SDI development to support spatial decision-making

Abstract

Improved economic, social and environmental decision-making are principal objectives for investing in the development of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) at all political and administrative levels. So much so, resolution 7 of the recent 5th Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference in Cartagena, Colombia argued that the purpose of the GSDI is to improve the availability, accessibility, and applicability of spatial information for decision-making (GSDI 2001). Developing institutional support for decision-making that promotes and incorporates the availability and accessibility of spatial information therefore plays an important role in SDI implementation.

From an institutional perspective the motivation for SDI implementation is driven by the impracticality of a single organisation producing and maintaining the wide variety of data and models needed to inform many decisions, which results in increased sharing of data, information, analytical, display and modelling tools. This is being seen particularly in the natural resource, environment and local government sectors in Australia (Feeney et al. 2002). These sectors are utilising a variety of institutional mechanisms in their development of spatial decision support capabilities, which are moving progressively towards models that support the development and availability of interoperable digital geographic data and technologies to support spatial decision-making at different levels and participation.

The inclusion of technology support as part of developing SDIs has been recognised as essential to meeting the needs of the multi-disciplinary and multi-participant environments that characterise decision-making for sustainable development (Agenda21 1993, GSDI 2001, Rio+10 2002). Unless a diversity of decision support mechanisms are going to be incorporated more into decision processes many relevant and useful spatial datasets and technologies are not going to be used to their potential to support sustainable development.

Government has a central role to play in developing infrastructure that supports the discovery, access and applications of spatial information and technologies for such decision support. This paper looks at a variety of institutional mechanisms, for supporting the decision process, being employed in SDI development in the natural resource and environmental sectors in Australia. The decision-making levels supported by these different mechanisms will be reviewed in terms of organisational decision-making and decision process theories, as well as the level of coordination between institutional approaches at the spatial data policy level. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the implications of the approaches to developing institutional support for decision-making, as part of SDI development, as well as a consideration of directions for SDI development in the future to support spatial decision-making.