By definition, ‘spatial enablement in action’ means that we (governments) must make our spatial information “actionable”. That is, it must be used and leveraged beyond just for mapping. It must form the enduring fundamental authoritative spatial data layers of a nation, and do so in a way so that it is able to support evidence-based decision making for the many social, economic and environmental drivers challenges that face our Governments. It is incumbent on us doing so. Should we not do so, we seriously risk “spatial stagnation”, and have a rich resource of geoinformation that remains largely untapped and with significant unrealised potential.

The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure SDI Cookbook defines SDI as the “… collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the availability of and access to spatial data.” This definition (which predates the cookbook) is more than fifteen years old, and over the course of fifteen years much progress has been made toward the SDI vision of abundant, easily shared, easily used geospatial information.

The economic and social development in the Sultanate of Oman during and after 1970 became the basis of assessment and planning to identify priorities of national development. For this, the role of geographic data to support sound decisionmaking has been considered important to support development programmes. Thus, the framework of dataset or the fundamental data in the Sultanate needs to clearly identify what constitutes the basic data used and produced by the government and private institutions.

There is a general consensus among the land administration professionals and different players of the economy in the developed countries and more and more in the developing world as well, that the Land Administration is one of the most important infrastructure for the economic growth and the implementation of sustainable development. This fact is proved by statistical data.

Best practice implementations needs to reflect experience: with cost effective world leading operational national systems; several generations of change i.e. experience with different models of private sector and public sector collaboration; in creating and extending systems of policy, regulation and governance; of the affects of different governance regimes, cultures and from international programmes. They therefore need to cover:

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, ‘This is mine,’ and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.” (from Discours sur l’Origine et le Fondement de l’Inégalité Parmi les Hommes, 1754, – Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

There is no denying of a characteristic that marketing as a concept and priority do not go hand-in-hand with the good departments. Survey of India, National Remote Sensing Centre, Geological Survey of India, Forest Survey of India, National Bureau of Soil Surveys and Land Use Planning (NBSS & LUP) and many other member-organization of NSDI are no exception. As a matter of interest, if you try to know what all is available in India from the portals of NSDI and other organizations, you are hardly rewarded by the desired information…

Metadata is commonly defined as “data about data” and also plays a critical role in any Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) initiatives. Metadata not only provides users of spatial data with information about the purpose, quality, actuality and accuracy of spatial datasets, but also performs vital functions that make spatial data interoperable, that is, capable of being shared between systems…

How can we plan and decide upon urban growth?, which house to buy as a secure investment?, which properties are at risk? All these are critical questions we have to face in a changing world and that may affect permanently our lives. For this reason, today it is much more important to make the correct decisions, whether for designing the national economy or making personal plans for the future.
Making decisions requires knowledge,…

Special characteristic of spatial data is that it can be shared and used for many other purposes than the one, for which, it was originally produced. To facilitate its efficient sharing and reuse, it needs to be properly managed in the form of infrastructure i.e. Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). This is one of the reasons that many countries are developing National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). But the challenge of developing a successful NSDI depends largely on its implementation which is so significant that none of the two key stakeholder groups i.e. public or private sectors can address it at their own. Therefore, if efforts are made to implement such initiatives by only one of the key stakeholder groups then the result may be partially if not totally failure to get the tangible benefits truly intended from such initiatives. As an example, Indian NSDI is explored in this context.