Sea Level Rise (SLR) and storm surges are a threat to coastal communities in South Florida. Residents face the increased frequency of tidal flooding and associated economic losses. This paper presents a web-based SLR impact assessment tool that was developed for the City of Coral Gables, Florida. The tool is able to dynamically visualize the inundation extent of SLR scenarios between one and eight feet and the worst-case inundation caused by category one through five hurricanes. In addition, it reports statistics about the potential impacts of these inundation scenarios on population, property value, critical facilities, land use and the road network in any user-selected part of the city. The tool provides city managers and planners with information that can assist in the decision making process for investments in community resilience programs against SLR and storm surges. This paper describes the implementation of this tool, which is based on free and open source geospatial software (FOSS4G) and uses mostly open data components. It also provides an overview of the spatial data ecosystem related to coastal inundation (SLR and storm surges) in the United States. Whereas the functionality of the application was successfully demonstrated for one specific community in South Florida, the flexibility and dynamic nature of the developed application and the use of open source software and open data makes it suitable to support effective data-driven planning not only in the showcased area but in other coastal regions as well. Based on local data available for analysis, the application framework could be expanded as needed and include other topics (e.g. measure the effect of SLR for specific types of businesses) or utilize alternative inundation models (e.g. include hydrologic runoff analysis).
Geospatial data are produced by several organizations located at various places, and that is clearly a distributed environment. Many technical and institutional issues need to be resolved to share data in such an environment and to eventually enable regional development. For this matter, many countries implement Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) for the last 40 years. Since 2010, also Pakistan is striving to implement an SDI at the national level (NSDI). However, so far, the promised benefits have not yet been achieved. This study explores the evolution of the NSDI in Pakistan from 2010 till 2020 to reveal what kind of challenges the country is facing. Given the importance of stakeholders' support for the implementation of SDIs, we conducted a stakeholder analysis and a dedicated survey. We adopted the power-interest grid method to classify stakeholders' interests based on their authority to influence the NSDI development. Among other, the results show that stakeholders’ low participation due to insufficient technological, financial, and human resources impedes NSDI implementation efforts in the country.
The increasing need for geospatial information demands for well-organised management among all levels of society. A Spatial Data Infrastructure ( SDI) is a multidisciplinary and dynamic instrument that facilitates access and sharing of geospatial information. The current trend towards open data initiatives is influencing the development of these infrastructures. In order to examine this effect, this article addresses the following question: what is the current state of SDI openness of four best practice open data countries Canada, The Netherlands, Australia and Brazil, and how do they compare? The question is answered through a qualitative literature study and the application of a newly developed Open SDI Assessment Framework to the countries. The Netherlands and Canada show a high performance on all assessment dimensions; data discovery, data access and data properties. Australia and Brazil show a poor open SDI performance, as they could not meet the requirements set for the assessed datasets. General conclusions of the assessment are that data is currently fragmented and scattered among the web in all four countries, which strongly negatively influences the user experience. It is crucial that a strict legal framework is embedded in a country, which ensures that current SDI objectives and propositions regarding an user-centred approach and open data availability are achieved.
In Ethiopia, geospatial data silos are common due to the absence of a proactive and collaborative geospatial sharing platform. A national sharing platform, Ethiopian National Spatial Data Infrastructure (ENSDI), is in its pre-implementation phase. It is now of crucial concern to identify and prioritize areas of investment. However, we lack information on what is already available and where, and what is still required to deliver ENSDI building blocks. The purpose of this work is to assess status quo of these building blocks. 110 organizations were addressed based on a sampling procedure that is free of personal bias. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, on-site inspections, and a review of secondary sources. The analysis revealed that many national geospatial information and other enabling policies, laws and strategies are already available. Although they do incorporate the value of sharing and accessing information, it appears that they lack details regarding interoperability, inclusiveness, and implementation. This work reveals complex institutional challenges that require better definitions of roles and responsibilities in order to overcome existing overlaps of mandates; and improved coordination of efforts with the geospatial industry. Furthermore, most legacy data sets are available in digital form, but they are neither ready to be shared on the Web nor accessible for the wider Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community. This is largely due to the absence of standardization, negligence of metadata, extended use of proprietary software, absence of clear data models and definitions, and poor (file based) data organization. The absence of Internet connectivity or low band width remains a fundamental obstacle for any web-based sharing of geospatial data. We also identify a lack of expertise in spatial data management, processing and programming. GIS and Remote Sensing specialist remain hard to find. Last but not least, this study recommends further study on data quality and data management issues.
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.
