Future-proofing the Provision of Geoinformation

On 3 February 2013, an Exchange Forum with the Geospatial Industry was held prior to the UN Global Geospatial Information Management (UN GGIM) at the Qatar National Convention Centre, Doha, Qatar. During this Forum, JBGIS – which as a coalition of leading international geospatial organisations speaks on behalf of the geospatial profession at international level, especially to the United Nations and other global stakeholders, and strives to co-ordinate activities within the international geospatial society – came to the following conclusions:

• Determining place

IAG has developed an accurate International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS) on which all GNSS positioning services are based. The sustainability of ITRS implementation and associated infrastructures requires intergovernmental support and commitment through a UN mandate.

• Monitoring place

Noting the advances in number, types and capacities of platform and sensors, imagery is the main source of data and the basis for monitoring place. There remains a need for open standards and strategies to demonstrate the underlying economic benefit of geospatial information as well as consideration for addressing context-driven privacy issues.

• Connecting place

 Collaboration and communication across disciplines using the value of place to facilitate informed decision-making to improve societies could be achieved by integrating authoritative and crowd‐sourced information and place‐based analysis using the Cloud platform.

• Delivering (geoinformation about) place

 Contemporary GIS offers flexible platforms for managing and integrating data within the context of location. Electronic production and publishing methods are combined with contemporary communication systems for output and delivery. There remains a need for effective communication of geospatial information through context‐dependent contemporary cartographic presentation techniques to ensure efficient dissemination of geospatial information to decision-makers as well as the public.