PCGIAP workshop

As part of the 17th United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Pacific (UNRCC-AP) held in Thailand in September 2006, Working Group 3 of the Permanent Committee for GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacifi c (PCGIAP) organised a one-day international workshop
(21st September 2006) on the‘Integration of Built and Natural Environmental Datasets within National SDI Initiatives’. The workshop was conducted with the support of the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration, the University of Melbourne.

The workshop aimed to facilitate and better understand and describe:• History and existing work related to the integration of built and natural environmental datasets and related National SDI initiatives.

• Capacity for and policies relating to data integration of cadastral and topographic datasets.
• Institutional support for and barriers against data integration of cadastral and topographic datasets.
• The technical, jurisdictional, institutional, legal and land policy perspective surrounding the integration of built and natural environmental datasets, in particular cadastral and topographic datasets, in a National SDI.
• Countries experiences and initiatives in integrating data in order to identify best practice.

Over 40 people from 18 countries and organisations attended the workshop.

The workshop began with a keynote and welcome by Prof Ian Williamson, the Chair of WG3 who highlighted the importance of the integration of built and natural environments internationally and the role that this plays in terms of meeting sustainable development objectives. The workshop then continued with a presentation by Dr Abbas Rajabifard, the Research Coordinator of PCGIAPWG3, who reviewed and presented the development of a three year
research project through collaboration between WG3 and Melbourne University titled “Integration of Built and Natural Environmental Datasets within National SDI Initiatives”. This included an overview of the major aim of the project, which is to develop a model, framework and associated tools for
data integration capable of being used in diverse jurisdiction.

An overview of the International Case Studies being utilised as part of the research project on data integration, which are being progressed through the use of an integration template, were presented by Mr Andrew Binns from the University of Melbourne. This template enables the discovery of information from case study countries on activities and issues in data integration including spatial information policies and SDI activities,laws and regulations, infrastructure implementation, institutional arrangements, integration issues and human resource and capacity building.

A focus on key data integration issues and activities related to case study countries within the PCGIAPMelbourne University Data Integration Project was presented by Mr Hossein Mohammadi, a PhD candidate from the University of Melbourne. This presentation outlined the key legal, institutional, social and policy issues that need to be taken into account in order to technically integrate datasets. This was followed by an overview of some of the actual technical issues hindering integration.

An invited report was then presented by Prof Stig Enemark on the “Integration of natural and built environment data– the experience of Europe with a focus on Denmark”. Prof Enemark discussed the development of the INSPIRE initiative in Europe which is both a top down and bottom up approach to the development of a European SDI.

The second session of the Workshop was allocated to the presentation of Country Reports on SDI and data integration activates by participating countries, based on the WG3 integration template. In this session, reports from Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Denmark, the Philippines, Singapore and New Zealand were presented followed by a short comment from other countries and organisations attending the Workshop, including Germany, Cambodia, Fiji, WHO and INSPIRE.

A short discussion was conducted on the impact of issues presented by both country and organisation representatives. This was summarised and fed into the fi nal outcomes session of the Workshop.