Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications

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    The role of sub-national government and the private sector in future Spatial Data Infrastructures
    Rajabifard, A. ; Binns, A. ; Masser, I. ; Williamson, I. P. ( 2006-08)
    A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) facilitates and coordinates the exchange and sharing of spatial data between stakeholders in the spatial data community. With this objective in mind, countries throughout the world are developing SDIs to manage and utilise their spatial data assets more effectively. These countries are developing SDIs to assist in various kinds of decision-making at different levels of government jurisdictions that have an important impact within their national boundaries. However, current research shows that SDI is understood and described differently by stakeholders from different disciplines and different jurisdictional levels. Therefore, in many cases SDI initiatives remain very much an innovation even among practitioners. There are still uncertainties regarding the benefits and identities of SDIs, particularly in connection with how they evolve over time to meet user needs.This paper reviews and assesses the development of SDIs throughout the world over the past fifteen years and the leadership role of national governments in SDI creation. This assessment is based on the SDI activities of various jurisdictions including Asia-Pacific, Australia, North America and Europe and research into the worldwide effects of spatial information clearinghouses. This assessment includes a discussion on emerging trends in SDI development, with particular reference to the increasingly important role played by sub-national governments and the private sector within the framework of SDI development. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for future SDI development, including the delivery of a virtual world that has a particular focus on facilitating decision making at a community level within a national context.
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    Hierarchical spatial reasoning applied to spatial data infrastructures
    RAJABIFARD, ABBAS ; ESCOBAR, FRANCISCO ; Williamson, Ian P. ( 2000)
    Many countries throughout the world believe they can benefit both economically and environmentallyfrom better management of their spatial data assets, enabling them to access and retrieve complete andconsistent datasets in an easy and secure way. This has resulted in the development of the Spatial DataInfrastructure (SDI) concept at various political and/or administrative levels. The SDI concept has beenrepresented by different descriptions of its nature, however, currently these demonstrate an overlysimplisticunderstanding of the concept.The simplicity in existing definitions has been slow to incorporate the concept of an integrated, multilevelledSDI formed from a hierarchy of inter-connected SDIs at corporate, local, state/provincial,national, regional (multi-national) and global (GSDI) levels. Failure to incorporate this multidimensionality,and the dynamic mechanistic and functional roles of the SDI, have rendered manydescriptions of SDI inadequate to describe the complexity and the dynamics of SDI as it develops, andthus ultimately constrain SDI achieving developmental potential in the future.As a result, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate the fitness and applicability of HierarchicalSpatial Reasoning (HSR) as a theoretical framework to demonstrate the multi-dimensional nature ofSDIs. It is argued that by better understanding and demonstrating the nature of an SDI hierarchy, anySDI development can gain support from a wider community of both government and non-governmentdata users and providers. The findings presented in this paper build on the authors' experiences inRegional SDI (multi-national) development and HSR.
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    The dynamic nature of spatial data infrastructures: a method of descriptive classification
    Chan, Tai On ; Feeney, Mary-Ellen ; RAJABIFARD, ABBAS ; Williamson, Ian P. ( 2001)
    Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is understood and described differently by stakeholders from different disciplines and different administrative/political levels. However, current SD Idefinitions are individually insufficient to describe the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of SDI. Despite the international interest and activities toward SDI development, SDI remains very much an innovation even among practitioners. There are still doubts regarding the nature and identities of SDI, particularly in connection with how it evolves over time to meet user needs. Asa starting point a means to describe SDI’s multi-dimensional capacity as an inter- and intra- jurisdictional spatial information framework is required. The aim of this paper is to better understand and describe the nature of SDI and its components. A method to classify the perceived roles of SDI is identified. The method is extrapolated from a technique to describe different perspectives of Geographical Information System (GIS) diffusion, based on identified parallels between GIS and SDIs. The methodology may facilitate description and understanding of the SDI technological and user environment, by promoting insight into the dynamic roles of SDI.
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    Directions for the Future of SDI Development
    RAJABIFARD, ABBAS ; Feeney, Mary-Ellen F. ; Williamson, Ian P. ( 2002)
    Understanding the role of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is important to acceptance of the concept and its alignment with spatial industry objectives. Much has been done to describe and understand the components and interactions of different aspects of SDIs and their integration into the transactions of the spatial data community. However, what fails to be received through these perceptions, is that the role SDI plays is by necessity greater than the sum of individual components of SDI and stakeholder groups.SDI is fundamentally about facilitation and coordination of the exchange and sharing of spatial data between stakeholders in the spatial data community. To this end, the authors propose that the roles of SDI have been pursued through different approaches: product-based and process-based. Both approaches have value, but contribute to the evolution, uptake and utilisation of the SDI concept in different ways. They provide different frameworks for dealing with SDI mandates for the objectives of spatial data access and sharing. This paper reviews the nature and concept of SDI, including the components, which have helped to build understanding about the importance of an infrastructure to support the interactions of the spatial data community. Several examples of how SDIs have been described are offered to aid understanding of their complexity. The need for descriptions to represent the conflict between the role and deliverables of an SDI and thus contribute to a simpler, but dynamic, understanding of the complexity of the SDI concept, are postulated. The transition between the understanding of SDIs from product-based to process-based approaches is investigated, with a review of the positions taken by current SDI initiatives throughout the world. A model of how these approaches provide a framework to meet the mandates of the relevant jurisdictions is proposed, and factors contributing to the success of such positions in the future are discussed.