UNSDI
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UNSDI is the acronym for the United Nations Spatial Data Infrastructure.
During the Sixth UNGIWG Plenary Meeting held in Addis Ababa in October 2005, endorsement by the individual participnats was given for a United Nations Spatial Data Infrastructure (UNSDI)to support coordinated efforts in the development and management of geo-spatial information was made.
[edit] UNSDI Compendium and Strategy Implementation Paper
A comprehensive UNSDI Compendium "Vision, Implementation Strategy and Reference Architecture" was prepared following the 7th UNGIWG Plenary in Santiago de Chile in early November 2006 as a reference companion to the "UNSDI Strategy Implementation Paper". In addition to an Executive Summary, the paper consists of four chapters:
Part 1 - Responding to a Changing World
Part 2 - Building for the Future
Part 3 - Implementing the UNSDI
Part 4 - A UNSDI Reference Architecture
plus a number of Annexes with reference materials:
The compendium can be downloaded here [1]
The strategy implementation paper can be downloaded here [2]
[edit] UNSDI development at national and regional level
Underlying the UNSDI is the perceived need to link UNSDI with national SDI capacities, both in developed and developing countries. Constructive action has so far been taken by the national SDI with The Netherlands where a UNSDI–Netherlands Coordination Office (NCO) has been established by the Government of the Netherlands, resulting in http://www.unsdi.nl. A similar process has been undertaken with the Czech Republic and Hungary, with successful kick-off meetings near Prague on 18 May 2006 and in Budapest on 28 September 2006, resulting in the establishment of www.unsdi.cz and www.unsdi.hu.
The first dialogue meeting between UNGIWG-UNSDI and national and regional-level SDI partners was held on 1 and 2 March 2007, hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA) at its ESRIN facilities in Frascati, Italy. This meeting was considered as a seminal milestone event in the history and development of UNSDI. A key outcome of the meeting was the 'Frascati Statement' [3]; an often quoted document that demonstrates and highlights the groundswell of support from within the UN system and the member states: '...the establishment of a UNSDI as proposed by the UNGIWG forms a fundamental framework to exchange data across many agencies and disciplines for the mutual benefit of both the UN system and its Member Countries'.
The Frascati meeting was organized back to back with the final ESA-FAO-JRC "Heterogeneous Missions Accessibility (HMA) Workshop conducted by ESA on 27 and 28 February 2007 at ESRIN. The presentations and discussions of the UGPM meeting can be found here [4].
It is also understood that a very limited number of discussions are also ongoing within the SDI communities in Spain and the Federal Republic of Germany on UNSDI. Furthermore, it is believed that SDI authorities in the following countries and regional organizations may respond positively to an UNGIWG invitation to join the UNSDI development process if it was given: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Chile, Hungary, Jamaica, India, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Mongolia, Nigeria, Spain and South Africa. The following regional Organizations joined the process: The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) in Nairobi, Kenya, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nauru, Nepal, and the Regional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys (RECTAS) in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
At present the first national UNSDI metadata portal is established in The Netherlands, based on GeoNetwork opensource software.
(Jan Cees Venema, UNSDI-NCO)
