GLOBAL 
2 
  
2) Legislation 
3) Pricing 
4) Standards 
  
Integrated 
Data Model 
  
2 
2) Access Rules 
EEE 
  
  
Global Applications require 
integration of information 
from individual DBS 
1) Institutional Issues 
  
1) Information Inventory 
3) Performance of Data Transfer 
LOCAL 
GI Production 
System 
^ 
  
1) Data Consistency 
& Data Quality 
2) Data Exchange 
3) Data Update 
  
  
Individual System DBS 
* Associated Applications 
Figure 1: A conceptual model for a Geoinformation Utility 
information, requests the development of a platform to 
formulate, agree upon, and enforce information policies and 
legislation. 
A Geoinformation Utility can be described as a set of 
institutional, technical and economical arrangements, to 
support the availability of relevant, up to date, and 
integrated geoinformation, timely and at an affordable cost; 
to support decision making processes related to country's 
sustainable development. A high level conceptual model of 
such a Geoinformation Utility is given in Fig.1 [C. Paresi, M. 
Radwan, 1995]. 
3. TRENDS 
Co-ordinate actions, at top political level, related to the 
development of National/Regional/Local Geoinformation 
Utilities in North America (eg. FGDC in the USA, Delta X 
and CANOGIS projects in Canada), Europe (E.U. DGXIII 
report on "GI2000, Towards a European Geographic 
Information Infrastructure [EGII]"; creation and actions of 
EUROGI; work of CEN on normalization), Australia 
(establishment of a National Resource Information Centre), 
and Africa (AFRICAGIS, African Information Highway) to 
name but a few, are proves of the relevance of those 
developments for the planning and management of the 
country's scare resources. 
From a technological perspective, progress in dealing with 
aspects of heterogeneity in a distributed environment; 
advances in data exchange standards in the context of 
heterogenous database design; and advances in data 
636 
communication (highway/super-highway), are proves of the 
trends toward operationalization of inter-organizational 
information systems. 
4. A RESEARCH AGENDA 
In many countries, there is a nation-wide pressure to create 
a national Geoinformation Utility, that makes 
geoinformation, hosted in geographically distributed GIS's 
in the country, accessible by the GIS user community. The 
objectives are to minimize duplication in information 
gathering, and maximize data sharing; furthermore, to 
  
  
  
  
Figure 2: Integration of institutional, technical a 
economical aspects of Geoinformatics 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B4. Vienna 1996