A review of the implementation of OGC Web Services across Europe

This paper presents the results of an investigation conducted in the spring of 2010 to review the availability across Europe of public Web services conforming to the standard specifications issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium. The descriptive and statistical analysis of 6,544 geospatial network services might provide insight into the current level of implementation of these services in Europe. These services were discovered with the help of a focused crawler able to discover access points to public geospatial network services. This crawler relies on general-purpose search engines for finding seed URLs related with geospatial network services from which begin crawling. The work also identifies potential limitations and data biases derived from the methodology. Nevertheless, this kind of strategy might open up new opportunities to complement SDI implementation assessments when exhaustive, periodic and up to date monitoring is required

O BALANCED SCORECARD E OS KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS: UM ESTUDO DE CASO NUMA EMPRESA DE TRANSPORTES PÚBLICOS

O presente artigo visa propor uma reestruturação ao Balanced Scorecard (BSC) e selecionar Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) numa organização de Transportes Públicos. Para o efeito utilizamos a metodologia do estudo de caso e recolhemos informação através de entrevistas, da observação direta e da análise documental. Concluímos que a proposta de reestruturação do mapa estratégico mostrou-se adequada à missão e aos objetivos estratégicos da empresa e que os KPIs selecionados reverteram para uma rápida compreensão dos resultados estratégicos da mesma. Estes revelaram-se importantes na análise estratégica, bem como no alinhamento dos colaboradores com a missão da organização

Indicadores de desempeño para evaluar las Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales

The importance of geographic information in decision-making and the ability of Spatial Data Infrastructures to transform government actions from a spatial perspective have placed the IDE as a fundamental solution in decision-making at many levels. In view of its relevance and major investments in this area, there is great interest in different sectors of society to observe the impact of the IDE, its evolution and future scenarios. This creates the need for an assessment of its impact, to obtain an approximate measure the success of these initiatives. This requires the availability of reliable mechanisms of evaluation from different approaches and objectives, which does not prevent, despite having a wide variety of studies and proposals, remains a difficult task. As part of the evaluation and monitoring IDE there is a variety of approaches using performance indicators as valid to estimate their development mechanism. In this context it is noted, the effort of experts and organizations, by agreeing a method to evaluate the IDE on the one hand and to define indicators, which are the essential part of various methodological approaches on the other. Given that the indicators are principally a desire to measure, marked differences in purpose of evaluation, the name and scope of the indicators themselves are observed, which indicates there is still much work to be done. This article presents a comparative analysis of the use of indicators for monitoring and evaluation of IDE development, which has been considered the study of five major initiatives: IDEC of Catalonia, GIDEON the Netherlands, eSDI-Net + e INSPIRE European and UN-GGIM of America.La importancia de la información geográfica en la toma de decisiones y la capacidad de las Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales IDE para transformar las acciones de gobierno desde la perspectiva espacial, las han situado como una solución fundamental en la toma de decisiones a muchos niveles. En vista de su relevancia y de las grandes inversiones realizadas en este ámbito, existe gran interés en diferentes sectores de la sociedad por observar el impacto de las IDE, su evolución y escenarios futuros. Esto genera la necesidad de realizar una evaluación sobre su impacto, que permita obtener una cuantificación aproximada del éxito de estas iniciativas. Para ello es preciso contar con mecanismos fiables de evaluación desde diferentes enfoques y objetivos, lo que no impide que, a pesar de disponer de una amplia variedad de estudios y propuestas, siga siendo una tarea difícil. En el marco de la evaluación y monitoreo IDE, existe una variedad de enfoques que utilizan indicadores de desempeño como mecanismo válido para poder estimar su desarrollo. En este contexto se observa, el esfuerzo de expertos y organizaciones, por una parte, por consensuar un método para evaluar las IDE y por otra, por definir indicadores, que son la parte esencial de varios enfoques metodológicos. Partiendo de que los indicadores responden principalmente al deseo de medir, se observan notorias diferencias en cuanto al propósito de evalua ción, a la denominación y al alcance de los propios indicadores, lo cual muestra que aún existe mucho trabajo por realizar. Este artículo presenta un análisis comparativo del uso de indicadores para la evaluación y monitoreo del desarrollo IDE, para lo cual se ha considerado el estudio de cinco importantes iniciativas: IDEC de Cataluña, GIDEON de los Países Bajos, eSDI-Net+ e INSPIRE de Europa y UN-GGIM de América

Methods to Improve and Evaluate Spatial Data Infrastructures

This thesis mainly focuses on methods for improving and evaluating Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). The aim has been threefold: to develop a framework for the management and evaluation of an SDI, to improve the accessibility of spatial data in an SDI, and to improve the cartography in view services in an SDI. Spatial Data Infrastructure has been identified as an umbrella covering spatial data handling procedures. The long-term implementation of SDI increases the need for short/middle term feedbacks from different perspectives. Thus, a precise strategic plan and accurate objectives have to be defined for the implementation of an efficient environment for spatial data collection and exchange in a region. In this thesis, a comprehensive study was conducted to review the current methods in the business management literature to approach to an integrated framework for the implementation and evaluation of SDIs. In this context, four techniques were described and the usability of each technique in several aspects of SDI implementation was discussed. SDI evaluation has been considered as one of the main challenges in recent years. Lack of a general goal oriented framework to assess an SDI from different perspectives was one of the main concerns of this thesis. Among a number of the current methods in this research area, we focused on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a general evaluation framework covering all perspectives in an SDI. The assessment study opened a window to a number of important issues that ranged from the technical to the cartographic aspects of spatial data exchange in an SDI. To access the required datasets in an SDI, clearinghouse networks have been developed as a gateway to the data repositories. However, traditional clearinghouse networks do not satisfy the end user requirements. By adding a number of functionalities, we proposed a methodology to increase the percentage of accessing required data. These methods were based on predefined rules and additional procedures within web processing services and service composition subjects to develop an expert system based clearinghouses. From the cartography viewpoint, current methods for spatial data presentation do not satisfy the user requirements in an SDI environment. The main presentation problem occurs when spatial data are integrated from different sources. For appropriate cartography, we propose a number of methods, such as the polygon overlay method, which is an icon placement approach, to emphasize the more important layers and the color saturation method to decrease the color saturation of the unimportant layers and emphasize the foreground layer according to the visual hierarchy concept. Another cartographic challenge is the geometrical and topological conflicts in data shown in view services. The geometrical inconsistency is due to the artificial discrepancy that occurs when displaying connected information from different sources, which is caused by inaccuracies and different levels of details in the datasets. The semantic conflict is related to the definition of the related features, i.e., to the information models of the datasets. To overcome these conflicts and to fix the topological and geometric conflicts we use a semantic based expert system by utilizing an automatic cartography core containing a semantic rule based component. We proposed a system architecture that has an OWL (Web Ontology Language) based expert system to improve the cartography by adjusting and resolving topological and geometrical conflicts in geoportals

Assessment of Spatial Data Infrastructure from Risk Perspective

This research presents an operational framework to assess organizational Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) from a risk perspective to develop a stable SDI. The core of the framework is constructed based on a survey, fuzzy inference system and cluster analysis, providing quantitative indicators to measure and prioritize the risks to SDI. This framework could mainly contribute to identifying, mitigating or avoiding the potential risks of different aspects of an SDI, such as spatial data and information, organizational and technological aspects. Additionally, it could be considered as an approach that supports multi-view SDI assessment framework toward a more comprehensive assessment of SDIs. A prototype implementation to assess and prioritize the risks of the spatial data and information demonstrates the framework merit, flexibility and usability for assessing the risks of SDI initiatives at different levels, such as organizational, local and national levels; however, the risks and SDIs change over time; thus, the development of stable SDI initiatives depends on a continuous process for coping with the risks

Evaluating the Arctic SDI: An Assessment of the Foundations needed for Success

The Arctic encompasses eight countries and has a population of over four million people. With datasets produced by private and public stakeholders all over the world and noted gaps in data for many parts of the region, there is an opportunity to collaborate and create a unified Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the Arctic. This research identified a set of criteria for evaluating the long-term efficacy of the Arctic SDI from an organizational perspective and not from a user’s perspective. Through the external assessment, half of the countries were found to be strong contributors - almost equally contributing in terms of deliverables, resources and leadership to the Arctic SDI. These three themes developed based on a critical evaluation of the existing SDI literature. While the other half countries contributed noticeably less - due to a lack of deliverables, less participation in working groups or little or no resource contributions. Complementing theses (external) assessments, also internal reviews were conducted via semi-structured interviews, which obtained the participants’ view of the Arctic SDI collaboration potential successes and shortcomings. The interviewees identified opportunities, limitations and risks as they perceived them. Most of the issues associated with the opportunities, limitations and risks could be cross-validated with the external assessment criteria. However, the importance of communication was strongly emphasized in the interviews and was not represented by the external assessment criteria. The completion of both the external and internal assessments led to the multi-view framework that can be used to assess the long-term potential of the Arctic SDI. This evaluation tool can also be used for defining tasks and clarifying responsibilities for the next 5-year Memorandum of Understanding (2019-2024) or to assess the Arctic SDI to identify challenges and mitigation measures that would assist in its longevity. This tool can also be used for other regional SDIs to define MoUs and assess the potential for success

Assessing the motivators and barriers of interorganizational GIS data sharing for address data in South Africa

Address data within geographic information systems (GIS) is used as reference data to link personal and administrative information, thus making it possible to locate and deliver goods and services to eligible persons. Preferably, every country must develop and maintain a single national address database (NAD) to eliminate data redundancy and provide a common point of reference across the board. In South Africa, the challenge is that there are separate address databases, which are developed and maintained by various public and private organizations – with little or no cooperation on data sharing. Currently, the establishment of a Committee for Spatial Information (CSI) which is tasked with the implementation of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI) and the publication of the South African Address Standard (SANS 1883) offer organizations an opportunity to collaborate towards the creation of a single address dataset. This research posits that the implementation of a successful data sharing initiative depends on the understanding of motivators and barriers of organizations participating in it. The research applied the case study method – with a semi-structured questionnaire – to assess the issues that motivate or obstruct GIS data sharing among three address organizations in South Africa. The results identified significant motivators that underlie the data sharing activities, e.g. reduced cost of data collection, improved data quality; and equally identified significant barriers that make organizations reluctant to enter into a data sharing initiative, e.g. data copyright and ownership, high staff-turnover, and lack of financial and technical resources. Although the case studies focused on address data in South Africa, the research findings can equally apply to other spatial datasets and are relevant for the successful implementation of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI).Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2012.Computer ScienceUnrestricte

Indicatori ambientali per la valutazione ambientale strategica

The goal of this thesis is to create a methodological path for the implementation of strategic environmental assessment of regional plans and programs. In particular we wish to reach a procedure that, starting from a specific vision of "environment", allows to identify environmental indicators of context and performance that are suitable in reading environmental state and trend. The thesis is structured in five parts that analyze: 1. the set of rules in force, as a founding element in understanding and identifying strengths and limits in the analyzed case studies; 2. Italian and British manuals and guidelines on how to implement SEA; 3. 12 case studies selected from those submitted by eight European countries including Italy, Malta, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Sweden from August 2006 to June 2007; 4. the proposed approach to indicators selection; 5. a case study: Fauna and Hunting Plan, Province of Medio Campidano (Sardinia)