SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE AND INSPIRE IN GLOBAL DIMENSION

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) allows geographic information to be combined from a variety of sources to a variety of disciplines, facilitating decision-making processes at all levels and allowing governments, local communities, non-governmental organizations, commercial sector, academic community and common people to make more informed decisions and to cope with disasters. SDI is a framework of policies, institutional arrangements, technologies, data and people that enables sharing and effective usage of geographic information. The European Union INSPIRE Directive for establishing European SDI is a unique example of a legislative ‘regional’ approach. The international community could benefit from the experience and good practices of those countries and regions that already have advanced SDIs, saving time, money and effort, i.e. not reinventing that which has already proven to be successful in practice.