This column is sponsored by ESRI
The question of global cooperation and coordination of geospatial efforts is an important one. There are many fronts where global cooperation is necessary, including navigation and positioning tools, data sharing, and monitoring. Our world is a seamless place with only our own fabricated political boundaries, and the management of our impact on the planet must take a holistic and boundary-free approach if we’re going to continue to enhance our collective standard of living.
Unfortunately, political and economic pressures are at play that can make it difficult to come together on global issues. Some of the barriers to intergovernmental collaboration will never be resolved, others will take a great degree of creativity, persistence, and perhaps even coercion. Cross-governmental geospatial advances will likely happen on the commercial side of the business much more readily than on the government side, but there’s reason for optimism that our leaders are beginning to “get it.”
Position, Navigation and Measurement
The predominant Global Positioning System, NAVSTAR, is owned, controlled and maintained by the U.S. government and operated by the U.S. Air Force. This constellation of satellites provide signals to ground-based receivers that translate the inputs into an accurate position and precise time. This signal was originally scrambled with something called Selective Availability (SA), that degraded the signal to civilian-owned devices to 100-meter accuracy where military devices were fed position of 10 meters or less. Ever since SA was turned off in May of 2000, the system has gained broader use and acceptance for a myriad of consumer purposes due to much greater positional accuracy and reliability. Yet, the military hold on the system means that there’s a possibility that some control could be taken back.
This alignment of the GPS system with military oversight means that there will be continued spending from other governments due to security concerns. Even though the system does an adequate and increasingly better job of delivering position as the satellites are maintained and updated. The European Union now controls the Galileo GPS system, having taken control from a partnership of private companies in 2007. The Galileo system is complementary to the U.S.-owned NAVSTAR system and the Russian GLONASS system, but has promised greater accuracy.
The billions of dollars that are being spent on a redundant system do seem out of alignment with the benefits. There have been calls in the past for the privatization of the U.S.-based GPS system, which could greatly allay the fears. There’s more benefit to civilians from the GPS system than for military purpose, but I doubt that this argument could be turned into much of a debate given the current geopolitical climate.
Data Sharing
I recently spoke with Harlan Onsrud, executive director of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association, and specifically questioned him about the idea behind GSDI. Harlan concurred with my own sentiment that it’s hard to think of global SDI, when we have trouble coordinating a national effort, with many of our states unable to combine county data, and some countries without even paper maps. After his first GSDI meeting, he was sold on the benefits of collaboration and resource sharing, feeling that the lofty goal of global data coordination is a worthy cause.
The integration and collaboration of global data sets from individual nations will take decades to realize, but the existence of the association means that incremental work will be done to establishing connections between countries and foster best practices on data collection and management. Harlan indicated that there’s often good exchange of data between these groups, and there’s also great opportunity for hosting. He indicated that in developing countries there might be the ability to collect data but often not enough reliable electricity and Internet connectivity in order to share it with the rest of the world.
The idea of a global GSDI will be an increasingly important one, but again some countries view this information as a military sensitivity. The existence of global geobrowsers have gone a long way to dispelling these types of security issues with their increasing global data coverage with ever-greater accuracy.
GSDI is an important objective yet it’s not that imperative for the betterment of our planet as a whole. There are very many earth observation platforms and data sets that give us a global picture, that the headaches of getting all the countries to share their data in a common way in a common format doesn’t seem that compelling of an aim. Certainly it would be nice to ensure that all countries are adequately mapped in order for each to gain the benefit of geospatial insight, but a global coordinated data set is a long way away.
Monitoring
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is hard at work on the Global Earth Observation System of Systems for the global monitoring of natural disasters and the environment. This goal, with the common objective of observing and protecting against the fickle pressures of mother nature, is gaining great momentum as it now consists of 75 member countries. The international collaboration toward a system of systems means a loosely coupled alliance of monitoring devices that will speak to each other to provide Earth observations on the themes of disasters, health, energy, water, weather, ecosystems, agriculture and biodiversity.
I believe the GEOSS effort has the greatest promise, both from the benefits as well as the possibility of actually fostering global collaboration, investment and action. The U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, believes in the system, calling it an “amber alert for the planet.” And an increasing number of nations are signing on to be a part of this global monitoring plan.
There’s a 10-Year Implementation Plan with details on the purpose and scope of the system as well as implementation and governance structure. The equal voting of all members in a central yearly meeting where all members have the same vote, makes consensus necessary. The collaboration on system design, architecture, science and technology means that the system can immediately have an impact. The sharing of capacity for information gathering and reporting also means that the science won’t suffer in countries that may not have the scientific resources to match other states.
Global collaboration is definitely a possibility, with great rewards for all of us. There’s too much competition in the world to think that this collaboration can be accomplished for all global goals, but it’s nice to know that we’re united in the goal to better our planet so that we may all live longer upon it.
Read what Jeff Thurston has to say on this subject here.
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Hi Matt,
Great to meet you at the SES session at the User Conference…
I liked many of your points in the article below, but I think that you are missing the goal of the GSDI Association.
The goal is not to build a global spatial dataset – but to build the global spatial data infrastructure…the mechanisms for the data to interoperate, be shared, etc.
Think of a transport analogy – GSDI is not about building the car — but the highway. Cars cannot go 65 mph unless the highway supports them!
Spatial data cannot be shared and used broadly without good SDI principles in place: use data standards (ISO), collect metadata, share information via portals/clearinghouse, establish data sharing protocols and policies, etc. SDI helps governments to leverage their geospatial data assets to their greatest benefit – at whatever level is applicable… local, national, regional, global.
Cheers,
Carmelle J. Terborgh, Ph.D.
Global Affairs/Federal Account Manager
ESRI – Washington, DC
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