THE INDONESIAN STANDARDS FOR THE EXCHANGE OF DIGITAL DATA BETWEEN VARIOUS GIS SYSTEMS
M. Mostafa Radwan
ITC, Department of Geoinformatics, P.0. Box 6, Enschede, The Netherlands, ISPRS Commission III
Paul Suharto
Bakosurtanal, Indonesia
ABSTRACT:
The development of standards for the exchange of digital spatial data between various GIS in Indonesia,
‘is a task of high priority.
This includes the design of the information model and its supporting data
structure and the transfer format for the data exchange. This model is based on the object-oriented
concept in order to allow the transfer of terrain features at various levels of complexity and
abstraction and with freely defined descriptors. computer packages were developed for the interfacing
between this standard and the existing GIS systems.
NEEDS FOR STANDARD DATA EXCHANGE FORMAT IN
INDONESIA
The inventory of natural resources in Indonesia is
vital for its economical growth. Agencies involved
in this task are under the pressure to make the
optimum use of the technological advances achieved
in the area of GIS applications. Among many organ-
izational and technical components, the availabil-
ity of terrain information in digital form, with a
specified format and data organization, is a pre-
requisite in these systems. With a special refer-
ence to the on-going Land Resource Evaluation and
Planning Project, LREP, the present phase of
development was directed towards the acquisition
of digital data on resource potentials and en-
vironmental conditions in major Islands in
Indonesia. These data should be made available to
the Regional Planning Offices (BAPPEDA’s) for the
analysis and evaluation of resource data.
The National Coordination Agency for Surveys and
Mapping, Bakosurtanal, is taking a leading role in
coordinating these activities and the creation of
a National Topographic Database that can be used
continuously by all potential users, is a task of
high priority, [4]. It is also agreed to assign to
Bakosurtanal the leadership in defining and main-
taining Government’s earth science standards.
Under this agreement, Bakosurtanal is coordinating
the development of a standard for the exchange of
digital data between GIS systems in Indonesia. The
solution to the data exchange problem will promote
the use of GIS technology since it reduces the
initial effort and cost required to set up a data-
base and facilitates the integration of different
data types from different sources.
The first draft (a prototype) of the proposed
standard was produced in 1991 under the name:
BAKO DATA EXCHANGE FORMAT, in the frame of the
ITC-BAKOSURTANAL Cooperation Programme, TAT
Project, [6], [7].
This prototype will be tested, enhanced and
adapted to the Indonesian environment, before
submission for designation as a National Standard
for Data Exchange.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS IN THE DATA EXCHANGE
STANDARDS
Since the middle of the 60th, various information
systems had been developed for spatial data
analysis and GIS applications in various
disciplines. In these early days of development,
the work was not coordinated and the same or
equivalent data is repeatedly collected by
different groups. This problem of redundancy
and/or shortage of particular data types in a
specific format and quality, leads to much wasted
time and resources.
232
With the increasing activities in this field,
there is greater need for exchanging digital
spatial data between organizations and GIS
systems. Data sharing reduces costs by avoiding
duplication of data capture and maintenance and
ensure data integrity.
Transferring spatial data, however, is often
complex due to the incompatibility of various GIS
systems. Each has its own concept for the
modelling of reality, different data structures
and data processing levels and computer systems of
different make.
It had been realized in many countries that the
full benefit of data sharing depends on the
availability and wide use of an efficient and
effective method for the exchange of spatial data.
Developing direct convertors for the transfer of
data between systems, each has its own data
format, is not an efficient approach particularly
when the number of different systems to be
supported is large. Instead, the use of an
intermediate standard format as the transfer form
and the development of convertors for interfacing
between the various formats and the standard one
(i.e. converting data to and from the standard
form), offer various advantages:
- Less effort in software development and free
from constraints imposed by changes and
upgrading of specific system(s) in the
information communication network.
- Standard format provides ‘agreement’ on concepts
for the modelling of reality, definition and
classification of spatial entities, and
structuring and formatting of the transfer. This
will assist all levels of communication between
spatial data users and avoid reliance on
vendor-specific formats.
Decision on standards for data transfer involves
many aspect:
- What purpose will the transfer support: data
display or spatial analysis operations?
- Concepts for the modelling of the real world:
the transfer data model (description and
organization of spatial features and
relationships) and its supporting data structure
(how descriptors, relationships and links are
implemented).
- Standards for the terrain
definition of
features, attributes and authority for the data
definition.
- Flexibility of the transfer data model to
accommodate a vide range of sender/receiver data
models.
- How to report about data quality (lineage,
positional accuracy, attribute accuracy, logical
consistency and completeness of the data).
- Format of the transfer (organization of the
transferred data in data-records).
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