Spatial data : the fundament for the national spatial data infrastructure of the Republic of Macedonia
Todorowski, Dimo
Countries that have sustainable development and application of the principles of good governancee in perspective, sooner or later start developing strategies for development and implementation of National spatial data infrastructure (NSDI). In the Republic of Macedonia (RM) the needd for development of NSDI should be accepted and observed from perspective of: how to accomplish the big picturee so called NSDI in RM. Although NSDIIs have a substantial component of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the most fundamental asset is the data itself, because without data there is nothing to have access to, to be shared, exchanged or to be integrated. When setting the objectives for development of NSDI it is recommendable to be acquainted with the basic concepts, cases and good practices of NSDI and in case of the Republic of Macedonia the INSPIRE directive. Good practices and the lessons learned from the developed western European countries are showing that a significant effort and resources are dedicated on development of the basic or authentic registers. In order that these datasets are in function of the NSDI it is required that they contain: complete, digital, up-to-date, reliable, rapidly accessible and quality assured spatial data. While identifying all key actors in Macedonian NSDI, in parallel it is required to perform analyses of their ICT capacities and analyze the actual status of the spatial data from aspect of: percentage in digital form, formats, datamodels, standards, organsation of the spatial data in appropriate geo-data bases, possibility of sharing, exchange, integration and their distribution via standardized digital channels. Finally this paper concludes that knowing the concepts of NSDI, INSPIRE directive, identification and analyses of the key actors are important for designing NSDI, but the core, the fundament of each small or big system, all the way to massive system such as NSDI are the spatial datasets itself. For the development of the NSDI in RM in parallel of building the ICT component it would be required to work on further development of authentic registers which would contain the spatial datasets.
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