A spatial data infrastructure (SDI) comprises technology, standards,
policies, organisational/legal aspects, human resources and related ac-
tivities to integrate, exchange, process, maintain and preserve geospa-
tial data and information. Students will:
‐ Be able to describe the main components of SDIs and know key
objectives, benefits and current state-of-the-art of such initiatives
[OI5-1].
‐ Understand the conceptual strategies, organizational requirements
and legal frameworks for leveraging the advantages of open geo-
graphic data infrastructures [DA3-3, GS1].
‐ Recognize the importance of standardized data models to store, an-
alyse and manipulate geographic phenomena.
‐ Be able to explain the role of metadata for spatial data sharing
across distributed networks [GD12].
‐ Be able to describe the existing spatial data sharing policies includ-
ing intellectual property rights, security issues, privacy issues, Open
Government data initiatives [GS5-4, OI5-6].
‐ Be able to explain the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) concept
together with its underlying publish-find-bind principle.
‐ Know internationally accepted geographic- and IT standards (OGC,
OASIS & ISO) and apply these in practical projects [OI5-1].
‐ Be able to understand, design and implement geodata models ac-
cording to standardised approaches [CF3-CF6].
‐ Be able to publish geodata and geoprocessing services over the
web: map services, data services (editing, search, image service),
and analytical services.
‐ Be able to define the interoperability needs beyond technical issues
like direct access and industry standards on a legal, semantic and
organizational level [OI5-2].
‐ Understand the principles and techniques of spatial data organiza-
tion and apply these principles and techniques to design and build
spatial databases [DM2, DA4].
‐ Based on these concepts, the students will learn how to utilize open,
shared GIS resources to design and use Open GIS data structures,
workflows and processes leveraging information repositories
