to be covered. It concerns the need for a geomatics infrastructure to make the
optimal use of geo-information possible. The word "infrastructure" is used in its
proper definition i.e. the capital investment needed to create the structures and
services to make access to and use of geo-information efficiently possible. For
geographic and land information, this infrastructure is basically as follows (4):
a national (geodetic) positioning system,
a national digital topographic data base, and
a national property register,
thematic databases that are spatially defined in terms of at least the first but
possibly also the second and the third system,
agreed standards for information classification, qualification, and digital
communication,
legal and technical provision for universal connectivity amongst data bases,
directory information, and legal rights to interconnect (6).
It is generally accepted that it is a role of government to design and ensure the
realization of this Geomatics Infrastructure. Likely, because of the confederate
nature of Canada, with highly autonomous provinces, and because of the
enormous surveying and mapping tasks, the notion of sharing information once
surveyed has led to early recognition of the need for a Geomatics infrastructu
re.
For many, it is somewhat foreign to think about geographic information out of
context of its content, and this has caused some difficulty with the acceptance of
Geomatics. Yet when we think of disciplines such as Thermodynamics, we also
have generalized properties and structure or behaviour, disconnected from the
application to a steam turbine or the behaviour of a water column. Similarly, the
theories developed by Tienstra and Baarda as well as Hotine were generalizations
disconnected from the specifics of the actual surveys. Furthermore, it should be
remembered that Thermodynamics did not create the steam engine. But
Thermodynamics lets us design better and different steam engines. Similarly, the
early GIS systems were developed mostly on the basis of technical capability with
very little theoretical foundation. I hope we have now learned enough to know
that further effective development will depend in large part on our ability to
create a theory of geographic information, of its intrinsic character and structure
and how that affects data capture, classification, use etcetera as well as
recognition that the emphasis on quantitative analytical processes in GIS is
inadequate for the full exploitation of the technology which should aim at the
optimal use of geographic information once collected and thus, public access to
government geographic information databases.
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