Management of risk and disaster covers many human activities and includes many environmental aspects. While the application of risk and management techniques is broad, what is lacking is a useful and comprehensive theory capable of providing an overarching, linking methodology. The most unifying approach would revolve around the user. The user really is the pivotal point in the management phase, and eventually also in the past or present disaster. Beyond an understanding of the relevance of placing the user central, his appearance as subject to be protected and in managing the risk, a common approach to disaster management, is still being defined. There may be solid doubts as to whether such a theory is needed and should be found.

Infrastructure

To maximise the effectiveness of such a search, attention should focus on Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) as a comprehensive system that satisfies the needs of user as both disaster victim and disaster manager. SDI also provides the archway to different types of disasters. Indeed, SDIs have and continue to demonstrate their great power in effective risk and disaster management. Reinforcement of SDIs requires recognition that Data Infrastructures (DI) have throughout human history been crucial in knowledge generation and decision making. The spatial component has always been there, but sometimes hidden and/or bundled in the data collected and used to feed decision making. So the real strength of DI has been and is still based on the infrastructure itself; without adequate infrastructure it is difficult to effectively use data and information. Reference to ‘infrastructure’ does not necessarily mean that technologies based on informatics and telecommunication are on the ground; this has been demonstrated by the existence of DI and SDI in the absence of ICT infrastructure. I thoroughly discussed this subject during the 2006 IGU Conference in Brisbane.

Domains
The relationship between SDI and public administration through e-government should also be kept in mind. What does SDI mean to public administration in terms of the physical presence of facilities? In the physical domain SDI extends from the premises hosting employees, visitors and archives, to the roads and paths, cables and networks that allow circulation of papers, forms and certificates. In the intangible domain, SDI is represented in the form of rules, procedures, specifications, data and information governing the production, distribution and use of services and the functioning of the infrastructure itself.

Spatial
Infrastructures serve to collect, store, enhance and deliver data for public administration and by individuals. Some data is alphanumeric, some entirely geographic and some is mixed, depending on the quantity of the geographic component. Some information resists easy categorisation because of the complexity of its characteristics. For instance, the interpretation of rules by public administration is a difficult part of its function, and one which affects final service delivery. Computer programmes and ontological tools do not seem to be quite up to this task of elucidating defined rules. Let us be realistic and not euphoric about DIs. We should be taking account of the important fact that in infrastructures only some of the data is spatial, the majority is alphabetical and numerical. And only some data has clear spatial attributes, which do not often concretise themselves in maps and spatial images.

Key
DIs began in the era preceding spatial data, but spatiality was one essential feature without which the infrastructure was unable to function and provide results on request. An example is the infrastructure based on ­­e-government data and services that may not be delivered, used and performed in the absence of an infrastructure and its technical solutions, provided in advance to users and producers of data and services. However, it has also been demonstrated that in performing the risk-and-disaster-management cycle, the spatiality of data is highly invoked and used even when embedded in the body of complex data. Typical questions posed by the cycle, such as where, how and when, may be answered only through the effective use of geographic addresses, although addresses may be defined by any one of many geographic components: addresses, coordinates, location, semantic description, and so on. Indeed, SDIs represent a key objective of research, tests and use in risk and disaster management.