Towards Geographical Information Ecosystems

Since the late 1980s the geographic information community in most parts of the world initiated activities towards a more efficient and effective operation of geographic information in the public sector. Spatial data infrastructures developed from provider driven towards user driven infrastructures focusing on the delivery of high quality basic geodata to well-known user groups. Open data and APIs were embraced by the geodomain resulting in an overwhelming amount of unknown users, using our data for unknown purposes.

Recently the concepts of open data ecosystem and open Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) were introduced, suggesting a fundamental change in the way we operate our SDIs. This presentation will address these new concepts and discuss how they are different from spatial data infrastructures: Do we really need to change the way we operate our SDIs today in order to be ready for the challenges of tomorrow?