Abstracts

Spatial Database Infrastructure (SDIs) and Sustainable Community Planning: What's in for Local Government Organizations (LGOs)?

Governments throughout the world including Canada (CGDI) have spent or are in the process of spending multi-million dollars in developing and implementing SDIs. The underlying purpose of these geospatial data clearinghouses is to promote data sharing and provide open and free access of geographic information to all users for better decision making and value added activities. This pyramid of geographic data integration primarily rests on the availability of local government data which is the foundation for such initiatives. Sustainable development has been recognized as one of the theme areas for SDI development that aims to assist LGOs in planning sustainable communities with the tools and services available from SDIs. Sustainability issues (environment, economy and health) cannot be resolved within isolated municipal jurisdictions. These issues are rather addressed effectively by multi-organization partnerships that foster collaborative planning mechanisms. These scenarios increasingly require better participation of LGOs in the development of national level SDIs. This will allow a heterogeneous environment of geospatial information data sharing and exchange that will promote collaborative planning between different sectors and organizations and effectively utilize value added services offered by SDIs. There are significant gaps in our understanding of the adoption, implementation and effectiveness of SDIs within LGOs for - improving data sharing practices, developing data standards, producing metadata standards and procedures and using centralized geospatial infrastructure. This paper will explore the issues concerning the effective utilization and implementation of SDI principles and policies within LGO's for sustainable community planning initiatives. SDIs have been increasingly recognized as the spatial data clearinghouse that also enables interoperability functions for spatial data web services which holds huge potential for LGOs in lowering their costs, increasing their revenues and improving their overall planning and management capabilities. This paper will also highlight the role of geospatial web-services such as participatory GIS, and community mapping for sustainable community planning.