SDI Convergence - Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association

changes that have taken place in the notion of a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) over
the last 15 years. He addresses several challenges facing SDI implementation. He
questions the 'one size fits all' approach, which is utilised in many SDI initiatives.
Where governance activities are composed of specialised task-specific jurisdictions,
SDI implementation is likely to stick to the perception of one relevant jurisdiction at
each level of the administrative hierarchy. The required flexibility to respond to new
needs and circumstances is lacking and Masser advocates that this is one of the future
challenges SDI implementation has to overcome.
Cooperation is very important for a successful SDI implementation. This is stressed by
Olof Olsson in Cooperation – a Key Factor for Sustainable Spatial Data Infrastructure.
He, however, also notices that little research explicitly focusing on cooperation in the
SDI domain has been accomplished. As a consequence, cooperation as a concept is
generally not fully understood within the SDI context. He also notes that the SDI community
does not necessarily have the best experts on organisational issues. In this respect
he argues that the SDI community should welcome those that are specialised in
cooperation to improve our understanding of cooperation as a critical component of an
SDI. He introduces the Talk, Decision and Action theory of Brunsson as a means that
may contribute to advancing our knowledge on cooperation in SDI.
COMMUNITY BRIDGING
In this part, three articles bridge the SDI community with other (SDI-) communities.
Sheelan Vaez, Abbas Rajabifard and Ian Williamson raise in Seamless SDI Model -
Bridging the Gap between Land and Marine Environments the issue of multiple SDIs
covering adjacent and sometimes overlapping areas. Although interaction between
these SDIs may be beneficial, currently they develop in isolation. The authors argue
that there is a need to create a seamless SDI model that bridges the gap between the
terrestrial and marine environments, creating a spatially enabled land-sea interface to
more effectively meet sustainable development objectives. The authors identify issues
and challenges that need to be overcome to converge terrestrial and marine SDIs.
Rohan Bennett and Abbas Rajabifard address in The RRR Toolbox: a Conceptual
Model for Improving Spatial Data Management in SDIs large-scale data such as built
environment information. The article assesses the applicability of the rights, restrictions
and responsibilities (RRR) Toolbox, a holistic framework for understanding, creating
and managing land interests to SDI. If a jurisdiction wishes to manage coherently all its
RRRs, then each of the eight components of the Toolbox needs to be addressed and
acted upon. Preliminary analysis suggests that seven of the eight RRR Toolbox principles
hold for SDI. The authors argue that SDI researchers and practitioners should
examine the requirements of Land Administration in terms of these seven principles, if
only to improve their knowledge and understanding of the RRR based datasets within
SDI. Their research suggests that the principles revealed in the RRR Toolbox are generic
enough to apply to many SDI initiatives.
And finally, in reverse, SDI theory is applied to catchment management in Building SDI
Bridges for Catchment Management by Dev Raj Paudyal, Kevin McDougall and Armando
Apan. A catchment can be defined as a natural collection area where all rainfall
and run-off water eventually flows to a creek, river, lake, ocean or into the groundwater
system. A reliable SDI is needed for appropriate decision making and conflict resolution
in catchment management. However, the integration of spatial data in such environments
has been problematic as the available spatial data often have different scale,
content and formats. One major cause is the community centricness of catchment
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