Roger Longhorn, GSDI Secretary-General, Infoter 5 Conference, SES Presentation

The Spatially Enabled Society -Global Trends and Best Practices

Roger LonghornSecretary-General, GSDI Association

Editor, GSDI Global Newsletter

www.gsdi.org / [email protected]

http://www.gsdi.org/

What is a Spatially Enabled Society (SES)?

• A spatially enabled society, including government, businesses and citizens, “is one that makes use of, and benefits from, a wide array of spatial data, information, and services as a means to efficiently organize its resources, services and related activities.”

• Spatial enablement … “adds location to existing information and unlocks the wealth of existing knowledge about resources, uses and challenges”.

• Such information … “must be available in a free, efficient, and comprehensive way in order to support the sustainable development of society”.

• It needs to be … “organized in such a way that it can be shared easily, integrated, and analysed to provide the basis for value added services”.

Adapted from ‘Spatially Enabled Society’ by Daniel Steudler and Abbas Rajabifard, published by FIG and GSDI Association, FIG Publication No. 58. Accessible from www.fig.net/pub/figpub/pub58/figpub58.pdf

6 November 2014 Infoter Conference, Balatonfured, Hungary 2

SES Historically and in the Future

• The Spatially Enabled Society (SES) offers new opportunities for government and wider society to use and develop spatial information.

• Historically, spatial data underpinning SES has been produced by governments –and used mainly by them in service delivery.

• Recent advances in technology permit ever more spatial data to be collected by businesses and citizens, not just governments.

• The concept of SES needs to move beyond the current tendency for the responsibility to achieve SES to lie mainly with governments.

• The SES will be more readily achieved – and more quickly - by increasing involvement from the private sector, and even citizens.


SES Current Trends

• accepting ‘location’ as a key element of decision-making by all sectors of society;

• differentiating between authoritative and volunteered geospatial information (VGI or crowdsourcing);

• recognizing the importance and value that both types of information (official and unofficial) provide for spatial enablement and enrichment of society;

• growing awareness for openness of data, e.g. open data initiatives, licensing issues, and improvements in data quality;

• moving towards service provision rather than just data provision;

• confronting challenging issues arising from the ubiquitous availability of location-based information, e.g. privacy, IPR, etc.


Fundamental Elements of SES & SDIs

• a legal framework to provide the institutional structure for data sharing, discovery, access, use and re-use;

• a sound data integration concept to ensure multi-sourced data integration and interoperability;

• a positioning infrastructure to enable, and benefit from, precise positioning possibilities;

• a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) to facilitate data sharing, reduce duplication and link data producers, providers and value adders to users based on a common goal of data sharing;• EU SDI (INSPIRE) – 1995 to 2020!

• data and information that respects certain basic principles, e.g. to increase the availability and interoperability of ‘free to re-use’ spatial data from different actors and sectors.


SES Elements – Legal Framework

SDI Jurisdictional framework for implementing the SES:

• legal framework is a key element in achieving SES,

• legal interoperability offers its own challenges, e.g. different policies spanning different societal sectors, and jurisdictions (Irish gov example)

• the framework constitutes an integral component of a jurisdiction’s institutional infrastructure spanning all elements of society,

• the framework governs behaviour and creates institutional arrangements within a legal jurisdiction,

• these structures facilitate the use, sharing, access and management of spatial information and technologies within and between different levels of society.


SES Legal Framework Challenges

• including use of information in formal situations (e.g. in courts as evidence),

• proofs and verifications of information,

• commercial-in-confidence limitations,

• privacy and personal protection and protection of people in special circumstances

• intellectual property (IPR) and licence arrangements,

• value adding for innovative or secondary purposes,

• reuse (especially on a commercial basis),

• social access, storage and archiving,

• liability for error,

• responsibility for maintenance (custodianship) and forms in which the information is kept.


Addressing SES Legal Framework Challenges

• United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UNGGIM) HLF October 2011

• Issued a declaration that highlights the importance for governments around the world to share their experiences in …

• “policy-making, supporting legislation, and funding strategies to encourage and develop best practices in the management (i.e. collection, storage, maintenance and dissemination) with respect to global geospatial information, and to facilitate and to promote the sharing of knowledge and expertise, especially with developing countries”.


SES Key Trends

• More and more governments, globally, are adopting ‘open data’ principles for all or large sections of government (official) data. (see http://census.okfn.org/)

• In the EU, several Directives provide stimulus for wider use of spatial data by government, businesses and individuals – PSI Re-use Directive, INSPIRE Directive, ‘Aarhus Convention’ Directive, and more.• WFD, MSFD, MSPD, Flood Assessment, Noise Assessment, and more in future…

• ‘Location Frameworks’ are being recognized as crucial to conducting both government (especially e-government) and commercial business, leading to EU-funded projects such as EULF and E.L.F. and numerous national initiatives.

• Some government agencies are now actively investigating ways to include non-official (VGI or crowdsourced) spatial data in their datasets.

• Citizens are becoming involved in not only using spatial data, but in creating spatially enabled information and even services using new user-friendly tools.

• The key issues for creating a Spatially Enabled Society are access, sharing and ability to re-use data collected by others, both technically and legally.


SES Trends - Examples

• Positioning Infrastructure (PI) – continually improving GPS/GNSS and alternatives (WiFiand GSM triangulating), inertial sensing (moving tracking from external to internal environment)

• Ubiquitous sensing – sensor webs proliferating, ‘citizen as sensors’

• Location-based social networks, feeding into and used by e-government, UK ‘FixMyTransport’ example combining government official data with crowdsourcing

• People tracking – for health, for performance monitoring, ethical issues• BP, eBay, Coca Cola, Tesco, Capriotti’s (Google Glass), Virgin Atlantic, Bank of America and

various European banks, and more…

• Vehicle and machine tracking – privacy issues, benefits to economy and society, e.g. machine control and Google’s self-drive cars• Australia ag and mining sector: 75 to 135 billion AUD benefits in next 20 years

• Exploring the environment – virtual ‘seeing’ (Google glasses linked to spatial data)


SES Key Challenges

• Keeping up with the technology!• Future near-ubiquitous availability of location-aware devices, including sensors, at ever reducing costs.• Ready access to enhanced positioning technology (including tracking of location in closed environments).

• Adjusting to rapidly evolving information infrastructures driven by, and underpinning, trends in social media, e-government – and citizen’s expectations.• Privacy and personal data protection issues

• Intellectual property rights, especially when integrating data from multiple sources

• Ethical use of location technology, e.g. current micro-drone (UAV) privacy issues, employee tracking, etc.• Non-professionals creating spatial information services raises a number of issues (quality, fitness for

purpose, IPR, etc.)

• Defining formal methodologies for evaluating the benefits of SES• Governments will continue to invest in SES technologies and services, only if there is a valid business case

for such investment

• Industry are key players and apply multiple business models in information and services provision, from inexpensive apps for personal use to global services for multiple sectors of society.


SES Publications from GSDI Association Press (open access)

Visit http://www.gsdi.org/openaccessbooks for links to these freely available publications from

the GSDI Association Press relating to SES:

Spatial Enablement in Support of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction (300 pages)

Editors: Harlan Onsrud and Abbas Rajabifard; Publisher: GSDI Association Press, 2013

ISBN 978-0-9852444-2-2

Spatially Enabling Government, Industry and Citizens: Research and Development Perspectives (286 pages)

Editors: Abbas Rajabifard and David Coleman; Publisher: GSDI Association Press, 2012

ISBN 978-0-9852444-1-5

Spatially Enabling Society: Research, Emerging Trends and Critical Assessment (248 pages)

Editors: Abbas Rajabifard, Joep Crompvoets, Mohsen Kalantari, Bas Kok

Publisher: GSDI Association and Leuven University Press, 2010

ISBN 978-87-90907-88-4


Thank you for your attention!

Find out more about the GSDI Association, its vision, goals, members, resources and activities at: http://gsdi.org

GSDI accepts both organisational and individual members from across the globe.

For more information, contact:

Roger Longhorn, GSDI Secretary-General

[email protected]


http://gsdi.org/

Roger Longhorn, GSDI Secretary-General, Infoter 5 Conference, SES Presentation

Data & Analytics

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