A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) provides access to any kind of spatial data to users. It comprises the technology, policies, standards and human resources necessary to acquire, process, store, distribute and improve utilisation of geospatial data.

The conference will show the importance of SDIs and their use, on local, national or regional level in the region of South East Europe and its relation to global initiatives. It targets the process of spatial data sharing through the Internet, as a tool for faster, easier and simpler access to spatial data by all stakeholders, customers and clients; the implementation of International/Global and European criteria for organizing digital spatial data ; the impact of SDIs on all application fields; cooperation between stakeholders such as state institutions responsible for collecting, structuring, archiving, updating and analyzing spatial data according to their legal mission and obligation.

The conference has the ambition to become the major SDI conference in the region and be influential for SDI development. It follows an earlier conference entitled “Importance of developing National Spatial Data Infrastructure of the Republic of Macedonia based on INSPIRE directive” that took place in Skopje on 27 March 2009.

Conference themes:

1. Sub national, National, Regional, Continental and Global Spatial Data Infrastructure
2. Scientific aspects of SDIs and their development
3. Methodologies for SDI development, update and upgrade
4. Technologies and standards
5. Architectures of SDIs
6. Data, data specifications, data organization and exchange mechanisms
7. SDI metadata and spatial coordinate systems
8. Building and organization of SDIs
9. Integration and compatibility of SDI’s developed by different platforms
10. Legal aspects of SDI developing and utilization
11. Experiences in SDI development on sub national, national, regional, continental and global level
12. European INSPIRE development and implementation
13. Pan-European geographic datasets
14. Global Mapping
15. SDI as necessary tool of cartography
16. Applications of SDI in various sectors such as government, telecommunications, utilities, cadastre, land management, environment and nature protection, disaster management, climate changes, Earth structure, physical and urban planning, tourism and others
17. Education, training and awareness creation
18. Others

Expected Audience

The conference will bring together stakeholders interested in the development and use of SDIs, with a focus on the region of South-East Europe. Participants from other countries-continents would contribute with their research and experience. Scientist, researchers, industry and data owners from public or private sector are expected to contribute to increased understanding and awareness of SDIs in the region and to the identification of new ways of their implementation and use.

Participation of professionals from all over the world, especially from European countries in the conference will allow sharing their experiences in developing and using SDI’s in their countries. Through scientific and practical solutions presented by the participants (scientific institutions-researchers, governmental and private sector organizations), and fruitful discussions and papers, methodologies and ways will be put forward, which will help finding out the probably best-appropriate-common ways for developing SDI’s in the region and in general and for special purposes and applications.