Growing a Global Knowledge Network among Geospatial Specialists

Harlan J. Onsrud is Professor of Spatial Information Science and Engineering at the University of Maine and a research scientist with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA). His research focuses on the analysis of legal, ethical, and institutional issues affecting the creation and use of digital spatial databases and on the assessment of the social impacts of spatial technologies.

I am going to talk today about some of our experiences in developing a virtual network in order to enhance learning among the community of geospatial specialists.

Geospatial specialists have a problem. We can’t find each other efficiently and thus we can’t learn from each other efficiently. Agencies don’t know what other agencies across the globe are doing, and I think this is particularly true in terms of implementing geospatial technology. We don’t know the names or expertise of geospatial specialists among and across all of our communities. We don’t know the details about spatial data infrastructure (SDI) implementations across the globe. Further, many of the studies, reports and lessons about implementations are very hard to find, and we’re all talking across hundreds of specialty groups among many social networks.

As a result, the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association was tasked to build a knowledge network to allow us all better to learn from each other. Some of the questions which immediately arose were, What would it look like? Perhaps better, What should it look like? And, if we build it, will they come?

The GIKNetwork

We concluded that the only way to answer these questions was indeed to create such a system. Therefore we built an online capability called the Geographic Information Knowledge Network or GIKNetwork (http://giknet.org). So right now, anyone interested from across the globe can join this moderated network. And in this network you can now find the personal profiles of those who have declared themselves as geospatial specialists. You can now find out about and e-mail geospatial specialists across the globe without the system exposing the e-mail addresses of these various leaders. Geospatial leaders and others post and update their own profiles. Geospatial agencies, geospatial private companies and geospatial non-profit organisations can also update their profiles in a centralised repository for all geospatial organisations.

We can also allow several registrants from a single organisation to revise their organisational profile so that the updating isn’t restricted to a single person.

Agencies can now report in detail on their SDI implementation experiences using a standard form in order to share their story efficiently with the rest of the world in an understandable fashion. We’ve tried very hard not to duplicate the services of other organisations. For instance, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) supports a registry for software developers for all new versions of their software and what standards that software meets. Similarly, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) supports an SDI components and services registry. Thus, this new facility automatically leads companies and agencies to those other registries when appropriate to report on that information and then we automatically interface with and draw back from the OGC and GEOSS databases to complete reports in the GIKNetwork.

Any registrant is also now able to upload any geospatial article, book, report, video or educational resource into a global repository for long-term safekeeping with a flexible yet standard means for stating use rights in that resource. And if you can’t acquire authority to upload the document, we allow you to provide a link to that resource instead.

One thing the GIKNetwork is not providing is yet another social networking capability or discussion list. Rather, at the current time, the website simply leads you to many of the leading geospatial lists and social networking specialty groups that already exist.

Suggestions

Well, now that it’s built, will they come? Not without support from you.

So here are some suggestions on how you can help. Number one, enter a profile for yourself and your organisation. Either of these should take you only a few minutes to cut and paste the information from other sources.

Number two, encourage all the geospatial conferences across the globe to link biographies from the GIKNetwork. Instead of gathering biographical information over and over again for each conference, we could simply have had, for instance, all one thousand attendees at this particular Eye on Earth conference provide their GIKNet link on their registration form and thus you would have had their standard short systematic biography accessible prior to attendance here.

Convince high-level global authorities to encourage geospatial agencies to report their SDI experiences. Peers respond to peers. They also respond to influential higher authorities. So if authorities such as the United Nations or World Bank were to ask government agencies to report their SDI experiences through this network, that would have far more influence than a professional organisation’s doing so.

The International Geospatial Society grants free membership to people from developing nations that provide a professional profile in the GIKNetwork. And the GSDI Association grants free membership to agencies in developing nations that provide an agency profile and a SDI experience report. So other geospatial organisations should be encouraged to do the same.

Another thing you can do is start populating the global geospatial document repository. Many science domains have global repositories for the works arising from that field. The geographic information science domain does not.

Perhaps we should make this the long-term open-access repository for the full-text documents arising from all geospatial conferences held across the globe. And once a critical mass of a few thousand documents is contained in the repository, you can be assured that the use will take off.

Another thing: encourage all geospatial organisations to list themselves as supporters of the GIKNet. We should have fifty influential supporting geospatial organisations listed instead of just two.

In conclusion: technology is not the primary challenge in achieving effective knowledge networks. Nor is technology the primary challenge in achieving greater effectiveness in the sharing of learning materials for capacity-building. The primary challenge is a committed community. Here, we’ve made a first step. The technology is not perfect, but indeed it works, so please contribute.