Overview on global map as contributer of GSDI

Idrizi, Bashkim et al.

Global mapping is an international collaborative initiative through voluntary participation of national mapping organizations of the world, aiming to develop globally homogeneous geographic data set at the ground resolution of 1km, and to establish concrete partnership among governments, NGOs, private sectors, data providers and users to share information and knowledge for sound decision-making. The primary objective of Global Mapping project is to contribute to the sustainable development through the provision of base framework geographic dataset, which is necessary to understand the current situation and changes of environment of the world. Nowadays in the web site of ISCGM are available four GM datasets, named as GM V0, GM VX, GM V1/V2 (national and regional version) and GM V1 (global version), by following the ISO/TC 211 standards for geographic information. The GM specification consist the standards of GM V1/V2 and GM V1, both of them as most popular and most utilized GM data. GM V1 (global version) is available within the Google Earth also. The research for utilization of GM data resulted with some limitations in wide utilization for spatial analyses in international level. Problems detected as data overlapping, gaps, spatial discontinuity of data, non-homogeneous accuracy of whole data, utilization of UNK as value for unknown data ext., make GM dataset with limited utilization for wide spatial analyses. The lack of cartographic key (cartographic symbols), lack of cartographic/graphic representation, and absence of defined map projection prove that global map oneself does not contain the basic elements characterize a map, but it is just GIS database. Results from the research are in accordance with paragraph 6 of the GM specification 2, where suggestions from GM users are required, hoping that they will be taken into account in the next revision of GM specification.

Event: International Conference on Spatial Data Infrastructure 2010

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Document type:Overview on global map as contributer of GSDI (319 kB - pdf)