Basic Knowledge on SDI Course

Flying the flag of Geokomm academy, a training institution of the German geo-information industry association Geokomm, 24 highly motivated participants attended the training course "Basic Knowledge on Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)" held from the 28th of February to the 4th of March in Potsdam. The SDI basic course invited public authorities and consulting engineers challenged by the European Directive of the Spatial Data Infrastructure INSPIRE to get familiar with the opportunities and objectives of spatial data infrastructures.

A waiting list of about thirty people is testament to the popularity of SDI topics and the awareness to take an immediate action. The training course will be continued in 2011 in Potsdam and is supposed to live up to its success in Darmstadt-Frankfurt/Main in which it originated. The entire range of courses is based on the cooperation with IKGIS (Institut für Kommunale Geoinformationssysteme e.V., Darmstadt), the GSC (GeoServiceCenter) of the LGB (Landesvermessung und Geobasisinformation Brandenburg) and DELPHI IMM GmbH, Potsdam.

According to Dr. Peter A. Hecker, chairman of the geo-information industry association Geokomm, the results are extremely positive. "All participants confirmed to have gained a basic and sound overview on the technical facets spatial data infrastructures are to offer." Looking at the challenges set by INSPIRE Dr. Hecker emphasised the importance of SDI expertise to the Land Brandenburg and appealed to the high need for basic skills dealing the topic of SDI on behalf of public bodies, municipalities and consulting engineers. The majority of participants having no previous knowledge on SDI supported this fact by a broad and strong consensus.

The seminar elaborated on single themes each day while participants could teach themselves typical SDI services and applications in computer sessions. Day one handled the complete topic of metadata. Which norms and standards (INSPIRE - guidelines and metadata profiles) are of particular relevance and how are those embedded in the German SDI? Theory meets praxis, when experts of DELPHI IMM explained how to define a standard-compliant metadata set and how to generate, manage and publish datasets and services in a metadata catalogue. Experts from IKGIS followed this by introducing such aspects as geo portals as well as OGC web services (WMS, WFS and CS-W) and provided guidance and support in setting up INSPIRE-compliant SDI nodes.

Geokomm academy and its members and partners are committed to establish a wide range of SDI seminars bringing many advantages to the region of Brandenburg: practical and hands-on trainings to illuminate the opportunities of the sustainable use of spatial data, experts having business and technical experience of many years, best-practice applications and services for testing and free use as well as competent key contacts for the support beyond the seminar.

The future events of the training course "Basic Knowledge on SDI" and further information will be published on the homepage of Geokomm.