Database Reference
In-Depth Information
been to publish the data such that it is easily accessible and meaningful. The United
Kingdom not only faced this issue, but given that much government data were not
freely available but charged for at commercial rates, also had the additional chal-
lenge of how to make some of this data free at the point of use. This has required a
change in government policy, resulting in the commercial model being retained and
the government purchasing data from the appropriate government agency that is then
made freely available to the end users. However, even though significant amounts of
government GI are now freely available and accessible around the world, this has
exposed the issue of semantics: What does the data really mean? It has also resulted
in a plethora of different formats being published, making it difficult for people to
process the data. So, although data is now becoming more widely and freely avail-
able, it is not always in a form that is easily digested or understood.
3.5.3 t
he
F
ormal
and
i
nFormal
t
oGether
If we bring these two stories together, we should get a good picture of where GI finds
itself at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. Crudely, we
have two different communities, one professional, the other amateur. But, in reality
the picture is much more complex: Both the professional and amateur worlds are not
single communities, and membership is not exclusive; the GI professional by day
may spend leisure time constructing mashups or updating OpenStreetMap in the
evening. Perhaps it is best to first look at usage rather than communities.
What we have is at least three different uses of GI:
1. GI used within traditional GIS, back office and very specialized
2. GI used to integrate data as a mashup, or to produce integrated datasets that
may have location as an aim or enabler
3. The capture and creation of GI resources such as digital mapping and gaz-
etteers and the infrastructure to deliver them
The last use is indeed a use, although it may not appear to be so at first glance, but
in most cases, other GI is used in the creation process. At this stage, it is also worth
asking, Who are the users? Broadly, they fall into two groups: those that are the final
end users interested in the information imparted and those who deal with the data to
deliver it to the end user. Again, the situation is blurred as membership is not mutu-
ally exclusive. End users range from members of the general public wanting route
directions from a satellite navigation system and those wanting to obtain information
about somewhere to be visited, to professionals attempting to gauge the impact of a
potential flood event or wishing to detect fraud. The intermediate users are in many
senses not really users as such; they tend to be skilled in information technology (IT)
(whether as professionals or amateurs) and manipulate the GI to enable the end ser-
vices to be provided. But, at present these people are very influential in the direction
of GI, in many cases more so than the end users. This is because they have more
control over the technology. Of course, being an intermediate user does not preclude
also being an end user, and there are many people who are, but for the most part their
requirements and viewpoints are different. This can cause problems as it may well be
