Beyond Spatial Enablement

Over 650 years of experience in spatial information management, land administration and spatial enablement were percolated into 22 presentations offering a raft of initiatives and insights across the world corresponding with the theme of the forum, “Beyond Spatial Enablement’- Land Administration to support Spatially Enabled Government”

The Centre for SDI and Land Administration (CSDILA), The University of Melbourne was delighted to be part of a design and successfully conduct the 4th UN Land Administration Forum for Asia and the Pacific. The committee, led by and Prof Abbas Rajabifard (GSDI President and Director of CSDILA) and Mr Greg Scott (Chair, Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific- PCGIAP Working Group on Spatially Enabled Government) organised a world-class Forum, attended by 110 participants from different countries, including representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, Europe, Australian federal and state government and spatial industry, and a number of major international related spatial organisations.

This event was jointly organized by the PCGIAP, Centre for SDI and Land Administration (CSDILA), The University of Melbourne, with support from the Australian Government through Geoscience Australia, GSDI Association, FIG, ICA and other Australian federal and state organizations including Victorian Spatial Council, Land Victoria (DSE), Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) and Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI). The event has also been supported by the media partners including Coordinates, GIM International and Land Mark Magazine. The Forum was preceded by a day of collaborative workshops by CSDILA in the areas of national land infrastructure, spatial metadata automation and 3D property management. The event aimed to provide a forum for sharing trends, strategies and a vision for a spatially enabled future with additional themes in mapping, spatial information, SDI and land administration strategies to facilitate spatially enabled government.

The keynote addresses highlighted the emergence of location as the fourth Beyond Spatial Enablement 4th Land Administration Forum for the Asia and Pacific Region, Melbourne 5-7 October 2011 driver in decision-making, the role of the cadastre and land administration in spatial enablement, the continued need for good land governance to facilitate spatially enabled government to build capacity for addressing the global agenda and lastly, the primacy of a spatially enabled government in achieving sustainable development.

From local government organisations to international institutions like the World Bank reported the myriad initiatives currently occurring around the world to realise spatial enablement activities. The worldwide challenges were also examined and new initiatives that the UN and member countries are implementing in support of spatially enabled government and society were considered. It was observed that the realisation of spatial enablement was still being impacted by the existence and perpetuation of data silos both within and between organisations making the discovery, access, use and sharing of spatial data still a significant challenge.

In considering emerging trends for future direction, many different aspects were discussed. Key to these were participation trends especially pertaining to users, location as the fourth element of decision-making, the need to differentiate between high accuracy data (the new concept of AAA information) and other data (including crowd-sourced), evolving standards, growing awareness for open access to data, a focus on service delivery and finally, a caution that the move to achieve spatial enablement could result in spatial dependency. These various elements will provide the basis for the development of new strategies to provide the foundation for future international activities by participants in line with the objectives of GSDI and FIG and the MoU arrangements that currently exist with these organisations, as well as fostering collaborations with global organisations like ICA and the ISPRS.

Alongside the forum, the CSDILA also celebrated its 10 year anniversary celebrations. For more information about the Forum (including presentations) and its outcomes, visit: http://csdila.unimelb.edu.au/ BeyondSpatialEnablement/programme.html.