Policy/Research Forum - Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI )


André Streilein
Swisstopo
Switzerland





ABSTRACT
geo.admin.ch is the implementation and the portal to the federal spatial data infrastructure (FSDI) according to the Federal Act on Geoinformation. For the first time, federal spatial data can be accessed over central platform, main features are: Multilingual (five languages), fast and user friendly interface, single point of entry for all spatial data portals of the federal authorities of Switzerland, high performance of information retrieval, even at high loads. This could be achieved by a novel combination of an open source software framework with an innovative cloud computing architecture resulting in an attractive cost / benefit ratio. Existing spatial portals of the federal administration receive up to five times more visitors since the launch of geo.admin.ch since they are now linked. Usage of gov data could be leveraged. Awards: geo.admin.ch has been nominated for the Swiss Open Source Awards 2010 and won the quality competition "Excellency in public administration" 2010 in the category "eGovernment" and the EUROGI / ESDI-Net Award 2011 in the category technology. In 2012 geo.admin.ch has won the 2012 United Nations Public Service Award, 2nd place, in the category of “Advancing Knowledge Management in Government

1) Task
In Switzerland the Act on Federal Geoinformation regulates the access to public data. This act came into force on 1st July 2008. It provides the legal framework, for all activities relating to information about basic geodata of federal law and its exchange and use. “The purpose of this Act is to ensure that geodata relating to the territory of the Swiss Confederation is made available to the Federal, Cantonal and municipal authorities, to industry and commerce, to academic and scientific institutions and to society at large, for the broadest possible use, in a sustainable, up-to-date, rapid and easy way, with the required quality and at reasonable cost.” (Art. 1). The data contained in aerial photographs, maps and plans as well as further spatially referenced data must made available at a good level of quality and at reasonable cost, in printed form, over the Internet or on mobile devices. Uniform standards were required, in data capture as well as in the modeling and archiving of data and metadata.

A major economic benefit can be achieved with the establishment of geo.admin.ch in Switzerland. Advocating the use of spatial data is improving the value of this still unexploited resource. Furthermore, the federal administration benefits of the availability of fundamental information for decision-making, planning and improving efficiency of governmental processes: data production can be accelerated and data exchange processes simplified. Moreover, the reputation of government can be leveraged and even higher tax revenues can be achieved. Scientific studies have shown that providing easy and inexpensive access to geospatial data has a multiplicative effect of 1:4 between public investment and added value to private market related to spatial data. With around 230 million Swiss Francs annual investment by federal and cantonal authorities, this corresponds to a theoretical market potential of around 1 billion francs. A 2008 market analysis has shown that for the geospatial market of Switzerland this ratio with a volume of 500 million francs a year is only at about 1:2 before the Federal Geoinformation Act became into force.

2) Solution

  • OpenSource Software: no license cost, short time to market, scalable, innovative, user driven, and cost /benefit effective
  • Open Standards: interoperability with existing and future solutions guaranteed
  • Open Access: Access is where all content (data) is going. Where ever possible data, data services and application programming interface including sources were made public available
  • Map Viewer http://map.geo.admin.ch
  • Mashups and API under http://api.geo.admin.ch
  • Mobile support http://mobile.geo.admin.ch and http://mobile.map.geo.admin.ch
  • Cloud Computing: scalability & agility, cost effectiveness, automation, boost innovation
  • - Active communication and coordination addressing all stakeholders in the project and operation phase are key factors for success, including Social Media
3)Result

Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUbu8AzDD1Y

Martin Salzmann
Director of Strategy
Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency
The Netherlands




BIO
Dr. Martin is director of Strategy with the Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster) of the Netherlands. He is deeply involved in the development and deployment of geo-information in national and European Spatial Data Infrastructures.

ABSTRACT
How and why authoritative geo-data help us in our daily work
In the past 10 years many countries have invested in setting up authoritative geo-datasets, often by means of setting up so-called key registers as part of eGovernment or SDI-programs. Examples are addresses, topographical and cadastral maps, and cable and pipeline information. We investigate how these data help us to improve our working processes and in how far they live up to their expectations. What are the benefits for the public and private sector in practice? Which applications have emerged based on these authoritative data? We show for example how statistical agencies have readily adopted the possibilities of geo-data, have become geospatial and can more quickly and easily provide statistics based on given authoritative geo-data.

Dr. Byong-nam Choe
Head, Geospatial Information
Research Division
Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements
South Korea


BIO
Dr. Choe is a head of Geospatial information research division of Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, and a president of Korean geospatial forum. He has been involving in Korean SDI from 1990 and developing the Korean SDI policy by collaborating with the government in charge of SDI(Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs). His interest is on geospatial value, geospatial market, SDI methodologies, open source, geospatial platform and so on.



ABSTRACT
Lessons from Korean SDI
Korean geospatial policy (hereafter ‘KGIS’) which started in 1995 can be specified into three sub-policies on SDI, geospatial application/utilization and geospatial industry. Korean SDI policy is to build the capacity of 5 components of SDI in terms of building framework data (common spatial data), geospatial standards system, access/distribution system, human resources and governance like other countries. Geospatial application/utilization policy is to promote the use of Korean SDI, so users from public and private sectors hire products of Korean SDI to enhance their work performance. The policy for geospatial industry is to support that enterprises can create new values based on Korean SDI. For the successful KGIS, Korean government invested about 1.2 trillion KRW for KGIS by 2008; during the first phase of KGIS from 1995 to 2000, Korean government invested about 278.7 billion KRW for KGIS, and 46% of the budget was spent for Geospatial application/utilization policy, 42% for building framework data on Korean SDI policy. KGIS budget of the second phase from 2001 to 2005 was 455 billion KRW, and 59% and 32% was spent for Geospatial application/utilization policy and framework data. As the result of the investments, many of geospatial data and services in public sectors were produced. However, there are serious difficulties to access/share spatial information and to integrate the geospatial data because of lack of interoperability. Because of the difficulties, enterprises failed to create new values based on Korean SDI. So the number of companies in geospatial market is getting decrease, and it will end up the failure of policy for geospatial industry. The lesson of KGIS shows the importance of opening and sharing spatial data especially from public sectors. In this paper, overview of KGIS will be introduced in the first. Then, policy structure of KGIS will be presented by using system-thinking approach. The difference of current policy structure from ideal one which we expected while we were planning the policy will be shown. Finally, lessons to achieve the goal of SDI policy successfully based on Korean experiences will be mentioned.

Peter Baumann
Professor of Computer Science
Jacobs University
Germany


BIO
Dr. Peter Baumann (Jacobs University) researches on Big Raster Data. He has pioneered this field with 100+ publications, international patents, and with rasdaman, a fully operational n-D raster DBMS, for which he has received numerous innovation awards. In the OGC, he is chairing the geo raster working groups and is editor of over ten standards and candidate standards. In ISO, he is working on an Array SQL.

ABSTRACT
Big Earth Data Supporting Ad-Hoc Processing and Filtering - Mission Impossible?

Rich in semantics, easy and user-friendly to handle, flexible, scalable - these and more properties we demand from today's data access.Typically, however, we associate such properties only with metadata, and consider data themselves as too clumsy, semantic-less, and hence only downloadable - in particular, when these data are large, like 2D satellite imagery or 3D image timeseries, 3D geophysical data sets, or 4D climate and ocean data. This leads to a deep "semantic divide" between metadata and data, posing severe obstacles on fully leveraging our data assets.In the OGC, we are working towards breaking this barrier and allow ad-hoc filtering and processing also on bulks of multi-dimensional raster data and integrates data and metadata retrieval. The Web Coverage Service (WCS) suite provides such facilities in a modular and simple, yet powerful way. In particular, the new concept of OGC COverages has been decoupled from WCS as such, so coverages can be exchanged freely between services adhering to different standards, like WMS, WPS, or SOS. Further, as opposed to the (abstract) coverage definition in ISO 19123, the (concrete) OGC Coverage and service concept establishes verifiable interoperability, while adhering to ISO 19123.In our talk, we present data and service concepts, various technical challenges and their solution, applications, and the way ahead. Further, we introduce EarthLook, an interactive n-D showcase with "OGC standards in action". Time permitting we include a live demo.

Andreas Wytzisk
Project Manager and INPIRE Expert
con terra
Germany



BIO
Ruediger received his degree in Business Computer Science from the University of Essen, Germany in 2000. After working for the Fraunhofer Society in Dortmund, he changed to con terra in 2007, acting as project manager and product owner. He is leading the development for security and rights management, while also acting as a consultant and project manager. Meanwhile Ruediger is also engaged in standardization of geo security and rights management in the Open Geospatial Consortium.

ABSTRACT
Monetising SDIs: eLicensing and ePayment for Spatial Services
For many years, the development of SDIs primarily concentrated on technical interoperability. The more SDIs get into practical use, the more focus is given to commercial aspects, such as who is entitled to use a resource, how can IPRs be protected, how can a legal agreement to terms and conditions be enforced, and how can these resources be monetised.As part of the INSPIRE legislation, these issues are addressed as part of the data and service sharing regulation, but also beyond INSPIRE there are many initiatives dealing with legal and commercial aspects of data sharing within SDIs.The goal of an SDI was to ensure automatic and seamless access to and integration of spatial resources. Despite the consideration of commercial and legal aspects, this goal nevertheless remains. Thus, technology should be applied which does not break interoperability and which can be smoothly fitted into an SDI, especially supporting all the client applications which are already established, such as portals, apps, desktop GIS, etc.On the other hand, legal and economic requirements are heterogeneous. Different resources may have different prices and price models, or they may have different terms of use and different permissions. A solution is therefore needed which is able to cover these varying business requirements.For the integration of eBusiness functionalities into SDIs, licenseManager can be used as an extension to off-the-shelf SDI server products, enforcing a licence acceptance before allowing access to a service. It provides a fully electronic licence acquisition workflow, which the user has to follow until a licence for this actual user is created. The existence of a licence then represents access rights for this user on the licenced resource, allowing the user to invoke it within the SDI.In order to cover the different legal and commercial requirements, licenseManager uses a generic licence model framework, which caters for different legal regulations and different price models, such as free access, flat rate models, pay-per-use, etc.Within this presentation the different requirements will be described and the licenseManager concepts addressing these requirements will be presented.

Martin Peersmann
Managing Director LSV GBKN
The Netherlands



BIO
Martin Peersmann is Managing Director of the Large-scale Basemap of the Netherlands(GBKN) organisation. He has over 25 years of experience in geo-information management and innovation both in the E&P industry, Applied Research an Public sector.He is the GBKN transition manager for the Large-scale Topography (BGT.

ABSTRACT
Transition process of the Large Scale Base Topography of the Netherlands in historical perspective
The transition process will be discussed in a historic perspective of over 90 year large scale base map production since the 1930. Lessons learned on governance, financial models and innovation will be discussed and presented. The current large scale base topography (GBKN) is managed by a Public Private Partnership (PPP) consisting of all network operators, municipalities, provinces and water boards and the Cadastre. In 2008 a transition program has started under supervision of the ministry of infrastructure and environment (MinIenM) to implement legally mandated key registry topography (BGT). The transition program initiated technical, organisational, financial, process and governance changes. After 3 year of negotiation a new national standard for topography was agreed. This standard IMGEO 2.0 incorporates all topographic object used by the national, regional and local authorities in support of their activities. The technical transition process involves migration of over 2D vector databases distributed over 500 public and private organisation to one uniform national 5D object database (NSDI). The current Public Private Partnership LSV GBKN will be dismantled and transferred to a Shared Services Centre in the public domain. In this Shared Service Centre (SSC BGT) all national agencies, water boards, provinces and municipalities will participate. A societal cost benefit analysis (SCBA) was performed and a new finance model implemented. All stakeholder agreed to perform active benefit management in order to achieve a 20 percent cost reduction by implementing the principle of measure once use multiple and state of art innovation in the data acquisition process.

Martin Kodde
Manager Research & Development
Fugro GeoServices
The Netherlands



BIO
Martin Kodde works as Manager Research & Deveopment at Fugro GeoServices. He started at Fugro in 2006, after achieving his MSc. in Geomatics Engineering from Delft University. At Fugro he is responsible for the development of new data acquisition methods, both in terms of devices as well as processing. His interests include lidar, photogrammetry, open data and big data. Besides this work he is pursuing a PhD at the computer science group of Utrecht University.

ABSTRACT
Geospatial Democratisation: The Need for Regional Spatial Data Infrastructures
The geospatial industry used to be a highly specialised and rather impenetrable society, inhabited by professionals who relied on multiple years of education. Through the last decade, the industry has been revolutionised to a fully democratised ecosystem. This started with the availability of free online map data, and then positioning became ubiquitous through smart phones. At this moment 3D data acquisition technologies such as laser scanning and UAVs are rapidly developing, soon to reach price levels that are acceptable to individuals. This is the democratisation of the industry: anybody who has a need now has the tools to collect, disseminate and review geospatial data on it own behalf. This development also changed the way users and professionals expect to work with geospatial data. They want their information to be available at any time and at any place. They also want to update the data if needed. Traditionally, national governments established Spatial Data Infrastructures to distribute datasets that they considered important. However, these SDIs are mostly one way traffic, and, more importantly, do not contain the data that is of most importance.The information that is truly dynamic and immediately affects people daily life is at a regional and local level. Municipalities for instance maintain tons of useful data that is of great interest to both professionals and citizens. However, access to these data is typically difficult and restricted to a limited user base. We propose a regional spatial data infrastructure, called VISOR, which serves the data within a municipality while matching the user expectations mentioned above. We describe how VISOR improves the efficiency within a municipal organisation and how VISOR prepares governments to the Open Data future, the next big step in a democratised industry.