2004 
  
on 
  
  
International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B6. Istanbul 2004 
  
production, dissemination and use will have to anticipate on their position and role in this field in the 
coming ten years. The new opportunities offered by the modern technology, the new concepts of the 
role of government and the evolving new (global) economy will have an impact on the development 
of (national) geo-data infrastructures. 
What should be the role of governments? Do they have a regulatory role or should they be providers 
of information or should they only provide the infrastructure through which geo-information is 
provided? How should the core data for such an NSDI be defined, who will be the prime users and 
who should produce it? At which aggregation levels should GSDI be provided, national, provincial 
and or local? 
  
Business & Geo-ICT environment 
Institutional Settina 
Business m. Geo-ICT 
strategy strateay 
  
   
    
    
   
   
    
  
  
GI-PROVIDER 
Organisational Geo-ICT 
infrastructure architecture 
Figure 3- GI-Providers have to adjust their strategies, organizational structure and ICT architectures 
to meet the modern challenges of their Business and Geo-ICT environment (Courtesy of Dr 
Geogiadou,, ITC) 
   
   
  
  
GI-providers, and NMAs among them have to answer these questions to establish their roles in the 
modern evolving information society. Within this society a new business end Geo-ICT environment is 
emerging which forces GI-providers to develop new business strategies. Consequently they have to 
adjust their Geo-ICT strategies and develop new Geo-ICT architectures and adjust their organizational 
structure. This has been illustrated in Figure 3. EuroSDR has the expertise to anticipate on the new 
opportunities offered by the new technology and to elaborate scenarios for the development new GDIs 
with respect to the definition core or reference data, and the new products and services that should be 
provided and the technological infrastructure required. Therefore the contribution of the Organization 
will mainly be in the support of the development on new Geo-ICT strategies and architectures. 
Following from these considerations the following criteria have been formulated for the EuroSDR 
research perspective (EuroSDR, 2000): 
e The EuroSDR research should serve the whole European Geoinformatics Community, deal with 
problems of more than local significance, and be carried out by means of international co- 
operation. 
199