Speakers Bio & Abstract

Biography
Raymond Sluiter studied Physical Geography at Utrecht University, The Netherlands and owns a PhD in GIS and remote sensing. He is currently senior researcher GEO-ICT at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and working on the Big Data Policy of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. At KNMI, he coordinates the implementation and use of GIS, performs research on geospatial data infrastructures, and on spatialization of climatological and meteorological variables. He represents the Netherlands in the earth observation programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) as an technical expert. Last years he has evolved to a strategic data expert dealing with data governance, open data, earth observation data and big data.Abstract
The challenges of Big (geo-)Data for policy makingIn the densely populated low-lying Netherlands, geo-information is ubiquitous in the policy making process, for example for identifying climate change mitigation options. However, the data landscape behind the information is changing rapidly at the moment: much governmental data is available as open data and new geodata sources emerge from satellite observations and the Internet of Things. Citizens interact more and more with data and even produce data themselves through smartphones, social media, crowd-sourcing initiatives or just by surfing the Internet. The volume, velocity and variety of data are growing rapidly: geodata evolves to Big (geo-)Data. In this presentation I will discuss the policy goals of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment in relation to climate change, present examples of existing geodata-driven applications, and discuss the Big (geo-)Data challenges for the ministry and related organisations.