Creating a Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Diagnostic Tool
Kathrine Kelm, Rumyana Tonchovska & Mark Probert
The World Bank Group (WBG) land/geospatial team, working with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has created a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) Diagnostic Tool package (herafter referred to as SDI Diagnostic Tool) to facilitate a standard measure and approach to assessing a country?s SDI readiness and geo-maturity, initially at national level (i.e. the NSDI). The SDI Diagnostic Tool has been designed for internal WBG use, allowing a relatively quick (4-5 days) assessment of a country?s NSDI to highlight potential components requiring support, and geospatial information (GI) that could be of use in WBG projects, or to support such activities. The SDI Diagnostic Tool measures the capacity and willingness of countries to develop and use NSDIs. It incorporates a range of factors, including policy, governance arrangements, legal, technical infrastructure, socio-economic impact, capacity development, applications & services and geospatial datasets. The results, apart from the score, allow countries to identify missing or under performing elements of their NSDI and to prepare action plans with investment programs to maximize the benefits of this critical part of the information infrastructure. It also informs the WBG and country offices on potential improvements in the wider use of GI and related portfolio investments. As part of the SDI Diagnostic Tool package, a methodology for evaluating the socio-economic benefits of implementing and using a NSDI has been developed. This can provide countries with a business case for investing in NSDI and be effective in obtaining government budgets to accelerate NSDI implementation. The SDI Diagnostic Tool was created after researching previous initiatives and discussing with industry experts. The draft SDI Diagnostic Tool was first tested in December 2016 and to date it has been used on a trial basis in nine countries ? Albania, Croatia, Indonesia, Kosovo, Malaysia, Moldova, Scotland, Serbia and Zambia. The World Bank Land and Poverty Conference 2017 provides an opportunity to discuss the progress to date, to evaluate the initial results and to plan the next steps.
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