Integration of built and natural environmental datasetswithin national SDI initiatives

Sustainable development and meeting “the triple bottom line” (economic, social andenvironmental objectives) requires an understanding of the natural and built landscape in order toobserve and monitor change and to create realistic simulations of the evolving environment. Thisrequires access to both built and natural environmental datasets. Over the last decade these needshave attempted to be addressed by establishing spatial data infrastructures (SDI) where one ofthe key objectives is facilitating access to a wide range of spatial data from various custodiansand agencies and different jurisdictional levels. There is now a need to take the concept of aNational SDI to the next level through incorporation of the ability to integrate the datasetsavailable, specifically cadastral (built) and topographic (natural) spatial data.This integration involves an understanding and documentation of issues and problems within andbetween jurisdictions within the Asia-Pacific region. Integration of externally sourced spatialdata and information has raised many technical problems such as semantic and modelingheterogeneity and there is a need to develop policies, programs, logical and physical architectureand deliverables that removes duplication of effort in attempts to solve these technical problems.There is a need to built a framework for the reciprocal exchange of fundamental infrastructurewith the risk of misuse or misapplication of built and natural environmental datasets effectivelymanaged. This includes the creation of models that cater for both high end and highly resourcedas well as low end and lowly resourced organisations.This project aims to achieve this through development and documentation of best practice with afocus on Asia-Pacific countries. This will be through Working Group 3 (WG3) of the PermanentCommittee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific (PCGIAP) who is responsible forexploring technical, institutional and policy issues regarding the contribution of SDI indesigning, building and managing large scale, spatial, people relevant datasets, and in particulartheir role in cadastral, land administration and marine administration systems. This is a majorinitiative of WG3 activities and will be undertaken as part of its workplan.