Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications
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ItemSpatially Enabling Government – an International Challenge( 2007)The popular use of spatial technologies involves showing images and tracking assets and inventory in an increasing array of instruments, the most common being the ubiquitous mobile phone. These technologies penetrate into even low income poor countries, but their take-up and development concentrates in highly developed countries. This high-end use of these technologies will determine their future. Remarkable as these popular applications are, spatial technologies can also be used in even more dynamic, transformational ways. Transformational use of spatial technologies occurs when they are used to improve business processes of government, and assist delivery of policies for equitable taxation, conservation of natural resources and planning for rational growth. Use of this transformational capacity of spatial technologies in government creates a spatially enabled government (SEG). The major impediment to take-up of spatial information is counter-intuitive. We all use the new technology in our daily lives, but our capacity to understand the power of spatial information is remarkably small. In fact only about 1% of people in any society really understand spatial information with about 5% of people knowing something about the special technology. For 95% of people, spatial information and its supporting technologies is a mystery. Teaching people about spatial information and its technologies is therefore the first task in painting a vision of what is possible. The attractions of spatial technologies lie in how they present information, whether users rely on computers and the Internet, or on communications technologies. The adage of a “picture tells a thousand words” is now out of date. New digital pictures tell many stories, and, if the enabling platform is built, the pictures will become management tools of government. Spatial technologies are moving quickly. In Australia, since October 2006, Google Maps and Google Earth, combined with a geocoded national address
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ItemSpatial Data Integration Challenges: Australian Case Studies(Spatial Sciences Institute, 2007)
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ItemSeamless SDI Model to Facilitate Spatially Enabled Land-Sea Interface(Spatial Sciences Institute, 2007)
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ItemDeveloping marine SDI to facilitate marine administration - the spatial dimension( 2007)The coastal zone is a unique geologic, ecological and biological domain of vital importance to a vast array of terrestrial and aquatic life forms - including humankind. Managing the plethora of rights, restrictions and responsibilities of resources within the marine environment and at the littoral zone has created one of the world’s most complex areas of management. Evidently effective administration and management of these areas to meet the economic, social and environmental objectives of sustainable development is required. Until recently spatial information management and administration tools have focussed on the terrestrial environment. Initiatives such as the 3rd United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Sustainable Development Strategy for the Seas of East Asia (SDS-SEA) have bought to attention the importance of sustainable development of the coastal and marine environment. The concepts of marine spatial data infrastructure (SDI), marine cadastre and marine spatial planning have all emerged recently in response to a global realisation of the need to improve management and administration of the marine environment. The underlying theme of these initiatives is the importance of including a spatial dimension to marine administration. A more integrated and holistic approach to management of coastal and marine environments would be facilitated by the extension of the SDI on a seamless platform. This would promote data sharing and harmonisation between large numbers of diverse data holdings and an increasingly large number of initiatives in marine data thus facilitating better decision-making involving marine and coastal spatial information. A seamless SDI platform would enable the utilisation of common boundaries across the coastal zone to ensure no ambiguity exists and no areas are unaccounted for over the coastal interface. This paper discusses the potential for adding a marine dimension to an SDI in the context of seamless model to facilitate marine and coastal zone administration and highlights the need for access to and interoperability of data from marine, coastal and terrestrial environments resulting to the better and more integrated management of coastal zone. Ideally this framework would harmonise the stewardship of and access to marine data and information, thereby facilitating improved management of marine environment.
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ItemDeveloping a seamless SDI model across the land-sea interface( 2007)A more integrated and holistic approach to management of spatial information relating to coastal and marine environments is needed and this can be facilitated by the creation of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) on a seamless platform. There is a growing and urgent 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. This paper discusses the principles and concepts followed by introduction to issues and challenges that must be overcome in developing an overarching architecture for a seamless SDI that allows access to and interoperability of data from marine, coastal and terrestrial environments.
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ItemBuilding the spatial data infrastructure through data sharing: measuring progress within Australian local and state government jurisdictions( 2007)In the past decade efforts to develop spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) have migrated from the initial “top-down” national approaches to “bottom-up” and cross jurisdictional efforts at the sub-national level. Although national SDI developments are fundamental to building the SDI culture and policy, it is sub-national and local SDI development that will deliver the immediate benefits to citizens and the community. In countries which have highly decentralised federations of states such as Australia, United States and Canada, the challenge is how to co-ordinate the literally thousands of often small local government jurisdictions which are important contributors to state and local SDIs. In recent years, a number of co-operative spatial data sharing partnerships between local and state government have emerged in Australia. These partnerships are relatively new initiatives that have been established to facilitate more effective sharing of spatial data between organisations, but also as a mechanism to contribute to SDI development. To maximise the benefits from these partnerships it is essential to understand the factors that contribute to their successful operation and sustainability. This paper investigates these collaborative arrangements and examines the motivations, mechanisms and frameworks for data sharing between local and state governments.
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ItemSDI to Facilitate a Spatially Enabled Society(Spatial Sciences Institute, 2007)
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ItemBuilding seamless SDI to facilitate land and marine environments( 2008)Due to the high economic value of coastal and marine activities, and to the social value of coastal zones for quality of life, managing the coastal zone is a key component of the socio-economic framework in most nations with coastlines. In recent times several natural disasters hit some part of the coastal areas around the world in particular small islands and archipelagic countries causing hundreds thousands of peoples lost their lives, while those who survived had lost their properties. Learning from such kind of devastating disasters, it is important to have a functioning spatial data infrastructure (SDI) which facilitates discovery, access and sharing accurate, complete and up-to-dated spatial data for better planning and timely disaster management. Sustainable development requires the availability of integrated and comprehensive spatial information throughout the country both land and marine area, that can easily be found and accessed for public. Having said that, however current SDI design is focused mainly on access to and use of land related datasets or marine related datasets, with most SDI initiatives stopping at the land-ward or marine-ward boundary of the coastline, institutionally and/or spatially. Consequently, there is a lack of harmonised and universal access to seamless datasets from marine, coastal and land-based spatial data providers. This leads to the creation of inconsistencies in spatial information policies, data creation, data access, and data integration across the coastal zone. The extension of an SDI covering the land and marine environments on a seamless platform would facilitate greater access to more interoperable spatial data and information across the land-marine interface enabling amore integrated and holistic approach to management of the coastal zone. This paper aims to identify and discuss the main characteristics and criteria for utilisation of a Seamless SDI model and to examine the current barriers against implementation of this model. This would help to develop an extended framework to support a spatially enabled jurisdiction covering the land-sea interface. A Seamless SDI leads to the promotion of data sharing and communication between organisations thus facilitating better decision-making involving marine and coastal spatial information.
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ItemUnderstanding Land Administration Systems(Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific, 2008)
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ItemGeo-web service tool for spatial data integrability( 2008)The integration of multi-source heterogeneous spatial data is one of the major challenges for many spatial data users. Users put much effort to identify and overcome inconsistency among data sets through a time-consuming and costly process. Spatial applications that rely on multi-source heterogeneous data also suffer from the lack of automatic mechanism to identify the inconsistency items and assign an appropriate solution for any particular item. An effective integration necessitates the identification of the inconsistency among data sets and the provision of necessary standards and guidelines in order to overcome the inconsistency, and then data sets can be manipulated based on the guidelines and proposed solutions.The paper follows two main streams. Firstly, the results of a number of case studies which have been conducted in order to identify the issues and challenges of spatial data integration are discussed. Then based on identified issues the design and development of a validation tool is discussed. The tool has been designed based on an approach which is presented in the paper. The tool aims to investigate multi-sourced spatial data and identify the items of inconsistency. The tool also proposes available guidelines to overcome the inconsistency. This tool can help practitioners and organizations to avoid the time-consuming and costly process of validating data sets for effective data integration.