2. Geodata for Swiss Education – Implementation of a national geoportal

There is an increasing demand for geodata in different academic disciplines, such as earth sciences, cartography, architecture, spatial planning and many others. However, until today, there is no central academic geodata infrastructure in Switzerland. The current, two-year project Geodata for Swiss Education (Geodata4SwissEDU) will fill this gap by establishing a national geoinformation access platform for academia.

The project’s central goal is to develop a national geoinformation service for education and research at Swiss universities. It is carried out in collaboration between three partners, i.e. the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation at ETH Zurich (IKG), the Centre of Competence for Geoinformation at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (CCG HSR) and the ETH-Bibliothek (central university library of ETH Zurich). The collaboration ensures the expertise needed to establish such a service with the necessary infrastructure. The final service addresses Swiss universities, which want to facilitate the efficient and user-friendly access to geodata for their students and researchers.

The platform geodata4edu will comprise both official geodata (federal and selected cantonal geoinformation), which are subject to licence, as well as project-specific geodata. It thereby allows users to easily find and access a wide range of geodata. The geodata4edu platform will consist of a metadata catalogue to find the data and two services for accessing the data. The two different ways of access are necessary to meet the varying requirements of users. GeoVITe, a web-based access platform provided by the IKG, offers a graphical user interface to select, visualise and download federal data, therefore alleviating the need for GIS-knowhow in order to access the data. The HSR Geoportal offers direct access to federal and cantonal data via webservices and thereby meets primarily the requirements of experienced GIS-users who need to combine many different datasets. The national geodata access platform geodata4edu provides multifaceted opportunities. A major advantage is that a centralised service bundles the resources for data and licence collection and opens up for an expanded scientific user group to gain access to a wide range of geodata. Yet, the establishment of a national geoportal also poses challenges concerning the authentication, the regulation of legal issues or the development of a sustainable business model.

The project is running from January 2015 until December 2016. The service is in the process of implementation. The poster gives an overview on the project, illustrates key points of the future service and sheds light on past and potential future challenges as well as opportunities of implementing a nationwide geodata-platform for research and education.