Advanced Regional SDIs in Europe: comparative cost-benefit evaluation and impact assessment perspectives

This paper reports the findings of two studies on the socio-economic impacts of the regional spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) in Catalonia, and Lombardia, and then compares the developments in these two regions with those in other nine advanced regional SDIs to explore the extent to which the findings reported for the two detailed case-studies could be generalised. The significance of this paper is that the studies it reports are to date the only ones substantiating with real evidence the costs and benefits of SDIs in comparable regions of Europe. With the implementation of INSPIRE requiring the development of SDIs at multiple levels across Europe, the findings of this paper become all the more critical to support the investment decisions of public administrators, particularly at a time of considerable financial strains.