Geospatial Data Sharing: The Role of Coordination and Data Integration in Spatial Data Infrastructure

Abstract

Spatial data comes in a variety of formats and includes more than just geographic information. It is projected that over 80% of government data has location. Several initiatives have been launched in recent years to promote and coordinate the sharing of spatial data from various sources. These initiatives are frequently referred to collectively as the 'Spatial Data Infrastructure' (SDI), which can be defined as a collection of technological and organisational components aimed at facilitating and coordinating spatial data sharing. Coordination and data integration are widely regarded as the most important aspects of an SDI. Coordination is required because the use and exchange of spatial data involves many actors at various levels and sectors while data characteristics of usable datasets is the readiness of spatial datasets for integration with other datasets. To gain insights of the role of coordination and data integration SWOT analysis was selected to categorise information into several themes and factors including internal and external factors. The aim of this paper is to show the importance of coordination and data integration in the context of a Spatial Data Infrastructure and how it increases the degree of spatial data sharing.