A spatial data infrastructure (SDI), also called geospatial data infrastructure, is a

data infrastructure A data infrastructure is a digital infrastructure promoting data sharing and consumption. Similarly to other infrastructures, it is a structure needed for the operation of a society as well as the services and facilities necessary for an economy ...

implementing a framework of geographic data,

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

, users and tools that are interactively connected in order to use spatial data in an efficient and flexible way. Another definition is "the technology, policies, standards,

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ' ...

, and related activities necessary to acquire, process, distribute, use, maintain, and preserve spatial data".The White House, Office of Management and Budget (2002
Circular No. A-16 Revised
August 19, 2002 Most commonly, institutions with large repositories of geographic data (especially government agencies) create SDIs to facilitate the sharing of their data with a broader audience. A further definition is given in Kuhn (2005):Kuhn, W. (2005
presentation "Introduction to Spatial Data Infrastructures"
Presentation held on March 14, 2005. "An SDI is a coordinated series of agreements on technology standards, institutional arrangements, and policies that enable the discovery and use of geospatial information by users and for purposes other than those it was created for."

General

Some of the main principles are that data and metadata should not be managed centrally, but by the data originator and/or owner, and that tools and services connect via

computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

s to the various sources.Steiniger, S., and Hunter, A.J.S. (2012
preprint "Free and open source GIS software for building a spatial data infrastructure"
In E. Bocher and M. Neteler (eds): ''Geospatial Free and Open Source Software in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the first Open-Source Geospatial Research Symposium'', 2009, LNG&C, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 247-261. A GIS is often the platform for deploying an individual node within an SDI. To achieve these objectives, good coordination between all the actors is necessary and the definition of standards is very important. The original example of an SDI is the United States National Spatial Data Infrastructure ( NSDI), first mandated in the OMB Circular A-16 in 1996. In Europe since 2007, INSPIRE is a

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

initiative to build a European SDI beyond national boundaries; the United Nations Spatial Data Infrastructure ( UNSDI) plans to do the same for over 30 UN Funds, Programs, Specialized Agencies and member countries.

Software components

An SDI should enable the discovery and delivery of spatial data from a data repository, via a spatial service provider, to a user. As mentioned earlier it is often wished that the data provider is able to update spatial data stored in a repository. Hence, the basic software components of an SDI are: * Software client - to display, query, and analyse spatial data (this could be a browser or a desktop GIS) * Catalogue service - for the discovery, browsing, and querying of

or spatial services, spatial datasets and other resources * Spatial data service - allowing the delivery of the data via the Internet * Processing services - such as datum and projection transformations, or the transformation of

cadastral survey Cadastral surveying is the sub-field of cadastre and surveying that specialises in the establishment and re-establishment of Real estate, real property boundaries. It involves the physical delineation of property boundaries and determination of dim ...

observations and owner requests into Cadastral documentation * (Spatial) data repository - to store data, e.g., a

spatial database A spatial database is a general-purpose database (usually a relational database) that has been enhanced to include spatial data that represents objects defined in a geometric space, along with tools for querying and analyzing such data. Most ...

* GIS software (client or desktop) - to create and update spatial data Besides these software components, a range of (international) technical standards are necessary that allow interaction between the different software components.Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Organisation - The SDI Cookbook
link to cook book wiki
/ref> Among those are geospatial standards defined by the

Open Geospatial Consortium The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international voluntary consensus standards organization that develops and maintains international standards for geospatial content and location-based services, sensor web, Internet of Things, Geographi ...

(e.g., OGC WMS, WFS, GML, etc.) and

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

(e.g., ISO 19115) for the delivery of maps, vector and raster data, but also data format and internet transfer standards by

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

consortium.

National spatial data infrastructures

List by country or administrative zone. It is not complete, is a sample of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) official websites.

References

External links

The INSPIRE Directive: a brief description (JRC Audiovisuals)

GSDI 11 World Conference: The Geo-Spatial event of 2009, Rotterdam The Netherlands

Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association

Links to SDI initiatives
from the GSDI Association website
The Netherlands Coordination Office of UNSDI (UNSDI-NCO)

The GeoNetwork portal of UNSDI-NCO (with over 17.800 metadata sets)

Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing

SNIG - Portuguese National System for Geographic Information
; Journals
International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure Research
; Books
The SDI Cookbook
from the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Organisation
GSDI

Research and Theory in Advancing Spatial Data Infrastructure ConceptsGIS Worlds: Creating Spatial Data InfrastructuresBuilding European Spatial Data Infrastructures
; Software
geOrchestra
is a free, modular and interoperable Spatial Data Infrastructure software that includes other software like GeoNetwork,

GeoServer In computing, GeoServer is an open-source server written in Java that allows users to share, process and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer h ...

, GeoWebCache,..., * GeoNetwork is a

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

(FOSS) cataloging application for spatially referenced resources,
GeoNode
is a web-based application and platform for developing geospatial information systems (GIS) and for deploying spatial data infrastructures (SDI),
OpenSDI
includes Open Source components like

and GeoNetwork,
easySDI
is a complete web-based platform for deploying any geoportal.
Geoportal Server
is an open source solution for building SDI models where a central SDI node is populated with content from distributed nodes, as well as SDI models where each node participates equally in a federated mode. {{Authority control Geographic data and information regulation Spatial analysis IT infrastructure

General

Software components

National spatial data infrastructures

See also

References

External links