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4. DISTRIBUTED GIS AND DISSEMINATION OF 
GEOGRAPHIC DATA 
The Internet is an ideal communication media for disseminaton 
of almost any kind of digital data. The aim is to provide 
(through the common graphical user interfaces) a transparent 
access to spatial datasets distributed world wide. Mainly due to 
the low cost satellite imagery and advanced data compression 
techniques, geoportals (e-commerce Web sites offering spatial 
data and relating services) have mushroomed in the last few 
years. This happened despite the fact, that setting up such a site 
requires a substantial financial investment as well as skilled 
personnel with expertise in both GIS technology and e- 
commerce (Wagner 2001). 
The accepted e-bussines models for geoportals pay attention to 
three crucial components: geoportal owners, data providers and 
users. Administering a geoportal is a demanding task. Services 
and data have to be provided constantly (24/7) having in mind 
short response times. To be successfull, data providers are 
encouraged in capturing spatial data on regular basis and when 
appropriate pricing scheme, payment and delivery aspects are 
taken into account, users are the one who benefit the most. 
When considering to offer or sell spatial data on the Web, legal 
aspects must be taken into consideration (Sumrada 2002b). The 
Internet is no exception, things that are prohibited elsewhere are 
not allowed in the Internet domain either (Dickmann 2001). 
First, online publishing of any kind of confidential data (for 
example personal data) is not allowed. From the user point-of- 
view the information that may indirectly or directly imply 
conclusions, which in turn may influence the way a person is 
treated in everydays life, should not be accessible to 
unauthorized Web site visitors (Sumrada 2002b). 
Second, producers (authors) believe that expensive and time 
consuming spatial data capturing and data presentation efforts 
have to be protected in the highest possible way. For this 
reason, additional laws that protect copyrights considering 
specific characteristics of distributed environments are being 
introduced. However, severe legal regulation can have side 
effects since free exchange of data and information may in that 
way be slowed down to some degree (Sumrada 2002b). 
Last but not least, the liability for data quality is one of the most 
important aspects, when considering buying data on Internet, 
since important decisions may base on bought products 
(Sumrada 2002b). For now, only few spatial data providers 
guarantee the data quality. It is expected that those data 
providers that will express responsibility for data quality will 
outperform competitors. 
S. USER'S ASPECTS 
GIS software solutions are made to be used by the users. Users 
are the ones who may or may not need GIS tools. GIS 
community often asks itself how to make existent customers to 
feel a stronger need for having products and services they can 
offer and at the same time how to attract new customers? The 
answer may be complex, but generally speaking, users must 
either see an economical profit in using the GIS technology or 
the other option, using such tools should (considerably) 
simplify user's work or what is even better, user's life. 
24] 
GIS technology has been taken online. However, experience 
has shown that not all aspects and benefits provided by 
distributed systems have been fully addressed yet. We shall 
bear in mind that: 
e the use of spatially enabled data is still limited to more or 
less skilled personnel and/or advanced users that 
understand terms used in the GIS domain, 
e spatially enabled datasets, even though being brought to 
one common environment — the Internet, are still isolated, 
not integrated. 
Application service providers (ASPs), companies mastering 
modern Web-oriented technologies, are expected to change the 
current situation. Spatially-oriented ASPs provide users with 
neccessary hardware, software, spatial data and knowledge 
accessible over the Internet (Quartararo, 2002). One of the goals 
of ASPs is to prepare and present spatial information in an 
understandable way to everyone, specially to non GIS experts. 
In return for monthly or per transaction based fee, users are 
given a chance to express their requirements and demands 
regarding spatial data/services in non technical terms, in terms 
they are familiar with. At the same time users are encouraged to 
hire GIS software owned by ASPs for the purpose of viewing 
the results of their requests and possibly deriving some 
additional information out of it. ASPs are aware of the fact that 
more the clients know about the GIS topics, the more 
demanding they are. And this is the reason why ASPs think that 
consulting and provision of education is so important. 
An interesting possibility offered by new technologies is to 
allow users to maintain their own GIS projects on the Web. Not 
only viewing but adding and editing GIS oriented sites is what 
attracts (more demanding) clients. The possibility of combining 
the data captured on their own (for example with the help of a 
handheld GPS receiver, a digital camera etc.) with the spatial 
data found on the Web may produce interesting results. 
Similarly may an idea of constructing one GIS document by 
several spatially dislocated authors seem interesting enough and 
feasible too. 
To ensure the previously mentioned combination of user's own 
data and spatially enabled data that can be found on the Web, 
effective and simplified spatial data searching must be 
provided. That means that looking for available spatial data, for 
example on user's neighbourhood should not explicitly require 
choosing the right (usually coded) name representing the spatial 
database, which according to the user's opinion possibly 
contains information she/he is looking for. The development of 
user friendly spatial data search engines would certainly make 
spatially aware datasets more valuable. 
6. FUTURE TRENDS 
Time and location are becoming less important. There is a high 
possibility, that anyone with at least some experience in using 
a Web browser and navigating the Web comes upon some sort 
of geographic data and tools that enable performing GIS 
operations such as locating, navigating, searching a particular or 
finding the nearest object or event. Within approaches described 
in this paper this can be done anytime and anywhere as far as 
the connection to the Internet can be established. 
Distributed environments, the Internet mostly, have contributed 
a lot to spatial data and GIS popularization. However, that does 
not mean, that desktop GIS applications will dissapear in the