Spatial Infrastructures

Name: The Geospatial Dimensions of Critical Infrastructure and Emergency Response White Paper Series

Company: GITA

A spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is an information system to assemble and use geographic/geospatial information to meet the needs of users and decision-makers.

Increasingly, SDIs are cyber-based information systems which evolve to adopt and use new technologies. The concepts of information infrastructures and spatial data infrastructures have been around for approximately 20 years. These concepts found their start in the convergence of computer and communication technology. This convergence of technologies has brought about today's vast and rapidly changing information infrastructure, one in which a single definition of terms is difficult. This may be true for information infrastructures in general, however since the late 1990s the geospatial community has moved toward a common understanding of the term spatial data infrastructure (SDI). A spatial data infrastructure can now be seen as the “dial tone” of the geospatial web. It is commonly defined as the means to assemble geographic information that describes the arrangement and attributes of features and phenomena on the Earth and includes the technology, policies, standards, delivery mechanisms, and financial and h man resources necessary to acquire, process, store, distribute, and use geospatial data.

“GITA members recognize that ‘everything is somewhere’ and that critical infrastructures are vital to the well-being and health of our communities,” said John Moeller, author of the white paper and former GITA Board of Directors member, current GITA FLAG chair, and former FGDC staff director. “As the community improves its use and management of geospatial information and its enabling technology, we see that spatial information is an information infrastructure itself, and is becoming the key part of the cyber-infrastructure that connects all other elements of critical infrastructure."

Download the white paper.