Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications

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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 cultural aspects of sharing and dynamic partnerships within an SDI hierarchy
    Rajabifard, A ; Feeney, ME ; Williamson, IP (Informa UK Limited, 2002-01-01)
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    Spatial data infrastructure management: lessons from corporate GIS development
    Chan, Tai On ; WILLIAMSON, IAN ( 1999)
    It is argued that a corporate GIS is the lowest level in a hierarchy of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) worldwide. Therefore, SDI development can benefit from a good understanding of the nature and dynamics of development of a corporate GIS. To facilitate this cross-fertilisation, existing definitions of GIS are briefly reviewed in the context of the organisational setting of a corporate GIS. A high level perspective which describes a corporate GIS as making up of GIS modules that play the roles of either an infrastructure or a business process is presented in the paper. The modules are termed infrastructure GIS and business process GIS respectively, with the former supporting the latter. The patterns of GIS development and some long term characteristics of a corporate GIS are identified in a study of the dynamics of GIS development in the Department of Natural Resources and Environment in the State Government of Victoria. These two aspects of the nature of a corporate are also applicable to SDIs and their development. Based on the experience of SDI development in Australia, particularly Victoria, the implications of the observed nature of SDI relationships on SDI management are discussed