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Considerations for Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
Markus Guretzki
Managing Director
Phoenics GmbH,
Germany
Email: mguretzki@phoenics.de
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) in the broader sense is the technology, policies, standards, and human resources necessary to acquire, process, store, distribute, and improve the utilisation of geospatial data of an organisation, or nation. SDI is the set of data, technologies, skills, and policies that gives users access to geographic information according to their requirements.
In the narrower sense, SDI is a geoportal (or Web Map Server) developed as a one-stop Inernet access point to geodata stored in many different data servers distributed across an organisation‘s intranet, or the Internet. Generally, ‘map images‘ (e.g. jgp, png, or tiff images) are distributed across the network, not the actual data itself.
The objective of developing SDI is to facilitate the use of geospatial information, e.g. in disaster management, defence, environmental protection, planning, commercial (e-)business, e-government, and by society as a whole.
Most nations already have an SDI of some form operational today, with varying degrees of sophistication and effectiveness. This paper summarises considerations for SDI with a special focus on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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