National Geo-Information Infrastructure

From Geostandards

Contents 1 The concept Geo-Information Infrastructure 2 Legislation and regulations 3 Policy 4 Technology 4.1 Metadata, information model and services 4.2 Standards and specifications for harmonisation 5 Agreements about availability and delivery 6 References

The concept Geo-Information Infrastructure

For the geo-world, the concept of the Geo-Information Infrastructure (GII) acts as a guideline for increasing the easy access to, and the clear unlocking of (sources) of geo-information via open standards. The GII concept includes a specific concept that focuses on geo-information that is applicable worldwide. This leads to worldwide, national, regional, local and enterprise GIIs. INSPIRE for example is the European GII for environmental applications.

A GII is characterised by the possibilities it offers of exchanging the data of the resource (holder) via uniform interfaces (via databases, services and applications). Clear agreements have also been made about which geo-information is made available and in what way and under what conditions. (See Figure: Components of the GII). Various definitions of a Geo-Information Infrastructure are currently in circulation.

The Geo-Information Infrastructure as a concept is the sum total of geo-information (geo-data), standards, access & network services, human & organisation and geo-information policy for the efficient exchange of, and access to, geo-information.

Important properties (the founding principles) of a GII are:

• Single storage in the resource and plural use;
• Separation applications, services and data;
• Exchange via open standards (ISO/OGC/W3C).

The GII concept is based upon the disclosure and dissemination of diverse geo-information (resources) via international open standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), which is a close collaboration with the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO). The GII concept and its divisions are shown here. In the Netherlands, various (distributed) geo-resources of information are present. Geo-information is made accessible to the user by various distributed geo-information resources (data) via services and the various distribution canals (portals, applications, databases etc.). By building the exchange of geo-information upon standards, specifications and agreements, it is possible to make the exchange open, efficient and effective for diverse groups of users. Geo-information is characterised by its pluriform use in divergent applications. In order to bring about a national GII more than just technology is required. Policy, legislation, organisation and personnel, innovation and knowledge, collaboration and management, an implementing program and a roadmap are also necessary. In short, a GII, at most, ensures (more) efficient exchange of geo-information within and between organisations.

An NGII project may be considered as a project, in which a modification has to take place for a new service, a new business process, new forms of collaboration or new information systems, applications or portals of geographic components in the context of one or more components in the NGII.

 

Legislation and regulations

The way that the gathering, managing, distribution and use of geo-information is organised is one of the most important aspects of a GII. We are talking, not only about the willingness of organisations to share information, but about the co-ordination of the GII and the conditions that have to be taken into account as well.

Recording the tasks of all the various organisations and the requirements that the data and services have to meet may stimulate the quality of the exchange and use of data. A way to achieve this is by using legislation and regulations.

Legislation and regulations concerning geo-information are versatile and are related to various aspects of the Geo-Information Infrastructure. There is extensive legislation, for example, for the Dutch System of Basis Registers but also for the transposition of the European INSPIRE in the implementing law EU guideline infrastructure spatial information. This legislation sets out requirements for both the quality of data and its use. The basic concept, expressed in both laws, is that data has to remain as close to the resource as possible in order to encourage the GII adage “gather once, use more than once” as much as possible. Authentic data has been defined for the six basic registers. The government has to rely on this data which is mandatory for governments. By using this mandatory feedback, a high quality has to be reached. This high quality data must be exchanged within the entire government.

The 34 INSPIRE themes includes more than the six geo basic registers. INSPIIRE not only sets out the requirements necessary for the interoperability of the data, but also for the way in which it has to be made available via the services (consulting, viewing, downloading, transposition, invoking). More information about the European INSPIRE legislation and infrastructure can be found via: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/. The INSPIRE program office for implementing INSPIRE in the Netherlands is situated in Geonovum.

Finally, the Land Registry was one of the few organisations in the world with the legislative task of stimulating the geo-information infrastructure.

Legislation and regulations also provide conditions for the use of geo-information. This is mainly illustrated in the relationship between geo-information and information law. Information law involves regulations that focus particularly on information. Over the past decades huge developments have taken place in the field of law because of the informatisation of society. Important subjects are questions such as “to whom does the information (intellectual property, copyright the database right) belong”, “who is responsible for mistakes contained in the information”, “what protection does the person about whom the information is related to, actually have (privacy)” and “does the government have to make certain information available (public)” and “under what conditions (re-use)”. The Copyright Act, the Database Act, the Personal Data Protection Act (privacy) and the Environmental Management Act (right of access, transparency, publicity) and the Government Information (Public Access) Act (access and re-use) provide the Dutch framework. Specifically there are the KNMI Act and the Land Registry Act that provide the accessibility of the KNMI and the Land Registry. The same applies to the Spatial Planning Act (access of spatial plans), the Disclosure of Impediments under Public Law Act (in respect of Real Estate), and the Information Exchange Underground Network Act (grondroerdersregeling).

During the past years, information law, in particular, has been strongly influenced and shaped by European regulations. The Database Act came from the Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases, the Personal Data Protection Act of the Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, the part re-use of the act Government Information (public access) Act of the Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information, and the environmental Management Act partly results of the Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information.> The Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC about the storage of location data of telecommunication and Directive 2002/58/EC on privacy and electronic communications are also mentioned. Finally, there has been a discussion going on for years about the possibility for governments to market public data. The Adaptions Bill Amendment of the Dutch Competition Act, concerning a Code of Conduct for governmental authorities (nr. 31354) should make this clearer.

Other information about geo-information law is listed in:

• Geo-informatie: wat is het en wat is de juridische context? This is written by B. van Loenen, J.A. Zevenbergen, J. de Jong (2008).
• Recht en locatie; geo-informatie in een juridische context (pp. 11-33). Written by L. van Wees en S. Nouwt (Eds.). Den Haag: Elsevier Juridisch (Reed Business bv).

Policy

One cohesive infrastructure with all public geographic information available for everyone. This is what GIDEON. a basis provision on which the Ministry of Housing spatial Planning and the Environment Is working on together with departments, government bodies, businesses and institutes. On the 2 June 2008 Minister Cramer (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment) proposed this to the House of Representatives. Gideon will be ready in 2011.

Geo-information has links to nearly all the large social issues, such as mobility, care, public order and security and spatial planning. However this information is not available in one system yet and cannot be commonly exchanged or combined. This is why it is not used enough.

Developing it together’’’ This is why Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment is developing a basic provision for geo-information in collaboration with parties in the GI council, such as the departments, the Land Registry, other government bodies, companies and institutions. This provision is called Gideon. This infrastructure will be freely accessible to everyone. Citizens, companies and institutions will then be to develop opportunities, services and products in a much better way. Thus Gideon will help to reduce the administrative burdens for companies and improve the government’s services for citizens.

Step by step The implementation should be completed in 2011. The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment is developing Gideon together with other governmental bodies, companies and institutions. It chooses not to use an already devised blueprint, but to follow a step by step incremental approach in order to reinforce successes and to fill in missing knowledge. The execution of this remains in the hands of the geographic sector itself.

The report 'Gideon Basisvoorziening geo-informatie Nederland' is available in the Dutch and English.

This national policy will be translated as prior conditions/ filling in GII projects. GII projects involve policy that is in the process of being worked out.

Gideon is linked to other policy, under which European policy such as INSPIRE, GMES, PSI, etc.

Technology

Metadata, information model and services

For the way in which metadata information models and services are dealt with in an NGII we refer to the respective parts of this online wiki.

A good international example is the SDI Cookbook (Nebert 2004) which is available as wiki too.

Standards and specifications for harmonisation

For the standards concerning the technical setting up of an NGII project, we refer to the Framework for geo-standards. This includes the semantic and interoperability standards and the specifications that are necessary for the technical setting up of a NGII project.

The harmonisation is characterised by the uniform tuning and completing of the layer of information of the GII; clear specifications of the necessary geo-information resources and objects and the associated meta-information. Attention should also be given to the mutual fine-tuning from the perspective of the exchange of geo-information and its use. Relevant aspects to make this information clearly accessible. Clear means that aspects such as the unique identification of datasets and objects, transactions, semantics and ontology, scale degree and quality are fine-tuned and clearly drawn up. Finding a link with national and international geo-information standards is crucial. Harmonising services means that guidelines for the network services are selected (the so-called profiles). The collaborating network services give access via a geo-portal to publishing, searching, finding and retrieving of the geo-information through maps. The network services have standardised interfaces which are specified for the geo-domain by various standardisation organisations (mainly CEN, ISO, OGC and W3C) and the European profiles of the European guideline for geo-information INSPIRE. Network services in a GII ensure that geo-information can be found easily (catalog services), is visible (mapping services), can be selected (filter encoding services) and is clearly accessible (AAA and e-commerce services) in a safe way (security services). Via a conformance test services a bottle neck can perform an interoperability test.>

Agreements about availability and delivery

A crucial part of a GII is making agreements about the access to and use of the geo-information. Access to geo-information concerns the granting of access to organisations to offer geographic services. When this concerns the use of the geo-information, then agreements about the ordering and paying for the use of geo-information are necessary. The agreements relate to the user rights and the conditions for using the geo-information are recorded in these agreements. Finally, the most evident part are the agreements that have to be made about the level of security of the various information resources and streams.

References

• Developing geographic information infrastructures; the role of information policies. Dissertation. Written by B. van Loenen (2006), Delft University of Technology (Delft: DUP Science).

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