Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications

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    Awareness as a foundation for developing effective spatial data infrastructures
    CLAUSEN, CHRISTIAN ; RAJABIFARD, ABBAS ; ENEMARK, STIG ; WILLIAMSON, IAN ( 2006)
    The development of an effective spatial data infrastructure (SDI) often occurs in a fragmented organizational environment requiring a high level of inter-organizational collaboration. Different organizations from various jurisdictions needs to work together closely when agreeing on how they will jointly register, store, use and share data and how they will make their data available to the wider society. This collaboration is generally regarded as very difficult. In particular, organizational issues are considered one of the key fundamental constraints to inter-organizational sharing of spatial data. But what makes collaboration effective and successful? For example people often resist sharing data across organizational boundaries due to loss of control, power and independency. In the spatial community, the term awareness is often used when discussing issues concerned with inter-organizational collaboration. However, a major problem by using the term awareness in discussions of inter-organizational collaboration is that awareness is undefined and often misused as a term in the spatial data handling community. The (over)-use of the term awareness, without having a rigorous definition to rely upon increases the difficulty of understanding and developing collaboration issues. The difficulty in quantifying and describing issues in collaboration make the development of effective spatial data infrastructures problematic since this development should be based on a conceptual framework that clearly addresses the problems spatial organizations currently encounter. As a result, the focus of this paper is on the nature and role of awareness. It explores why and how awareness plays a fundamental role in overcoming organizational constraints and in developing collaboration between organizations. The paper discusses the concept of awareness in the area of organizational collaboration in the spatial community, explains the important role awareness plays in the development of spatial data infrastructures, and introduces a methodology to promote awareness. Furthermore, the paper aims to make people in the community more aware of the use of the term "awareness" – when to use it, how to use it and especially important, how not to use it. The paper will use land administration systems as the discipline for investigating awareness.
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    Capacity Building for SDIs
    Williamson, I. P. ; Rajabifard, A. ; Enemark, S. ( 2003)
    Capacity building is an essential component of any institutional reform such as building land administration infrastructures or spatial data infrastructures (SDI). However the capacity building concept is often used within a narrow meaning such as focusing on staff development through formal education and training programmes to meet the lack of qualified personnel in a project in the short term. This article argues that capacity building measures should be addressed in the wider context of developing and maintaining institutional infrastructures in a sustainable way, even if the key focus may be on education and training to meet short and medium term needs. This article develops the capacity building concept and looks at capacity assessment and capacity development as the two key components. Within capacity development it considers the levels and dimesions of capacity.The paper then introduces the evolving SDI concept and explores how capacity building is essential in delivering an operational SDI. In order to resolve the difficulty of applying the complex and often unclear nature of capacity building to the evolving and similarly unclear nature of SDI, capacity building for SDI in Australia is used as a case study.The paper also identifies that the SDI concept is less easily transferred to developing countries and as such raises the role of SDIs in developing countries as an important un-answered question for the Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific to consider.
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    The Cadastral Template Project
    Steudler, D. ; Williamson, I. P. ; Rajabifard, A. ; Enemark, S. ( 2004)
    While many country reports have been compiled in the area of land administration over thelast decade, there has not much attention been given to the basic cadastral issues. As a result,one of the objectives of Working Group 3 "Cadastre" of the PCGIAP is the establishment of acadastral template, which is basically a standard form to be filled out by cadastralorganizations presenting their national cadastral system. The aims are to understand the rolethat a cadastre plays in a state or national SDI and to compare best practice as a basis forimproving cadastres as a key component of SDIs.The work of the PCGIAP-Working Group 3 "Cadastre" is being done in collaboration withCommission 7 "Cadastre and Land Management" of the International Federation ofSurveyors (FIG), which has extensive experience in comparative cadastral studies. Thisarticle describes the creation and the content of the cadastral template and the expectedoutcomes.
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    Understanding land administration systems [1]
    Williamson, Ian Philip ; ENEMARK, STIG ; WALLACE, JUDE ; RAJABIFARD, ABBAS (Centre of Geo-Information Technologies, 2008)
    This paper introduces basic land administration theory and highlights four key concepts that are fundamental to understanding modern land administration systems - firstly the land management paradigm and its influence on the land administration framework, secondly the role that the cadastre plays in contributing to sustainable development, thirdly the changing nature of ownership and the role of land markets, and lastly a land management vision that promotes land administration in support of sustainable development and spatial enablement of society. We present here the first part of the paper. The second part that focuses on the changing role of ownership and the role of land markets, and a land management vision will be published in November issue of Coordinates.
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    Understanding land administration systems [2]
    Williamson, Ian Philip ; ENEMARK, STIG ; WALLACE, JUDE ; RAJABIFARD, ABBAS (Centre of Geo-Information Technologies, 2008)
    This paper introduces basic land administration theory and highlights four key concepts that are fundamental to understanding modern land administration systems. Readers may recall the first part of the paper in October Issue of Coordinates. Here is the concluding part that focuses on the changing role of ownership and the role of land markets.