The role of institutional mechanisms in spatial data infrastructure development that supports decision-making

Improved economic, social and environmental decision-making are principal objectives for investing in the development of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) at all political and administrative levels. Indeed, Resolution 7 of the recent 5th Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference in Cartagena, Colombia (GSDI, 2001) argued that the purpose of the GSDI is to improve the availability, accessibility, and applicability of spatial information for decisionmaking. While accepting the development of institutional mechanisms to support decisionmaking by promoting the availability and accessibility of spatial information as part of SDI institutional frameworks, many institutional mechanisms fall short of addressing the application of spatial data to decison-making. From an institutional perspective, the motivation for SDI implementation is the impracticality of a single organisation producing and maintaining the wide variety of data and models needed to inform many decisions, resulting in a need for sharin...