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IRAN SDI INITIATIVE: STUDY PHASE OF NSDI 
A. Mansourian and M. J. Valadan Zoej 
Faculty of Geodesy & Geomatics eng., K.N.Toosi University of Technology, No. 1346, Vali-e-asr St., Mirdamad Cross, 
Tehran 19967-15433, Iran, P.O.Box 15875-4416 
{mansourian , valadanzouj}@kntu.ac.ir 
Commission VI, WG VI/4 
KEY WORDS: National Spatial Data Infrastructure, Iran, Study Phase 
ABSTRACT: 
In Iran, development of National SDI (NSDI) was formally started from 2005, according to the law of "the fourth economic, social, 
and cultural development plan (2005-2009)", enacted by parliament in 2004. As the first step, referring to the mentioned law, the 
ministerial board assigned the National Center for Spatial Planing (NCSP) in Iranian Management and Planning Organization 
(MPO), as secretary and coordinator of NSDI in Iran. As several valuable spatial data activities had been individually conducted by 
national mapping agencies, ministries, and national organizations, NCSP decided to make a comprehensive study with respect to 
spatial data, from an SDI perspective, in Iran. The study aimed at: 
1. Investigating the experiences of different countries involving in development of SDI 
2. Assessing current status of Iran from an SDI perspective 
3. Development of NSDI Strategic Plan for Iran 
4. Development of NSDI conceptual model for Iran 
5. Development of NSDI action plan 
K.N.Toosi University of Technology was requested to carry out the study, in the context of a research project. This paper describe 
the results of the research briefly, with particular emphasize on the second and the fourth steps. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) has been recognized as an 
essential requirement for knowledge-based sustainable 
development. Development of SDI is a challenging task which 
requires attention to different social, technical, economical, and 
institutional topics (Masser, 2005). Currently, more than half 
the world's countries claim that they are involved in some form 
of SDI development (Crompvoets et al 2004), as part of their 
infrastructural activities. Budhathoki and Nedovic-Budic (2006) 
highlighted that such wide interests in developing SDIs is 
because of a functional SDI is an important asset in the societal 
decision and policy making, effective governance, citizen 
participation processes and private sector opportunities. 
As a general definition, Masser (2005) maintains that SDI: 
"...supports ready access to geographic information. This is 
achieved through the coordinated actions of nations and 
organizations that promote awareness and implementation of 
complementary policies, common standards and effective 
mechanism for the development and availability of 
interoperable digital geographic data and technologies to 
support decision making at all scales for multiple purposes. 
These actions encompass the policies, organizational remits, 
data, technologies, standards, delivery mechanisms, and 
financial and human resources necessary to ensure that those 
working at the (national) and regional scale are not impeded in 
meeting their objectives". 
Iran is a developing country located in the Middle East region, 
with a centralized governmental system. Development of Iran 
NSDI was formally started from 2005 according to the 
enactment of the parliament in 2004. Referring to the enactment, 
a high level document entitled "the NSDI Special Development 
Plan Document (NSDI-SDPD)" (MPO, 2005) was prepared and 
then approved by the ministerial board. The document includes 
mandating statements for NSDI development. It also clarifies 
the Iran NSDI vision, core components, coordinator, and 
secretary as well as main stakeholders. 
2. IRAN GENERAL SDI MODEL 
Figure 1 shows the general Iran SDI model including its core 
components and their relationship with each other (Mansourian 
and Valadan 2008). The general model illustrates that, by better 
use of technologies, proper policy-making, standardization and 
creating accessing networks, the relation between people and 
data can be facilitated (Figure 1). NSDI-SDPD has also 
accepted the hierarchy nature of SDI for Iran, including the 
horizontal and vertical relationships between different levels of 
SDI from local to national. 
By adopting the Luzet (2004) model, NSDI-SDPD mandates 
ministries and national organizations to be the main 
stakeholders and data custodians of Iran NSDI. They must 
accept the responsibility of production and updating the NSDI's 
data, based on and during their daily businesses. In other word, 
stakeholders should produce data through their daily businesses 
including road management, urban planning, land management, 
tax collection and so forth. Although there may be many data 
providers, the datasets they provide must be integrated in order 
to develop NSDI's datasets. Once these datasets are shared 
between data users, each user does not have to develop the data 
by oneself; the user can avoid duplicated efforts of data 
production. Consequently, by sharing the cost of developing the 
NSDI's data, data production cost can be minimized and shared 
between the users.