Major Policy Breakthroughs Announced at Spatial@Gov 2012

The first day of this year’s Spatial@Gov conference saw two major government policy announcements: the establishment of a National Foundation Spatial Data Framework, and the imminent whole-of-government licence of PSMA’s Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF).

The National Foundation Spatial Data Framework defines the ten data themes that form the authoritative geographic data layers that underpin other data and decision making. The policy recognises these as so critical that government will focus its energy and resources on ensuring its authoritative, reliable supply.

The whole-of-government G-NAF licence means that individual departments no longer need to separately get a G-NAF licence, saving a lot of money and greatly extending its potential utilisation. It is my hope that this could extend beyond government as well.

SDI in the CRC-SI: Also-ran or Opportunity?

Sample of the parallel discussion in the Twittersphere

At last week’s annual conference of the CRC for Spatial Information, we saw the (re-) launch of its “Spatial Data Infrastructures” (SDI) research agenda, which generated vibrant (online) discussions. Though this CRC has been operating for more than 2 years now, its Spatial Infrastructures program has been a bit of a wasteland. In part due to the lack of a dedicated Science Director, the program has to date failed to formulate any vision, nor a credible agenda, and delivered disappointingly little.

Rockstars, Google goes SDI, and DIY Panoramas

Wrap-up of Where 2.0, 19-21 April 2011

After Tuesday's workshops, Where 2.0 really kicked off of Wednesday. Two things immediately became apparent. Firstly: some of these young entrepreneurs are revered as rock stars. The only thing missing in the opening interview with Foursquare's CEO Dennis Crowley were the screaming teenagers.

Secondly, every self-respecting LBS product company uses the conference for a product launch. Thus we saw exciting new products & capabilities from established players like Microsoft, Nokia, ESRI and Google, and about a million start-ups.

And of course, this was the conference where the iPhone tracking 'scandal' was revealed. If you've been living under a pebble: unbeknown to most of us, iPhones and iPads track and store your location, unencrypted. It’s very easy for others (employers, suspicious partners) to read this.

Vision on "SDI 2.0"

At last November's annual conference of the CRC for Spatial Information, I presented a vision on "SDI 2.0", or what Spatial Data Infrastructures will look like in the 21st Century.

There will be a shift from SDI 1.0: top-down, supply driven, slow and expensive initiatives, that mainly generate a flurry of (user-less?) YAPs (Yet Another Portal), to SDI 2.0, which is demand driven, mobile, crowd-sourced, cheap and immediate. In SDI 2.0, the default 'authoritative source' is no longer assumed to be a government department or large commercial provider.

SDI 2.0 will harness the forces of Web 2.0 and neo-geography, where there is less and less distinction between users and consumers of geodata. There will be a long tail of many producers of little amounts of data and small applications and mash-ups. This dramatically shifts the demands on government, industry and data providers, who ignore these trends at their peril.

You can watch the slides below, or download them here.

CRC-SI Soapbox Presentation on SDI 2.0

View more presentations from Maurits van der Vlugt.

Bloody Big Deal: European Union extends Quality of Service regulations for Geodata Network Services

Last week, the EU issued a directive to extend its Quality of Service regulations for Geodata Services. This directive adds specifications for download and transformation services to the 'discovery' and 'view' services that were regulated in 2009.


Though this event earned little more than the odd footnote in the industry press and blogosphere, it is actually a bloody big deal. The directive sets specific minimum parameters for performance, capacity and availability of geospatial services published by EU governments. And these are binding.

Spatial Information is the key to Smart Infrastructure

Last Friday (12/3/2010) I had the pleasure of attending the "Smart Infrastructure Conference" in Canberra, hosted by the House Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. The conference was part of the parliamentary inquiry into Smart Infrastructure, which (in short) tells the government how best to implement and maximise the benefits from Smart Infrastructure, such as dynamic train management, smart utility grids or hydrological sensor networks.

Image Source: www.lbxjournal.com/node/260011