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Capacity building for geo-information provision: A public goods perspective
Yola Georgiadou and Richard Groot
International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
Enschede, The Netherlands
6th Seminar on GIS and Developing Countries, May 15-18, 2002
Abstract
The knowledge exchange activities of ITC aim primarily at capacity building and
institutional development in countries that are technologically and economically less
developed. These activities address problem areas (or application domains), - e.g.
improving multifunctional use of space, effective water management, food security,
disaster preparedness, global change monitoring, the environment etc, - where GI Science
and Earth Observation can play an essential role in finding solutions.
These problem areas are mostly regional and global in terms of their spatial spill-over
range. In fact, it is due to advances in Earth Observation technology, that they are now
recognized by public goods theorists and international development agencies as final,
regional and global public goods (and bads). Regional and global Geospatial Data
Infrastructures (GDI) are the intermediate mechanisms underpinning the supply of
regional and global final goods. GDIs encompass various components – fundamental
data and technological, institutional, organizational, economic resources etc– that also
exhibit public goods characteristics to a larger or lesser extent.
In this paper, we utilize recent advances in public goods theory in order to characterize
GDI components in terms of their nature, their spatial spill-over range (regional, global),
as well as in terms of their aggregation mechanisms (supply). We show that GDI
fundamental data and resources, seen through the lens of recent developments in regional
(and global) public goods theory, may be considered intermediate regional (and global)
public goods, albeit with variable publicness in consumption, in provision and in
distribution of benefits.
We argue that this taxonomy can help in engineering advocacy action and in developing
policy – e.g. through national, regional & global geographic associations - for the supply
of regional (and global) fundamental data and GDI technological resources with more
‘publicness in consumption’. We show that individual, organizational and institutional
capacity building is the only aggregation mechanism for the supply of ‘weakest link’-
type goods such as GDI institutional, organizational and human resources. Capacity
building underpinned by strong geographic associations can maximize publicness in
provision and in the distribution of benefits of GDI fundamental data and GDI
technological resources.
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