Mainstreaming Spatial Data Infrastructure
3rd Strategy: Advanced SDI Research. Currently, different nations and regions are at vary
ing stages of maturity with
respect to SDI practice and theoretical understanding. Authors taking a historical perspective have identified patterns in the evolution of different technological systems like SDIs. For example, Ernest J. Wilson III identifies four phases :
The first is the technological phase which is dominated by engineers and
scientists taking a technology deterministic perspective. In the second journalistic phase, futurists tend to dominate by advancing grand, apocalyptic visions of how information will change society. The third (empirical) social sciences phase advances institutional, political and distributional issues and empirically examines issues such as who should pay for it, who owns it and how it should be operated. The (interdisciplinary) scholarly fourth phase is characterized by inter-disciplinary
research involving social scientists to
develop empirically informed theoretical frameworks. With respect to SDIs, it may be argued, that a majority of nations and regions are in the first two stages of maturity characterized by more hype and grand visions and less of realized practical benefits, and a rather weak theoretical understanding of the reasons underlying this unrealized potential.
Current research into SDI has taken place primarily within the geo-community (comprising of specialists in spatial data handling and professional users of geographic information), and focuses strongly on issues related to spatial data and their accessibility (for example, issues of standards and interoperability). We believe that this data focus, both in theory and practice, contributes significantly to the unrealized benefits of SDI despite significant investments, political support, and push by vendors.
We thus see the potential for fusion and cross-learning between SDI and Information Systems research, especially related to information infrastructures and their applications in the settings of transitional economies.
Information Infrastructures are shared, open and enabling. Information Infras-tructures are thus not built to support one application for a pre-defined set of users, but to provide an enabling environment in which a variety of applications and user communities can flourish, and the infrastructure can evolve to support changing needs.
SDIs too represent these characteristics described of Information Infrastructures. They are shared as they seek to make available expensive, geo-referenced spatial data digitally to a variety of users for
diverse application needs (for example, biodiversity, utilities, and health) based on an integrated database approach. SDIs are open as no pre-defined boundaries limiting the user groups are made, and typically various government departments, citizens and private sector are
expected to draw upon them. SDIs are
inherently enabling as they are not pre-configured to a particular application, and can potentially be used by different entities to design their own applications.
Conclusions
Despite considerable progress in design and implementation, SDI are still an esoteric issue argued almost exclusively within the confines of a vibrant but small geoinformation community. The ongoing activities related to the WSIS are an opportunity to align "geoinformation" with "information", to conduct parallel SDI and Information Infrastructure capacity assessments and to enrich SDI research with conceptual frameworks and methodologies from the Information Infrastruc-ture and Information Systems research community.