EUROGI has been invited to participate as an observer to the 9th UNRCC-A and deliver a presentation on SDI

United Nations
Economic and Social Council
New York, USA - 10-14 August 2009

President Mauro Salvemini has been invited by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) to participate as an observer and deliver a presentation to the 9th United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for the Americas (9th UNRCC-A) to be held on August 10-14, 2009 in New York, USA.

The invitation specifically suggested President Mauro Salvemini to present a paper on The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community vs. regional SDI: the shortest way for reaching economic and social development under the agenda item on Spatial Data Infrastructures.

For the purpose, a paper has already been delivered addressing the suggested topic, namely on what concerns the European Union (EU) policies and how the INSPIRE Framework Directive associated to the related projects funded by the European Commission (EC) are driving the future of Geographic Information (GI) in Europe.

It is worth highlight that EUROGI has been invited as the representative European Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), bringing as such a unique European level dimension and perspective to the event.

See the complete paper by Mauro Salvemini prepared to the 9th UNRCC-A

See more information about the 9th UNRCC-A

The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community vs. regional SDI: the shortest way for reaching economic and social development

SUMMARY by Mauro Salvemini

Europe has already established and is operating relevant developments towards the SDI and that many European institutions are playing key roles in contributing to it. Europe is also aware that SDIs generate financial, political, socio-economic, commercial and technical benefits and because of this it is investing at Community and at MS level. It has also to be considered for the sake of clarity that the mentioned activities are part of a common approach to SDIs which is globally pervading our earth. It has already been largely demonstrated that the success and the efficiency of SDI is strictly dependent on how it has been designed, organized, populated by data, how it satisfies the need of end users, how it is locally dependent and centrally related. According to this, the idea of having a unique model for setting up an SDI is far from being truly sustainable. Having the same ingredients each SDI has its own characteristics insuring its absolute interoperability. Therefore each SDI (national, regional, local) should have the status of full partner of major level SDI and not the one of the client of an already established Supra or Global SDI.

This is absolutely demonstrated by the fact that the geo-services offered and/or supported by SDI are used locally by end users that have their own identity reflected in the services requested and that the geo-gov acts locally as already experienced by the e-gov. The approach of providing services where they are requested helps to reduce the digital divide and de-facto facilitates social and economic development.

Nowadays the way in which, Europe acts shows some very interesting peculiarities in the sense that it individuates one Directive for removing inefficiencies and improving value and quality in the provision, sharing and use of GI. To let collaborate together National SDIs developed by the Member States under the aegis of a common agreed Directive and then to proceed through implementing technical rules and common data models it is seems the most effective way for maximizing the results respecting the identities and the peculiarities of each nation and his territory.

The strength and applicability of a subsidiarity model for developing SDI is largely demonstrated by the fact that it is applied in the majority of the European nations between the central and the local level (nation-regions , nation-provinces, regionprovinces, etc.). The issue of relationships between central SDI and local SDI is becoming even more important in the political trend of devolution to local governments in the EU and represents foundations for collaboration with countries from other continents. It should be clear also that the way of achieving social and economic development should be consistently based on academic education, research and training institutions able to produce not only GI specialists and GI users and products but also specialized professionals for designing and developing geo-services.

After some profitable years of investigation and technical and scientific findings mostly based on the axiom of interoperability it is now time to overturn the SDI praxis shifting the effort mainly of public administrations from the technology driver to the social and economic drivers in order to ensure the development of society by offering finalized and locally-based services based on GI and technological achievements. This may be achieved by a strict analysis of real user needs, an effective design process and investing adequate resources in the framework of capacity building of the users.