SDI - From Spatial Data Infrastructure to Service Driven Infrastructure

This paper is offered as a contribution to the Workshop on Cross-learning between Spatial Data Infrastructures, and Information Infrastructures, Enschede, 31 March-1 April, 2005. Its purpose is to consider some of the key challenges we see for the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) in the short and medium term. Although much attention has been given recently to the initiative of the European Commission aimed at developing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) we deliberately have chosen not to focus specifically on the requirements of this initiative but to consider the broader research questions raised by the development of SDIs. Many of the questions raised by the paper are likely to be relevant also to Information Infrastructure research and to other domains-specific infrastructures, and these synergies will hopefully emerge form the discussion at the Workshop. The paper is organised in two main sections considering technical challenges, and socio-economic impacts respectively. The paper does not claim to be exhaustive in the research needs, and many important areas such as ethical considerations, privacy, and security are not addressed here even though they are clearly of major importance for the future development of SDIs, and related infrastructures.