructure (NSDI); comprising people, technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitates access to availability of spatial referenced data through all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors and academia.
However, the development of NSDI faces significant impediments, including the number of jurisdictions and associated differences in statutory and institutional structures, particularly in data quality, access and custodianship standards, pricing and licensing. The Australian case study demonstrated one of the worlds best internet based technical architecture for regional cooperation built on existing components, metadata standards, e-government services, best practice approach and business priorities. This paper advocates best practices and innovative approaches for the development of second generation NSDI and regional cooperation to support development of GSDI. In order to achieve sustainable development of GSDI, it is recommended that NSDI projects should be tailored employing such enabling approaches to supply quality spatially referenced information that is current, complete, accurate, affordable, accessible and integratable.
References:
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.
3. Institutional arrangements
In traditional set-up each government agency collects data they need individually, which leads to costly duplication of data and inconsistency between data sources. Instead of that data collected by individual agencies and shared by various stakeholders avoid duplication of efforts and provide consistent data for decision-making. The Australian set-up comprises a network of agencies that maintain standards, policies and cooperative arrangements to allow the sharing and integration of a wide range of geographic information held by various government agencies. The Australian approach to spatial data management aims to improve access for various stakeholders such as government, academia, industries and citizens. An important feature of ANZLIC is that it represents an extensive community of coordination arrangements in the public sector. ANZLIC comprises ten members representing the Australian Government, the New Zealand Government and each of the State and Territory Governments of Australia, representing their spatial information co-ordinating structure. Some jurisdictions have formalised these arrangements by creating coordinating bodies. This paper review best practices adopted by these coordinating bodies, in particular some aspects of:
- the Western Australia Land Information System (WALIS);
- the Queensland Spatial Information Infrastructure Council (QSIIC); and
- the Commonwealth Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM).
4. Regional Co-operation
The Commonwealth Government coordinates the spatial information activities of its agencies though the Commonwealth Spatial Data Council (CDSC), a member of ANZLIC, and more broadly though its lead agency for spatial information - AUSLIG. The ASDD is also hosted by the Commonwealth on behalf of ANZLIC and is managed by a group of Commonwealth agencies headed by AUSLIG. The Commonwealth’s spatial data policy consist of three tier coordination agreement (as illustrated in figure - 1) between senior executive policy group (CSDPE), a technical management committee (CSDMG) and a small project office (OSDM) for regional cooperation.
Figure - 1 Roles and responsibilities of Commonwealth agencies
The coperation mechanisms between the Commonwealth, States and territories creates croos-portfolio spatial data coordination artrangements between following key spatial custodians:
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To ensure effective use of huge government resources, metadata is used to raise awareness by describing content, currency and availability of data. The data collected and maintained by custodians at local level under standard metadata guidelines, which provides compliance with regional, national and international standards. The custodians are responsible for ensuring the reliability of their data and services component including conformance testing, performance monitoring, node status reporting, data and metadata quality. Furthermore, it is a liability of node administrator to supply dataset description to all network clients including scale and resolution of the data at free cost after getting authority to publish from the data custodians.
The Western Australian Government coordinates the land and geographic information management of its agencies through the WA Land Information System (WALIS). The WALIS Metadata Policy has defined metadata requirements under Metadata Guidelines of ANZLIC for dataset’s inclusion in the WALIS Land Information Directory. ANZLIC metadata gudielines are available online for data custodians to assist them in creating, sorting and distributing core metadata. To ensure the benefits of sharing, cooperation and collaboration, Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) have been developed to identify commitment required and benefits received by sharing fundamental datasets in WALIS. The fundamental datasets and base level specifications in WALIS were identified and developed in 1995 with time-to-time additions since then. The fundamental datasets under Commonwealth spatial datasets are categorised under following subject areas:
- Geodetic control
- Earth’s surface / Elevation
- Property
- Administration
- Natural Environment
- Transportation
- Socio-economic
- Built Environment
- manage geospatial dataset descriptions that comply with the ANZLIC Metadata Guidelines and the most recent ANZMETA XML Document Type Definition (DTD),
- produce XML, HTML and SUTRS formats for the metadata records,
- regularly update the metadata entries,
- regularly update to the latest versions of software as suggested by the ASDD gateway manager,
- update to the most recent metadata standards,
- make metadata entries in the ASDD for all spatial records, and
- make metadata entries in the ASDD for new datasets as soon as possible after the datasets have been created.
5. ASDI implementation
The ASDI comprises the people, policies and technologies necessary to enable the use of spatially referenced data through all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors and academia. The spatial data infrastructure facilitates access to information using a minimum set of standards practices, protocols and specifications to promote the concept of a reliable and supporting environment of data sharing and exchange. The term “spatial data infrastructure’ is often used to denote the relevant base collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitates the access to availability of spatial data.
For the implementation of ASDI, Autralian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD) is one of the main component, which provides platform for integration of data from various sources. The ASDD is based on the ISO 23950 standards for search and retrival which offers interoperability with other networked directory system such as Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI). The systematic approach of spatial data directory specifies geographic extent of document collection, gives a name to that metadata repository and provide node connection details such as server hostname, server port and concern contact or maintaining organisation. At the end of June 2003, there were 25 repositiories within the ASDD with a total of 33,173 datasets for search and retrival. Following are some ASDD nodes that suggests that a divesiry of spatial data is avaialabel form ASDI:
- ACT Spatial Data Directory
- Airesearch Mapping Aerial Photo Catalogue
- Australian Antarctic Data Centre
- Australian Hydrographic Service - Product Metadata
- Australian Oceanographic Data Centre
- BRS and Australian Natural Resources Data Library (ANRDL)
- Bureau of Meteorology
- CSIRO Marine Research
- EA Environmental Data Directory (Green Pages)
- Geoscience Australia (formerly AGSO)
- Geoscience Australia - National Mapping Division (formerly AUSLIG)
- IndexGeo Pty Ltd - Eco Companion catalogue
- National Oceans Office
- NSW Natural Resources Data Directory
- NT Spatial Data Directory
- Other Commonwealth Agencies (hosted by BRS)
- Qld Spatial Data (QSIIS)
- Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines Spatial Data
- Queensland Spatial Data
- South Australian Spatial Information Directory
- Tasmanian Spatial Data Directory
- Victorian Spatial Data Directory
- WALIS Interragator - Natural Resource Monitoring
- WALIS Interragator-Aerial Photography
- WALIS Interragator-Bibliographic Data
- WALIS Interragator-Environmental Impact Statements
- WALIS Interragator-Spatial Data
| Repository statistics based on Gateway reports August 2003 | ||||||
| Repository Name | Basic Gateway | Power Gateway | ||||
| Search Occurrence | Total hits | % Successful search | Search Occurrence | Total hits | % Successful search | |
| ACT Spatial Data Directory | 899 | 1626 | 17.58 | 146 | 526 | 6.85 |
| Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AADC) | 850 | 29779 | 23.06 | 146 | 1675 | 22.60 |
| Australian Hydrographic Service - Product Metadata | 885 | 50779 | 13.45 | 149 | 5654 | 20.13 |
| Australian Oceanographic Data Centre | 857 | 67 | 5.83 | 146 | 8 | 1.37 |
| BRS and Australian Natural Resources Data Library (ANRDL) | 965 | 15495 | 31.92 | 159 | 5044 | 30.19 |
| Bureau of Meteorology | 903 | 202 | 8.42 | 161 | 118 | 17.39 |
| CSIRO Marine Research | 876 | 67059 | 20.09 | 169 | 11339 | 24.26 |
| EA Environmental Data Directory | 953 | 5066 | 26.97 | 153 | 2740 | 33.33 |
| Geoscience Australia (formerly AGSO) | 1023 | 13831 | 22.29 | 156 | 4377 | 20.51 |
| Geoscience Australia - National Mapping Division (formerly AUSLIG) | 1040 | 1790 | 24.71 | 158 | 1702 | 29.11 |
| IndexGeo Pty Ltd - Eco Companion catalogue | 866 | 289 | 10.85 | 144 | 196 | 18.06 |
| NSW Natural Resources Data Directory | 914 | 149636 | 33.70 | 151 | 31863 | 29.80 |
| NT Spatial Data Directory | 879 | 21306 | 42.89 | 149 | 1619 | 22.15 |
| National Oceans Office | 863 | 1189 | 12.86 | 155 | 653 | 23.23 |
| Other Commonwealth Agencies (hosted by BRS) | 926 | 1187 | 15.98 | 146 | 859 | 23.29 |
| Qld Spatial Data (QSIIS) | 985 | 40123 | 37.97 | 157 | 10071 | 36.31 |
| Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines Spatial Data | 995 | 334451 | 30.35 | 150 | 41668 | 16.00 |
| South Australian Spatial Information Directory | 1100 | 8635 | 21.64 | 164 | 3982 | 20.73 |
| Tasmanian Spatial Data Directory | 919 | 1410 | 3.16 | 148 | 12 | 2.70 |
| Victorian Spatial Data Directory | 884 | 10135 | 24.55 | 148 | 6714 | 20.95 |
| WALIS Interragator-Aerial Photography | 884 | 800 | 110.09 | 151 | 56125 | 17.88 |
| WALIS Interragator-Bibliographic Data | 880 | 57261 | 17.73 | 149 | 6692 | 17.45 |
| WALIS Interragator-Environmental Impact Statements | 867 | 12578 | 23.76 | 154 | 7138 | 16.88 |
| WALIS Interragator-Natural Resource Monitoring | 871 | 13501 | 18.48 | 153 | 186 | 11.76 |
| WALIS Interragator-Spatial Data | 936 | 25952 | 33.97 | 169 | 14151 | 39.05 |
| Notes:1. Search occurance is total number of searches conducted at each node including successful and failed searches. 2. Total hits is accumulation of all matches to all searches at that node.3. Successful search is a search succeeded and one or more metadata records were found to match | ||||||
The ASDD Quarterly report suggests that many poorly configured or invalid XML metadata creates configuration issues, however, they aim that in first stage all nodes should be able to respond to a request for XML, HTML or SUTRS (Simpel Unstructured text Record Syntext) syntax quaries. It is anticipated that later when all nodes have established a full-fledged document collection based on XML metadata (i.e. ANZMETA DTD V1.3+), users will have option to request XML record syntax via WWW browser or HTTP-239.50 gateway. At present the ASDD gateway simply transfer relavant quaries to concern nodes, and do not carry-out any traslation of quaries, however other gateways to the ASDD such as Australian Atlas requests structured quaries which are being translated and concerned metadata is presented in a consistent lay-out. This system architecture also offers interface of ASDD nodes to any other external gateways such as US Geospatial Data Clearinghouse and vice versa.
| Criteria | This Quarter | Last Quarter |
| Starting day: | 01-04-2003 | 01-01-2003 |
| Ending day: | 31-06-2003 | 30-06-2003 |
| Total page views (Access of a page as a whole e.g. html): | 82,697 | 71,594 |
| Total visitors: | 5,706 | 4,770 |
| Total days covered: | 91 | 89 |
| Average page views per day: | 908 | 804 |
| Average visitors per day: | 108 | 94 |
The Geoscience Australia publishes web statistics and repository records in its quarterly technical reports to monitor progress of ASDI. The table above provides statistical comparison between two quarters, which suggests increase in visitors and usage of repositories. The reliability of repositories shows encouraging results of average 96% accuracy of data with ten repositories having 100% valid records for the period 01-04-2003 to 30-06-2003. Furthermore, monitoring of statistics such as top 20 pages, top 20 visitor domain, etc. provides vital information for deciding ASDI’s future strategies. In order to meet cross-portfolio need for the creation of consistent and reliable socio-economic datasets three staged strategies are considered for the development of ASDI:
Short-term : To develop concordances between postcodes and the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) system to increase access to vast amount of socio-economic data.
Medium-term: To encourage agencies to geocode their data using more appropriate geographic tool such as the ABS National Location Index instead of using postcodes as defacto tool to aggregate micro level data.
Long-term: To adopt the geocoded National Address File (G-NAF) for coding all area and classifying data into any boundaries without the need for concordances.
The above strategies intents to coordinates various aspects of ASDI development discussed here:
- Spatial data ccess model
- System architecture
- Spatial information supply chain
- Pricing policy
In order to facilitate access to spatial data in a meaningful, consistent and efficient manner, the Australian government has adopted three online principles of –
- “Integrated service delivery”
- “Whole of government”, and
- “Single point entry”
Figure - 2 Basic Spatial Data Access Model
The basic access model proposed under the present policy is illustrated in figure - 2 that provides features such as “single point of entry”, choice for access methods, metadata search engine (ASDD), links to endorsed portals / Gateways, distributed spatial data holdings, support for e-commerce and value added-services.
5.2 System architecture
In 1999, AUSLIG envisaged a conceptual architecture for the ASDI clearinghouse by demonstrating feasibility of gaining on-line access to distributed spatial data held by several agencies. The ADSS architecture depicted in the figure - 3 provides access to WWW clients to ASDD datasets by creating interface between http and Z39.50 gateway. The Z39.50 server are linked to ASDD nodes and data custodians, which provides access to relational databases, XML documents and HTML text as metadata. The metadata documents also link to other network resources such as further HTML information, GIF locality, data demo, online database, down load facilities and order forms. Furthermore, other information gateways are also validated and linked in the system architecture by creating browser link to the Z39.50 server. This system architecture provide direct access to the Z39.50 server as a true Z39.50 client as well as other applications can also interrogate the Z39.50 server for various mapping layers and glean metadata to present information in a WWW mapping interface.
The search under Z39.50 protocol, confirming ISO 23950, broadcast quarry generated by the client to various nodes and generate interface with spatially located databases within ADSS and returns the set of results. The search protocol, Z39.50 (ISO 23950), developed in client-server architecture on the World Wide Web (WWW) provides a gateway to simple method of searching, discovery and retrieval of spatial data. The gateway creates interface between client and various nodes.
Figure – 3 System Architecture of ASDD
5.3 Spatial information supply chain
The Queensland Government has identified five factors; capture, data management & access, distribution, value-adding & data integration and business integration, required to develop service charters in order to provide clarity within the spatial information supply chain. The service charter initiatives already operate successfully in the UK, US, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Singapore and Australia have significant impact on NSDI with open and responsive data suppliers to enhance spatial information supply chain. The Queensland Spatial Information Infrastructure strategy (QSIIS) guidelines outline service charters binding organisations involved in Queensland Spatial Information Supply Chain to assist development of spatial information products and services. In order to achieve consensus the Queensland government has developed a template MOU under the QSIIS Business Framework to be executed between cooperating entities for maintaining uniformity in data licensing, copyrights and Intellectual Property rights. The QSIIS is adopted to support ASDI development in cooperation with all spheres of government and private sectors using three-pronged approach (figure - 4) to facilitate use and access to spatial information.
Figure – 4 Three pronged approach
The generalised model of spatial information supply chain in figure - 5 represents bubbles with different business roles. The different supply chain is a particular set of paths of business arrangements through such a network of relationships adding value to the raw data to transform into end products. The stage wise transformation of raw data from fundamental datasets with custodians to value integration at the stages of resellers, distribution brokers and end-users is illustrated in different coloured arrows. The supply chain approach helps participating organisations to understand the typical business framework for the value adding and resale of spatial information. Furthermore, it helps to assess impact of decision made at one point in the chain to other participants along the chain. The QSIIS aspires to achieve a collaborative business environment characterised by efficient supply chains that provide easy access to spatial data, value added products and services. The business integration process is facilitated by QSIIS information office with different sets of licenses that take care of intellectual property rights.
Figure - 5 Spatial Information Supply Chain
To enhance spatial information supply chain QSIIS has evolved a business framework taking care of business environment, principles, arrangements and licence agreements. The QSIIS Business environment supports spatial information supply chain and various actors using Custodian Licence, DVA Licence, VAR Licence, Distributor Licence and End-user Licence as illustrated in figure - 6. The reorganisation to integrate various actors in the effective supply of spatial information seek higher involvement of market developers in the business case to provide interoperability with least government intervention in the supply chain.
A recent Western Australian Government report suggests that 97.4% of users would adopt a single on-line discovery mechanism for all land administrative issues. The figure - 7 also indicates transition and effectiveness to search and access spatially referenced data from desktop PC to web-enabled wireless approaches. Giving due considerations to that ASDI focuses on on-line data inquiry and access mechanisms.
Figure - 6 Frameworks of licences
Figure - 7 Transition in ICTs
An Internet-based public access system is proposed and under development within the framework of the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure. The extension of ASDI for web services model includes services that support data, styling (rendering), place name finding (gazetteer), address look-up (geocoding), user authentication etc. using registries of metadata and services having standard data models, vocabularies and styling rules (figure – 8). Furthermore, the vision is to integrate remote sources to thin clients such as plain web-browser to thick desktop (GIS) application on a distributed network.
Figure - 8 Web service model of ASDI
5.4 Pricing policy
In the public interest, all fundamental datasets under ASDI are available at three pricing points: free, marginal cost of transfer and full cost of transfer using three forms of data delivery – online, packaged and customised. The pricing policy is premised on the view that all fundamental spatial data should be freely available at marginal cost of transfer in order to maximise the net economic and social benefits arising from its use. The policy envisaged that as datasets become accessible over the Internet the marginal cost of transfer becomes zero and therefore all fundamental spatial datasets will eventually be made available free of charge. Accordingly, the government is investing in necessary technology to accelerate the move to free, online data and to maximise benefits. Furthermore, the pricing policy specifies that distribution of fundamental spatial data as customised products should be made available at a price not exceeding the full cost of transfer. There is no restriction on commercial use or value-added activities related to these datasets except custodians right for restrictions or royalties for customised products.
For commercial and non-commercial use of spatial information in WALIS, recommendations given in the Treasury Pricing Review are adopted, which are summarised in figure – 9. The Treasury Pricing Review suggested that uniform application of one set of pricing principles would not maximise community benefits in distribution of spatial information, where many factors create heterogeneity. Hence, considering set-up characteristics of cooperative and quid pro quo arrangements some flexibility in determining prices of spatial information in accordance with the particular circumstances are allowed in WALIS.
Figure – 9 The pricing review Strategy
The Pricing and Transfer Policy in WALIS categories use of spatial information within government and outside government in two categories – commercial and non-commercial use based on these categorisation cost recovery mechanisms are targeted to recover production and maintenance cost, extraction and distribution cost or a commercial value. The extraction and distribution cost are based on the average cost of transfer, which include direct cost (for example: media, computer processing and freight) as well as an estimated pro rata share of all overhead costs in providing the distribution service (for example: labour, capital equipment, and promotional facilities). The innovative approach for pricing and data transfer policy in WALIS has suggested revision of extraction and distribution costs to include the cost of providing offices, facilities, equipments and consumables necessary for staff to perform their functions of delivering data to customers. The above pricing policy not only minimise transaction costs but also maximise net economic benefit by use of spatial datasets.
A successful approach taken by some Australian Open GIS Consortium (OGC) members is to pool their resources and direct R & D budget into collaborative OGC pilot projects and test bed projects. The estimates from the CANRI DIY manual suggests that for approximately $5,000-$10,000 for an agency can establish and populate an OGC-compliant web map service or an ASDD node assuming some computing infrastructure is already in place. Indicative costs for establishing ASDI web service catalogue would be in the order of $50,000 - $75,000. An integrated collaborative approach such as this indicates possibility to gain benefits from much larger projects with relatively minimal investment. Recent studies by Price Waterhouse have confirmed that land and geographic data usage in Australia has yielded substantial net gains in the order of $4.5 billion for the period of 1989-94.
6. The GSDI Intitiative
The sucessful initives of NSDI lead to the conception to establish a network of regional and national datasets at global level. The Golbal Spatial Data Inftastructure (GSDI) approach is a unified approach to integrate spatial data all over the world, where the power of geographic information in conjunction with web technologies and other ICTs allow integration of geospatial data from various sources to support decision-making. The GSDI encompasses the policies, organisational arrangements, data, technologies, standards, delivery mechanisms, and financial and human resources necessary to ensure information sharing amongst their global partners. The GSDI is evolving in cooperation with regional organisations in Asia/Pacific, Europe, Americas and Africa. In the Asia/Pacific region, nearly 55 countries are working on a single platform called the Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific (PCGIAP). However, there are number of issues involved in integrating geospatial data from these organisations. The case of Australia and the PCGIAP suggests that shared experience of cooperation generate synergy required to achieve basic aim of the GSDI.
7. The emerging strategy for NSDI development
The arrangements to facilitate technical feasibility of NSDI suggest that technology has not been the inhibitor but evolution of government mechanisms to provide information to the end-users has been a problem. Therefore, there is a need to consider public-private cooperation to envisage business working model of NSDI in order to enhance overall economic growth as shown in figure - 10. The business model of NSDI in Australia has envisioned large royalties back to government and funding for the development of ASDI. The public-private business model of NSDI advocated here provides affordable and accessible spatial data considering private sector as catalyst for NSDI development and economic growth.
Figure – 10 Role of private sector in NSDI
To reconcile various NSDI development and management approaches discussed in this paper following stage-wise implementation plan is suggested. The emerging spatial data access model suggested here based-on ASDI and regional cooperation is depicted in figure - 11.
Figure – 11 Emerging spatial data access model
The model suggested here address to institutional arrangements by identifying roles and responsibilities of participants in regional cooperation. There is a need to tackle various issues of transfer protocol, format specification, licensing, copyrights, intellectual property rights in the delivery and distribution of spatial data in a collaborative approach. The identification of fundamental datasets in collaborative approach should consider standard spatial data framework and metadata directory to overcome sharing and interoperability issues. The distributed network of NSDI should be advocated using on-line data directories and value-added services by employing various ICTs to give shape to the first version of NSDI business model. A effective business model should provide easy, efficient and economic access to spatial information to citizens and industry through various gateways. The appreciation of such initiatives can only be realised when one considers web-mapping and customised data extraction techniques through on-line services in e-governance environment. There is an immense potential in integration of regional and national endeavours in this direction under the GSDI framework that provides valuable economic benefits.
8. Conclusion
Sustainable development is a process that effectively incorporates economic, social, political, environmental and resource factors into decision-making. The potential role of Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can only be realised when the community has easy, efficient and equitable access to spatial data in an environment where technology requirements, data formats, institutional arrangements and contractual conditions between them do not inhibit its use. The challenges of balancing these competing tensions in decision-making require a sound network, National Spatial Data infrastructure (NSDI); comprising people, technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitates access to availability of spatial referenced data through all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors and academia.
However, the development of NSDI faces significant impediments, including the number of jurisdictions and associated differences in statutory and institutional structures, particularly in data quality, access and custodianship standards, pricing and licensing. The Australian case study demonstrated one of the worlds best internet based technical architecture for regional cooperation built on existing components, metadata standards, e-government services, best practice approach and business priorities. This paper advocates best practices and innovative approaches for the development of second generation NSDI and regional cooperation to support development of GSDI. In order to achieve sustainable development of GSDI, it is recommended that NSDI projects should be tailored employing such enabling approaches to supply quality spatially referenced information that is current, complete, accurate, affordable, accessible and integratable.
References:
- Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) – www.anzlic.org.au/
- Australian Spatial Data infrastructure – www.auslig.gov.au/asdi/index.htm
- Australian Surveying and Land Information Group (AUSLIG) – www.auslig.gov.au/welcome.htm
- Commonwealth Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM) – www.osdm.gov.au/
- Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) – www.gsdi.org/
- Queensland Spatial Information Infrastructure Council (QSIIC) – www.qsiis.qld.gov.au/
- Western Australian Land Information System (WALIS) – www.walis.wa.gov.au/