Applying Design Patterns in URI Strategies - Naming in Linked Geospatial Data Infrastructure

The centrality of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) as names in Linked Data initiatives has led to the development of guidelines and best practices by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other experts groups on how to design "good" URIs in general and for the government domain in particular. However, these URI design guidelines have had limited pragmatic value for several reasons including the under specified nature of the rules, weak elaboration on nature of problems addressed and consequences of prescribed design decisions. With no conceptual or rigorous underpinning for existing design rules, checking for internal consistency or coverage when developing URI strategies is difficult. We tackle these problems in this paper by: 1) consolidating existing URI design rules, 2) distilling core URI design aspects or facets from these rules and 3) abstracting the rules into a set of consistent URI Design Patterns specifications. This process resulted in 8 Design Patterns from an initial set of 37 URI design rules. Following this, we show how the design patterns could be employed in developing a URI strategy to support the realization of a Linked Spatial Data Infrastructure. We conclude with an evaluation of the URI design patterns and implications of our work

A comparative analysis of stakeholder roles in the spatial data infrastructures of South Africa, Namibia and Ghana

Spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) at various levels (global, regional national, local and corporate) are being developed by and in countries around the world. We assess here the SDI developments in three African countries, Ghana, Namibia and South Africa, using the SDI models developed by the Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards of the International Cartographic Association (ICA), focusing on the stakeholders and their roles: the Policy Maker, Producer, Provider, Broker, Value-Added Reseller (VAR) and End User. SDI development in all three countries has involved a variety of stakeholders and has taken a long time, waxing and waning depending on the availability of funding and the commitment of the stakeholders, particularly the Policy Makers. This research on the similarities and differences of the SDI stakeholders in Ghana, Namibia and South Africa improves the understanding of SDI development and we hope that the results can help other countries with their own SDI developments. Based on our work, we make recommendations for refining the ICA’s stakeholder typology

Stakeholder analysis of the governance framework of a national SDI dataset – whose needs are met in the buildings and address register of the Netherlands?

National spatial data infrastructures are key to achieving the Digital Earth vision. In many cases, national datasets are integrated from local datasets created and maintained by municipalities. Examples are address, building and topographic information. Integration of local datasets may result in a dataset satisfying the needs of users of national datasets, but is it productive for those who create and maintain the data? This article presents a stakeholder analysis of the Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen (BAG), a collection of base information about addresses and buildings in the Netherlands. The information is captured and maintained by municipalities and integrated into a national base register by Kadaster, the Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency of the Netherlands. The stakeholder analysis identifies organisations involved in the BAG governance framework, describes their interests, rights, ownerships and responsibilities in the BAG, and maps the relationships between them. Analysis results indicate that Kadaster and the municipalities have the highest relative importance in the governance framework of the BAG. The study reveals challenges of setting up a governance framework that maintains the delicate balance between the interests of all stakeholders. The results provide guidance for SDI role players setting up governance frameworks for national or global datasets.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjde202019-09-20hj2018Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorolog

Stakeholder analysis of the governance framework of a national SDI dataset – whose needs are met in the buildings and address register of the Netherlands?

National spatial data infrastructures are key to achieving the Digital Earth vision. In many cases, national datasets are integrated from local datasets created and maintained by municipalities. Examples are address, building and topographic information. Integration of local datasets may result in a dataset satisfying the needs of users of national datasets, but is it productive for those who create and maintain the data? This article presents a stakeholder analysis of the Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen (BAG), a collection of base information about addresses and buildings in the Netherlands. The information is captured and maintained by municipalities and integrated into a national base register by Kadaster, the Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency of the Netherlands. The stakeholder analysis identifies organisations involved in the BAG governance framework, describes their interests, rights, ownerships and responsibilities in the BAG, and maps the relationships between them. Analysis results indicate that Kadaster and the municipalities have the highest relative importance in the governance framework of the BAG. The study reveals challenges of setting up a governance framework that maintains the delicate balance between the interests of all stakeholders. The results provide guidance for SDI role players setting up governance frameworks for national or global datasets.The H2020 European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme.https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjde202021-09-20hj2020Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorolog

Innovation-Driven Enterprise Architecture

Organizations don't use Enterprise Architecture (EA) to leverage innovation as much as they should. And this while the organization's ability to innovate is an essential capability in a competitive market. IT can enable business innovation and EA is rooted in IT. Therefore, IT is considered the common denominator between EA and business innovation. This exploratory research provides new insight to bridge a knowledge gap on how EA can enhance an organization‘s ability in IT-enabled business innovation. It reveals that organizational learning is critical to the innovative capabilities of organizations. With this in mind, the most important capability domains have been determined: Knowledge, Collaboration & communication, Information processing & coordination, and Ideation. To facilitate these capabilities, several technological and organizational assets are identified: Key stakeholders, Collaborative organizational culture, Web technologies, Knowledge management systems, and Data Analytics. We developed a conceptual model which positions the capability domains and key assets. This model has been validated through a case study, conducted within a global manufacturing company. Conclusion is that EA is a viable approach to systematically address and facilitate IT-enabled business innovation. By focusing on the capabilities and facilitating these through organizational and technical assets, organizations can enhance their ability in IT-enabled business innovation

Gestión colaborativa de modelos 3D de ciudades en citygml durante su ciclo de vida basada en servicios en la nube

El objetivo de esta tesis es facilitar la gestión colaborativa de modelos 3D urbanos durante su ciclo de vida, incluyendo desde la generación hasta el uso de los mismos. Para ello se han diseñado y desarrollado una serie de servicios web que permiten generar el modelo con diferentes niveles de detalle y requisitos, validar el modelo 3D urbano a medida que se actualiza de forma colaborativa y proporcionar mecanismos para el despliegue automático de los mismos.El primer problema a resolver sobre los modelos 3D urbanos es que la generación de los mismos es compleja y costosa. Aunque la generación de la información geométrica de modelos 3D urbanos ha avanzado muchos en los últimos años, la semantización, que es el proceso de asignar información semántica a los objetos urbanos, sigue siendo uno de los aspectos críticos. Una vez existen, el siguiente problema a resolver es el mantenimiento, ya que normalmente los modelos se generan en un momento concreto, pero o no se actualizan o solo se actualizan cada mucho tiempo.Otro de los problemas que han sido identificados después de años trabajando con modelos 3D urbanos y desarrollando aplicaciones basadas en los mismos, es la necesidad de validarlos. Cada vez que se realizan cambios en el modelo, más aún si estos cambios los realizan diferentes personas, es necesario comprobar que el modelo sigue siendo válido. Normalmente la validación es un proceso semimanual que conlleva un gran coste en tiempo, y aun así no se tiene la certeza de que el modelo sea totalmente válido.Ante esta situación es necesario, por un lado, diseñar y desarrollar metodologías para facilitar y agilizar la creación y mantenimiento de modelos 3D urbanos. Y, por otro lado, ofrecer soluciones que permitan trabajar conjuntamente de forma colaborativa en el mantenimiento de un modelo 3D urbano y ofrecer mecanismos para la validación automática de los mismos una vez actualizados. Con estas soluciones será más fácil disponer de modelos 3D urbanos actualizados, validados y puestos a disposición de sus usuarios fácilmente.El objetivo de esta investigación es también avanzar en la correcta adopción de los modelos 3D urbanos con el fin de aumentar su uso en diferentes herramientas y por diferentes tipos de usuarios y organizaciones, tales como administraciones, empresas, universidades o ciudadanos.<br /

Towards BIM/GIS interoperability: A theoretical framework and practical generation of spaces to support infrastructure Asset Management

The past ten years have seen the widespread adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) among both the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) and the Asset Management/ Facilities Management (AM/FM) communities. This has been driven by the use of digital information to support collaborative working and a vision for more efficient reuse of data. Within this context, spatial information is either held in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models in a Common Data Environment (CDE). However, these being heterogeneous systems, there are inevitable interoperability issues that result in poor integration. For this thesis, the interoperability challenges were investigated within a case study to ask: Can a better understanding of the conceptual and technical challenges to the integration of BIM and GIS provide improved support for the management of asset information in the context of a major infrastructure project? Within their respective fields, the terms BIM and GIS have acquired a range of accepted meanings, that do not align well with each other. A seven-level socio-technical framework is developed to harmonise concepts in spatial information systems. This framework is used to explore the interoperability gaps that must be resolved to enable design and construction information to be joined up with operational asset information. The Crossrail GIS and BIM systems were used to investigate some of the interoperability challenges that arise during the design, construction and operation of an infrastructure asset. One particular challenge concerns a missing link between AM-based information and CAD-based geometry which hinders engineering assets from being located within the geometric model and preventing geospatial analysis. A process is developed to link these CAD-based elements with AM-based assets using defined 3D spaces to locate assets. However, other interoperability challenges must first be overcome; firstly, the extraction, transformation and loading of geometry from CAD to GIS; secondly, the creation of an explicit representation of each 3D space from the implicit enclosing geometry. This thesis develops an implementation of the watershed transform algorithm to use real-world Crossrail geometry to generate voxelated interior spaces that can then be converted into a B-Rep mesh for use in 3D GIS. The issues faced at the technical level in this case study provide insight into the differences that must also be addressed at the conceptual level. With this in mind, this thesis develops a Spatial Information System Framework to classify the nature of differences between BIM, GIS and other spatial information systems