GPC Whitepaper - Geospatial Standards

GEOSPATIAL STANDARDS
SOLUTIONS THAT MATTER

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE WHITE PAPER SERIES
2012
An Original GPC Group Document
2012, GPC GIS LLC and GPC Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Enterprises of all sizes are developing geospatial standards and advanced geospatial data quality initiatives to increasingly exploit location intelligence to enhance their operational efficiencies and improve strategic planning and decision-making. Well considered standards provide an important foundation element for the development of an efficient and effective enterprise system or spatial data infrastructure (SDI) program. These ensure that data created for one application will be suitable to support others, that this information can be utilized by other systems without losing vital content in translation, and that data users can be aware and confident that the information they are accessing has known and reliable accuracy, is up to date, and authoritative. A secondary benefit of the process of establishing standards in an organization or community is the level of understanding of mutual requirements that is gained by the participants through this engagement. By partnering with others in a standardsoriented working group, data custodians gain an appreciation of how others may wish to use their information for their own purposes, and data users are exposed to the methods used to create this information and maintain it over time through dayto-day transactions. This sort of introspection often leads to better mutual understandings in regards to data creation and maintenance issues, but also reassessment of the involved business processes and interdependencies that can be expedited through better communications and coordination. This white paper will help organizations and stakeholder communities approach geospatial standards development with a clear vision, business objective, and focus on end results. It reports the findings of a cost benefit analysis of geospatial standards that has been conducted based on years of experience gained by GPC in establishing and sustaining enterprise Geospatial Information, Technology & Services (GITS)1 and national SDIs (see Reference 1). It also suggests an approach that a community can use to organize and collaborate in the development of geospatial standards to meet mutual needs.
Geospatial Information Technology and Services (GITS): Collection of computerized tools (GIS, RS, and GPS) and methods that is designed to capture, store, manage, visualize, and analyze features or phenomena that occur at a location on the earth, supported by the activities and services related to data production and dissemination, integration with enterprise business solution, development of spatially enabled services, adoption of standards to ensure interoperability, along with capacity building to ensure turning the data into knowledge and supports well-informed decision making.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary .............................................................................................................. 2 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 4 Standards A Key SDI Component ..................................................................................... 6 Geospatial Standards Coverage.................................................................................................................................. 7 Business Value of Standards .............................................................................................. 10 Beneficiaries of Standards ......................................................................................................................................... 10 Benefits and Outcomes ............................................................................................................................................. 11 Standards Development Framework .................................................................................. 13 Phased Development ................................................................................................................................................. 14 Cost Benefit Analysis .......................................................................................................... 19 Quantifying the Benefits of Standards .................................................................................................................... 19 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 23 Background ........................................................................................................................ 24 References .......................................................................................................................... 26 Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... 27 Your Strategic Partner ........................................................................................................ 28 The GPC Group Contact Details........................................................................................ 29
Figure 1: Geospatial Standards component highlighted ........................................................................................ 7 Figure 2: Coverage of Geospatial Standards ............................................................................................................ 8 Figure 3: Standards Development Framework...................................................................................................... 14 Figure 4: Geospatial Standards Development Process ........................................................................................ 16
Table 1: Beneficiaries of Geospatial Standards ..................................................................................................... 11 Table 2: Benefits of Geospatial Standards ............................................................................................................. 12 Table 3: GITS Maturity Levels of SDI Stakeholders ........................................................................................... 19 Table 4: Standards Benefits Category mapped to GITS Maturity Indicators ................................................... 20 Table 5: Factors in Geospatial Development Projects Alignment ..................................................................... 20
INTRODUCTION
This paper is prepared by the GPC Group with the purpose of sharing our experience and lessons learned on geospatial Standards development and benefits. While the interested audience behind this paper may be mostly GIS specialists and managers at organizations who oversee Geospatial Information Technology & Services (GITS) implementations and operations, executives may be interested to read about the return-on-investment of GITS developments in general and geospatial Standards in particular. While spatial information and services are becoming ubiquitous in our day-to-day life, whether in government, businesses, or academia, one of the main factors behind the growing dissemination and adoption of location-based services is data and technology Standards. Without Standards, people would be not be able to use Web maps (such as Bing, Google, Yahoo!, Ovi Maps) on their smart phones to find a landmark or a route and indicate to their friends their current location on a social media website as Facebook, or leaders would not be able to virtually track the development of multi-million dollars infrastructure projects from their offices with video streams captured from the site and added to an intelligent and dynamic map. Most of the individuals who are not specialized in the geospatial domain may not recognize, from the first insight, the development effort behind bringing complete and accurate maps live for their day-to-day use and more importantly using Standards. Therefore, the intent of this paper is to expose the general audience as well as the geospatial specialists who may have specific interest in Standards, on the complex process behind Standards development to bring out spatial solutions that matter to all. Today, thanks to technology and data transfer Standards, we do exchange locationbased information and services on the cloud with our mobile phones using a variety of application mashups and e-services. Some of the applications may be as simple as identifying your location using GPS and sending a notification message to your friends about your current address and the shortest route for them to reach to you. On the other hand, some applications may be more complex such as capturing realtime observations on routes followed by maritime species and studying their natural habitats and migration behaviors. Behind those common platforms for communication, collaboration, and real-time information exchange are international professional bodies such as OGC & ISO, national Standards bodies, spatial data infrastructure programs, and geospatial
experts who are actively collaborating in common Standards development, dissemination and maintenance. At GPC-GIS, throughout our extensive experience in Enterprise GIS and SDI programs development, we are proud to be active contributors to geospatial Standards development and adoption across several communities of practice. Our long-term involvement in that process in collaboration with subject-matter-experts in Enterprise GIS and SDI has helped us qualify and quantify the recurring benefits from geospatial Standards development and dissemination as identified in this paper. In our experience, GITS Projects that apply the proper Standards can result in savings due to efficiency gains up to 25% through their entire lifecycle including operation & maintenance. This applies to the case, for example, where data products using the right standards are fully utilized by the beneficiaries. This is also in range with findings conducted by Booz & Co. for NASA in 2005 (see Reference 2) on specific geospatial projects that utilized Standards. In addition, Standards bring value to the daily operations of the geospatial professionals who work on the supply side. Last, but not least, geospatial Standards contribute to the business value generation across the value chain due to effective utilization of GITS which is indirectly associated with the level of GITS Maturity (refer Cost Benefit Analysis section) in an organization. Those concepts are explored further in this paper in addition to other papers on SDI, GITS maturity and ROI that are published by the GPC Group.
STANDARDS A KEY SDI COMPONENT

Standards are essential to facilitate the development, sharing, and interoperability of geospatial data, services, and applications. Standards allow geospatial data from one Geospatial Data, Services, and source to be easily used with those from Applications: other sources to create richer and more useful Geospatial Data: GIS data sets applications. Geospatial standards constitute provided on a geoportal for downloading or to be accessed as one of the main components of a Spatial Data Web Mapping & Web Feature Infrastructure (SDI). Services. E.g.: Data sets for various An SDI is defined as the technology, policies, standards, human resources, and related activities necessary to acquire, process, distribute, use, maintain, and preserve spatial data and services. A conceptual model of a SDI, showing the organizational, technological, and business driver frameworks, is presented in Figure 1: Geospatial Standards component highlighted. A robust Spatial Data Infrastructure is a critical foundation element for more effective physical, economic, and social development as well as environmental resource management and policy making.
themes such as basemap, transportation, land use, infrastructure, etc. Geospatial Services: GIS functionality provided as web services to be used for geospatial applications development or for geo-enabling non-spatially aware applications and e-services. E.g.: Services for geocoding, buffering, routing, LBS, visualization, etc. Geospatial Applications: Fullfledged web GIS applications. E.g.: Applications for landuse analysis, site-selection, Traffic Impact Assessment, Community Facility locating, etc
Figure 1: Geospatial Standards component highlighted
Business Framework Comprises: Industry / Business: Government-to-business (G2B) applications and services typically relate to economic development, land development, licensing, or permitting. Government: Government-to-government (G2G) applications and services improve the amount, quality, and speed of information exchange among various levels of government and/or agencies and departments within governments. Better communication helps governments use resources more wisely by avoiding duplication of effort and allows agencies to work together to tackle large-scale planning problems or respond to emergencies. Public: Government-to-citizen (G2C) applications and services provide information on government service, such as trash pickup, or streamline the publics interaction with government agencies by allowing online payment of fees, or providing feedback on land use plans to the concerned constituents.
Geospatial Data Standards focus on improving the effectiveness of the government through the more widespread use of geospatial information. This improved effectiveness can often improve the quality and timeliness of governments decisionmaking and service delivery for managing resources equitably, efficiently, and sustainably across a wide variety of programmatic contexts such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, public safety, and resource optimization.
Geospatial Standards Coverage

Geospatial standards help improve the collective efficiency of the SDI stakeholder community by making geospatial data more accessible, reliable, and less expensive
Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper to acquire through enhanced data-sharing and more effective management of investments. Geospatial standards span the spectrum of technology, data, and services encompassing people and entities; covering technology, data, and services components; and supporting processes and functions as illustrated (by the red dashed rectangle) in Figure 2: Coverage of Geospatial Standards. The standards development effort mainly pertains to different types of geospatial data. On the technology side, the relevant industry standards for Database, Server, Storage, and Communication are utilized. On the services side, the OGC web services standards, such as WMS, WFS, WCS, CS-W, GML, GeoRSS, etc are commonly adopted.
Figure 2: Coverage of Geospatial Standards
Geospatial Data Standards are grouped as follows: Data Content Standards for understanding the contents of different data themes by providing a data model of geospatial features, attributes, relationships, and a data dictionary. Data Management Standards for handling geospatial data involving actions such as discovering data through metadata, spatially referencing data, collecting data from the field, submission of data by contractors to stakeholders, and tiling image-based maps. Data Portrayal Standards for visual portrayal of geospatial data using cartographic feature symbology.
Information systems built using standards-based distributed services have been adopted by the geospatial community. SDI Communities use distinct data models and terminology, as well as community-specific resource discovery facilities. Concurrently, Linked Data principles (see Reference 3) are being applied now as a means to enable interoperability of SDIs and easier integration with other forms of
Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper information infrastructures. It is necessary to stay on top of such emerging developments in the geospatial standards field and put them into operation when they mature.
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BUSINESS VALUE OF STANDARDS

A routine problem faced by the leadership of a government or a corporate body/organization is that various types of information required for decision making and risk evaluation are not readily available at short notice. The rapid and dynamic nature of todays operations in government or corporate bodies/organizations, along with the availability of high-speed network infrastructure and Internet, has created high expectations on the accessibility of information and the timescales for its delivery. There are several barriers that prevent the availability of reliable information at the right time: Users face many data access problems. They often spend more time in searching for data, acquiring data, understanding data, manipulating data, transforming data, and organizing data than in using the data to support business operations. Business analysts and planners have high overheads. The data held by different constituent agencies are not of uniform content and structure making it necessary to spend excessive effort in integrating them across different sectors or disciplines, taking into account different levels of detail, positional accuracies, geocoding schemes, and update mechanisms. The supporting Web services available to applications to work with the data are often dependent on specific platforms and technologies necessitating more time and effort to make them interoperable across different sectors. Legal barriers concerned with data privacy, intellectual property rights, and liability prevent the availability of reliable information at the right time.
Apart from achieving significant cost savings due to reduced time and effort in reprocessing the data, standards are required to ensure that geospatial data sets are shared smoothly across the stakeholders and that reliable information can be produced timely for effective decision making and service delivery. Standards also protect long-term technology investments enabling existing software solutions to be integrated with or replaced by other software solutions adhering to the same standards.
Beneficiaries of Standards
Geospatial Standards impact different groups of people in different ways, both inside the organization as well as outside. Table 1: Beneficiaries of Geospatial Standards below lists the major beneficiary groups of Geospatial standards in the government / corporate as well as in stakeholder organizations / departments and briefly describes how each group is benefited.

Table 1: Beneficiaries of Geospatial Standards
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Where
Who Benefits Operational Users
Inside the Stakeholder Organization
Strategic Planners
Policy Makers
Contractors
Outside the Stakeholder Organization
Service Providers
Academia
Public
How Benefitted The users involved in day-to-day business operations of the stakeholder organization are able to do more work by spending less time pre-processing the geospatial data The senior management gets more reliable and timely data from the line of business units of stakeholder organizations for business analysis & planning The decision makers of corporate / government are empowered with reliable and timely information to make informed policy decisions The engineers, consultants, and other professionals involved in creating geospatial data for stakeholders are able to submit clearly defined and unambiguously specified geospatial data within time and budget Developers of value-added data and applications are able to create additional data, develop newer applications, and offer better services to consumers The academic community consisting of teaching staff, admin staff, and students in colleges / universities is able to carry out better projects and research using real-world geospatial data Members of the public are able to enjoy the benefits of many new location-based-services and applications using the geospatial data
Benefits and Outcomes

Implementation of Geospatial standards typically ensures that all transactions of stakeholder organizations rely on standards to enable smooth information flow among business processes. The main outcome of Geospatial standards is the availability of geospatial data through business applications enabled by web services. The numerous benefits of Geospatial standards to the stakeholders are categorized into five groups, namely Customer (direct user), Operational, Financial, Strategic, and Social (non-direct, public). These benefits are briefly described in Table 2: Benefits of Geospatial Standards below.
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Table 2: Benefits of Geospatial Standards
Customer Benefits Improved customer interactions by stakeholder entities Improved customer responsiveness Better services to contractors, consultants, academia, and public
Operational Benefits Improved business productivity Improved workforce efficiency Improved control over data updates and new versions of datasets Improved data consistency Better integration and analysis of diverse sources of data, including demographic and business data Improved opportunities to collaboratively plan data collection to serve multiple uses Enhanced eServices Ability to easily add new technology Reduced system integration time
Financial Benefits Decreased cost of geospatial data Reduced data maintenance & operations costs Cost avoidance of duplicate data Reduced cost of data sharing Reduced time for data integration & interoperability Lowered risks and reduced cost of new applications development Stakeholders empowered to reduce risk, stimulate market activity and innovation, and future-proof applications Higher societal / institutional Return on Investments
Strategic Benefits Improved customer understanding Improved market understanding Improved partner relationships Improved crossjurisdictional decision-making Enhanced working relationships among stakeholders and across jurisdictions Improved data security Increased data integration and interoperability More ability to reuse data for new applications Improved rigor and transparency regarding data collection, processing, and update Reinforced commitment to standards Effective data sharing agreements Innovative new businesses, products, and services
Social Benefits Improved data access Increased data sharing among stakeholder organizations Facilitate better use of data assets Higher quality of data Improved documentation of information resources Better understanding of the benefits of data sharing Improved communication across diverse information communities Increased access to relevant data in emergencies, disasters, and conflicts Increased institutional effectiveness Strengthened community building Increased geospatial awareness
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STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK

Geospatial data are assembled by the SDI stakeholder community to serve a variety of users and applications. There are a variety of geospatial standards available widely ranging in scope and scale. On the one hand, there are international standards organizations, OGC and ISO, as well as communities of practice and other international SDI bodies developing a variety of standards for various types of geospatial data and services. In the context of this paper, these organizations are categorized into two groups of Major Developers of Standards and Major Implementers of Standards as shown in the text boxes below.
Major Developers of Standards Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) ISO Technical Committee 211 on Geographic Information and Geomatics Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Major Implementers of Standards Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC)
On the other hand, there are data producers in a stakeholder community employing standards for the creation of commonly used reference data sets such as Geodetic Control, Cadastral, Orthoimagery, Elevation, Hydrography, Administrative units, Transportation etc. Similarly, data users in the stakeholder community utilize different standards for themes in the application domains such as Utility Networks, Land Cover, Land Use, Environmental, Community Facility, Critical Infrastructure, etc. Geospatial standards development primarily involves adopting a top-down and a bottom-up approach for harmonizing the more abstract ISO standards (see Reference 4), the implementation-ready OGC standards (see Reference 5), and the different communities of practice with the various existing stakeholder community standards as illustrated in Figure 3: Standards Development Framework, to arrive at a set of geospatial standards tailored to and customized for the particular stakeholder communitys requirements.
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Figure 3: Standards Development Framework
A Working Group comprising the data producers and key data users of a particular data set is the main instrument for consensus-driven development of the standard for that data set. Liaison with OGC and other relevant international bodies is also arranged as appropriate to ensure suitable interfaces for information transfer. It may be noted that many countries have formal standards bodies that would engage formally with ISO and others. The bodies should be contacted to determine their level of participation in monitoring, developing or publishing the standards that ensue from the geospatial standards development process.
Phased Development
Given that standards are integral components of any SDI, the standards development phases usually accompany SDI/ Enterprise GITS development phases, which consist usually of three major tracks, 1) Situation Assessment, 2) Planning and Design, and 3) Implementation. During the Situation Assessment and Planning stage, initial standards are proposed that are further developed and refined during implementation. The implementation phase is carried out incrementally through three stages namely, 1) Foundation, 2) Institutionalization, and 3) Geo Business Intelligence. Brief descriptions of various tasks involved in different tracks are tabulated below. Situation Assessment Inventory all the data used in a stakeholder organization, including all geospatial projects that generate data, and identify the data producers as well as data users Understand the organizational objectives, analyze business processes to determine spatial data utilization, and identify the required information products
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Identify common data requirements and determine all the reference data sets that are required by various applications Identify common business needs of geospatial data and the corresponding data processing and analysis requirements Identify common information products derived from geospatial data Identify common data processing service needs Identify common technical requirements for generating, processing, and managing geospatial data, including data quality issues Carry out a GITS maturity assessment of the stakeholder organization to measure its current readiness and usage of geospatial data and services using the GITS Maturity framework (see Section Cost Benefit Analysis) Planning and Design Setup the strategy, vision, mission, and goals for geospatial standards in alignment with the business objectives and the overall SDI/ Enterprise GITS program Setup and mobilize Working Groups for different data themes including development of Working Group charters, work-plans and schedules with clear roles and responsibilities Layout the Standards Development Process (see Figure 4: Geospatial Standards Development Process and the corresponding text box) from the initial draft through the final publication of the standard Setup and mobilize Standards Custodian Groups (along with their charters, workplans and schedules) and assign responsibilities (See the text box) for each group during the Draft, Review, and Final stages of the standards development process

Figure 4: Geospatial Standards Development Process
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Standards Development Process The Working Groups decide the necessary data content and the basic standard to be followed. The seven steps from the initial Draft to the Standards publication are organized into three stages - Draft, Review, and Final: Draft Stage: Steps 1 2 Inputs from Working Groups (WG) Comments from WGs and other stakeholders Standard is ready for review Review Stage: Steps 3 6 Internal format and integration review Standard is ready for approval Final Stage: Step 7 Becomes an officially recognized Geospatial Standard
Standards Custodian Groups & Responsibilities Each step of the Standards Development process has a custodian, the group responsible for the current state of the standard: SDI Working Groups (WGs) Standards Working Group (SWG) Standards Development Group (SDG) SDI Stakeholder Group (SG) SDI Management Group (MG) The responsibilities of the custodian groups during the three stages of development are: Draft Stage 1. Produce Working Draft (SDG) 2. Revise Working Draft (WGs) Review Stage 3. Review and Evaluate (SWG) 4. Respond to Comments (SDG) 5. Evaluate Responsiveness to Comments (SWG) 6. Act on Recommendation (SG) Final Stage 7. Approve and Sign for final Publication (MG)
Identify potential existing standards that may be relevant as models for local customization Develop the Standards Governance Framework giving stakeholders opportunity to shape its structure and functions Develop a performance assessment methodology Flesh out a ROI analysis model for specific geospatial Standards Develop an outreach plan (workshops, seminars, conferences, publications) to create an awareness of standards and share knowledge with the stakeholders Develop a professional development plan to provide relevant education and training to stakeholder staff, for the take-up of standards
Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper Develop an implementation monitoring plan consisting of monitoring mechanisms, cycle, and reporting structure Develop a standards maintenance plan for collection of feedback, benchmark for improvements, and updating standards when necessary Develop plans to work with professional geospatial standards bodies Implementation
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Depending on the findings of the previous two tracks, namely Situation Assessment and Planning & Design, the required SDI Community Working Groups (WGs) shall be setup for Standards development in the implementation track, which consists of three stages Foundation, Institutionalization, and GeoBusiness Intelligence as explained below.
Foundation Stage:
Setup different stakeholder groups to support standards development and assign roles and responsibilities to them Develop Standard for Spatial Reference System including positional accuracies Prioritize the requirements and develop data content Standards for the commonly used reference data themes Develop data management Standards for Reference Grid, Geographical Names, and Thoroughfare Addresses, geospatial data submission by contractors and consultants, etc as needed Develop the metadata standards for data discovery Develop a portal for data sharing Implement the outreach plan
Institutionalization Stage:
Develop a Wiki site for Standards and publish all documents Setup data automation process between geospatial portal and data generators Enforce data submission standards in stakeholder agencies and incorporate them in their RFPs Develop additional data standards for community domain themes using international best practices Implement the Standards Governance Framework including setting up of Services Desk to help users on standards Conduct trainings on Standards and initiate professional development activities Carry out periodical Standards ROI studies
Geo Business Intelligence Stage:
Offer resources to help users in stakeholder organizations take advantage of geospatial standards Encourage stakeholders toward more effective and integrated utilization of standardized data and services
Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper Conduct pilot projects and develop use cases to utilize standardized data and services to enhance business processes of stakeholders Identify common applications functionality among stakeholders, develop standardized services to provide the functionality, and share them across the community
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COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Geospatial information today is considered as part of the core information infrastructure of an organization. Measuring the costs and savings of knowledge assets is always problematic. While there have been several studies on the Cost Benefit / Return on Investment of SDIs (see Reference 6) and an Australian study on quantifying the cost of geospatial data and the quantified economic impacts of geospatial information (see Reference 7), the only published study on geospatial standards per se that GPC came across during our secondary research is the one conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton for NASA (see Reference 2). The findings of costbenefit analysis on geospatial standards presented in this section are mainly based on the study conducted by GPC on a sub-national SDI and partly from its experience on other SDIs and enterprise GISs. In the present study, the costs specific to geospatial standards are considered separately for the development, operations, and maintenance of data and services. In this paper the benefits are considered for each of the SDI/GITS stakeholder organizations as well as for the SDI Coordination Body. The methodology used for quantifying the benefits of SDI stakeholder organizations is associated with the GITS Maturity assessment process developed for assessing the geospatial maturity levels of SDI stakeholder organizations. GITS Maturity refers to the geospatial maturity level of stakeholder organizations which utilize GITS for improving organizational productivity, enhancing customer service, supporting decision making, and sustaining innovation. The six levels of GITS Maturity and their definitions are provided in Table 3: GITS Maturity Levels of SDI Stakeholders below.
Table 3: GITS Maturity Levels of SDI Stakeholders
GITS Maturity Levels 1 Awareness 2 Project-Based 3 Departmental 4 Central 5 Integrated
6 Enterprise
Key Milestones Individuals in the organization start to learn about GITS capabilities (a GITS champion is born). Enough interest in GITS has been garnered to support a GITS project, or GITS featured within a project. Departments or operations within the larger organization recognize the value of GITS for their internal use A central GITS unit begins to structure the entitys GITS needs. Centralization produces cost savings. GITS applications are developed to improve access and data maintenance. GITS functionalities are imbedded into the core businesses areas in the organization. Seamless integration of GITS with all relevant enterprise and missioncritical systems. GITS capabilities are on-demand.
Quantifying the Benefits of Standards

In an SDI environment the benefits of geospatial standards are quantified under the following three categories:
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Benefits gained from incorporating standards into the geospatial projects during the alignment of Geospatial Development Projects across the SDI community Benefits obtained from the upkeep of standardized data and related services (Projects O&M) on Data Producer organization nodes (and on geospatial portals) Benefits achieved from the productive utilization of standardized data and services (Opex) by Users in stakeholder organizations to meet their business needs The mapping between the benefits categories of standards and the GITS maturity indicators are shown in the following table:
Table 4: Standards Benefits Category mapped to GITS Maturity Indicators
Standards Benefits Category Benefits from Geospatial Development Projects (Planning / Implementation) Benefits from O&M Projects Benefits in GITS Opex from Data Utilization
GITS Maturity Indicators GIS Roadmap Standards Alignment Coordination and Governance Data Maintenance Data Standards Technology Standards Spatially enabled e-services Customer Communication Productivity Workflow Integration Strategic Decision Making
The total effort involved in the alignment of Geospatial Development Projects activity is apportioned under six different headings shown in the table below.
Table 5: Factors in Geospatial Development Projects Alignment
Item 1. Scope of the Geospatial Development project 2. Standards planning and implementation 3. Timeline and priorities of the project 4. Deliverables, Outputs, and Outcomes of the project 5. Alignment during project implementation 6. Review and Validation of the project (involving use of Standards during projects O&M)
Percentage 20% 10% 10% 20% 20% 20% (15% Stds.)
From a Standards perspective, this effort in Geospatial Development Projects alignment is categorized under two phases of the projects viz. Standards Planning and Implementation phase (item 2, which maps to the first benefit category in Table 5) and Operations & Maintenance phase (item 6, which maps to the second benefit category in Table 5). Under Item 6 Review and Validation, 75% of the O&M effort is towards quality control of data primarily involving compliance to Geospatial Standards. Accordingly, this standards-related O&M work amounts to a portion of 15% (75% of 20%) of Review and Validation. Thus, a total savings of 25% (10% from item 2 above and 15% from item 6 above) is estimated as the portion of standards from the geospatial projects alignment activity.
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In our experience, the major lessons learned from the Standards Cost Benefits analysis, are: The savings due to Standards in geospatial projects is 25% of the total project cost. The savings due to Standards in the projects O&M are 15% of the total project cost. The percentage savings from Standards attributed to GITS utilization are considered to be in the same proportion as the GITS maturity percentage in general and the GITS resource management percentage (a sub-indicator of GITS Maturity Indicator) in particular in the stakeholder organizations. Anecdotal experience indicates that the savings from Standards attributed to GITS utilization are in the same order of magnitude as the GITS Utilization percentage indicator multiplied by the estimated savings from Standards utilization in enterprise GITS operating expenditure. (The savings from Standards as a percentage of GITS utilization are estimated as 20%).
One of the often quoted return-on-investment (ROI) studies of geospatial standards is the independent ROI study conducted by NASA (see Reference 2) to assess the impact, positive or negative, of using open standards that enable geospatial interoperability among its partnering agencies. The major quantitative findings of this comprehensive study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton are: The project with open standards saved 26% overall compared to the project that relied upon a proprietary standard. That is, for every $100 spent on projects based on proprietary platforms, the same value could be achieved with $74 if the project were based on open standards. The project that implemented open standards had a risk-adjusted ROI, or Savings to Investment ratio, of 119.0% over the 5-year project lifecycle. That is, for every $100 spent on investment, $119 is saved on O&M costs in longterm savings.
NASAs 26% savings may be compared to the 25% data projects savings of SDI in this paper. The 19% savings of NASA could be compared with the 15% data O&M savings of SDI. Both studies came to similar findings in comparable areas even though each one of them adopted different methodologies that were applied at different scales. Note that GPCs experience during the last decade includes several enterprise GITS and SDI implementations in Public Sector organizations. The recent GPC case study analyzed GITS projects, initiatives, and operations within stakeholder organizations spanning the public sector, representing an SDI community with several dozens of organizations including sub-national and federal governments, businesses, and
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academia. This is in contrast to the NASA study conducted in 2005 that analyzed and compared individual project (s) i.e. the ones that applied geospatial Standards vs. the ones that did not.
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CONCLUSION
Geospatial Standards enable the SDI stakeholder community to come together and also enhance access to a common Standards help create information products to: repository (physical or virtual) of Explain existing condition situation geospatial data as well as a platform for awareness services, thus minimizing data Communicate importance and priorities Show temporal changes: past, present, duplication and streamlining data future updates. Standards help create high Show status and performance Provide timely information quality information products Support decision making supporting the decision making process Disseminate knowledge with more accurate and up to date Design the future information (see text box). Finally, they provide significant costs savings and contribute to several tangible and intangible benefits in a SDI program or enterprise GITS setting. The Standards framework is a highly scalable, manageable, configurable, and extendable model that can be well adapted to the requirements spanning from a business enterprise to a local/regional/national government.
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BACKGROUND
The GPC Group has been very active in the last decade on SDI and recently on Community Information Infrastructure (CII) developments particularly in the MENA region and Asia as part of Public Sector initiatives and programs. The scope of GPC Group activities has ranged from Enterprise GIS in government organizations such as utilities, urban planning, and environmental to federated GIS and SDI developments across sectors with involvement of several stakeholders including federal and local government, businesses, academia and public. At GPC Group, we support our clients throughout the full life cycle of Geospatial Information, Technology & Services (GITS) including assessment, planning, design, implementation, measurement and iterative cycle of adaptive management. Notwithstanding their implementation scale, geospatial standards, which are an integral component of the GITS development methodology by GPC Group, are analyzed from the business, institutional, and technical perspective with the purpose of balancing GITS readiness versus utilization by the end users. This is achieved through a hands-on capacity building process towards developing geospatial solutions that matter to our clientele! From that perspective, one of the cornerstones of GPC Group activities is to map geospatial standards development to the business value that is generated in the value chain of relevance to the stakeholders. Throughout the years of Geospatial Standards and SDI: implementing dozens of In a recent assignment that was very intensive on geospatial projects with clients in Standards development in addition to other complementary different countries with tracks, subject-matter-experts from K.U. Leuven Research & Development, who collaborated with GPC Group on the various disciplines and project, commented on their Standards development effort varied governance structures, for Abu Dhabi Spatial Data Infrastructure (AD-SDI) program as follows: the GPC Group has accumulated a very rich body We were very impressed by the ongoing efforts of the AD-SDI Program. The approach is very similar to what is being done in of knowledge in geospatial the European INSPIRE initiative, but there it is at the scale of an Standards development. In entire region. The resulting products (standards) are concise and clear, and a very useful instrument for all the stakeholders several instances, subjectinvolved. They could (should) serve as an example for the UAE matter-experts that and the whole region, and could also provide as example for standardization at the international level. We suggest integrating collaborated with GPC Group these efforts in international initiatives like ISO/TC 211 and brought domain expertise OGC. such as environment, urban planning, utilities, infrastructure, local government as well as institutional and technical knowhow. This comprised areas such as Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS), Project Management (PMBOK or
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equivalent), Geo Legal Sound Practices, GITS Maturity Assessment, and SDI Returnon-Investment (ROI).
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REFERENCES
1. Spatial Data Infrastructure: The GPC Group Story, The GPC Group, December 2011 2. Geospatial Interoperability Return on Investment Study, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Geospatial Interoperability Office, Booz Allen Hamilton, April 2005 3. Linked Data in SDI or How GML is not about Trees, Sven Schade and Simon Cox, European Commission Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Ispra, Italy, April 2010 4. Standards Guide, ISO / TC 211 Geographic Information / Geomatics, June 2009, www.isotc211.org 5. Geospatial and location standards, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), www.opengeospatial.org 6. Report of Workshop on Cost Benefit/Return on Investment of SDIs: Assessing the Impacts of SDIs, European Commission Joint Research Center, January 2006 7. The Value of Spatial Information: The impact of modern spatial information technologies on the Australian economy, Executive Summary, CRC for Spatial Information & ANZLIC the Spatial Information Council, ACIL Tasman, March 2008
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ABBREVIATIONS
AD-SDI CS-W FGDS G2B* G2C * G2G * GITS GML ICT ISO MENA O&M OGC PMBOK RFP ROI SDI WCS WFS WMS WTS Abu Dhabi Spatial Data Infrastructure Catalogue Service Fundamental Geospatial Data Set Government to Business Government to Citizen Government to Government Geospatial Information, Technology and Services Geographic Markup Language Information and Communication Technologies International Standards Organization Middle East and North Africa Operations and Maintenance Open Geospatial Consortium Project Management Body of Knowledge Request for Proposal Return on Investment Spatial Data Infrastructure Web Coverage Service Web Feature Service Web Map Service Web Terrain Service
* E-government makes the interaction between government and citizens (G2C), government and business enterprises (G2B), and inter-agency relationships (G2G) more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.
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YOUR STRATEGIC PARTNER

The GPC Group includes GPC Inc., GPC-GIS and GCS, three companies that work closely together toward a common vision by leveraging each member's unique strengths, tools, methodologies and experiences.
Based in California, USA, GPC Inc. is the rst of the GPC Group of companies, established in 1995. GPC Inc. staff have conducted over 250 projects worldwide, covering a broad range of sectors and scales. In recent years, GPC Inc. has focused on the use of SDI as a mechanism for institutional transformation and innovation, offering full spectrum information infrastructure solutions addressing Business, Technical and Institutional Framework building.!
Based in Abu Dhabi, UAE since 2008, GPC Global Information Solutions LLC (GPC-GIS) specializes in the delivery of geospatial information services to the MENA Region. By harnessing more than 25 years experience of GPC partners, we provide consulting services in Geospatial Information Technology and Services (GITS), Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), Geospatial Education, Location Based Services and Information Management for a wide variety of organizations and projects.!
Based in Kabul, Afghanistan, Geographic Consultancy Services (GCS) was launched in 2011. GCS is an Afghan owned and operated, full service consulting company focused on the planning, development and operations of geographic information systems (GIS) and community information infrastructure in Afghanistan. GCS works closely with GPC Inc. and GPC-GIS to deliver world class, quality service to the Afghanistan market.!
For over two decades, the GPC Group has been committed to assisting its clients and the communities they are part of, to build knowledge-based societies, through a number of SDI related projects including:
Eye On Earth Summit Abu Dhabi 2011 Jammu and Kashmir State (India) SDI Workshop AGEDI Phase II Abu Dhabi SDI Stages 1 and 2 Yemen Spatial Data Infrastructure Afghanistan SDI Continuing Support Afghanistan SDI Initiation Program Arctic Research Support Spatial Data Infrastructure Bahrain Central Information Organisation (CIO) SDI Readiness Assessment Libya Spatial Data Infrastructure Community Information Footpath World Health Organization (WHO) GIS Situation Assessment and Technology Strengthening Strategy Saudi Arabia Eastern Province Governor's Office, E-Gov. GIS Portal Concept Plan Malopolska Region GIS Situation Assessment and Technology Strengthening Strategy World Bank GIS Situation Assessment and Technology Strengthening Strategy Salton Sea Database Program (SSDP) Lebanon National GIS Infrastructure Feasibility Study Jamaica National Land Information System Framework Plan Sultanate of Oman Nationwide GIS/LIS Strategic Plan Baghdad Municipal GIS Design State of Hawaii Ocean and Coastal Resource Information System
THE GPC GROUP CONTACT DETAILS

REDLANDS, CA, USA, OFFICE Telephone: +1.909.867.7628 Fax: +1.909.867.5310 Email: info@gpcinc.net Post: 5 East Citrus Ave Suite 205 Redlands, CA 92373, USA SEATTLE, WA, USA, OFFICE Telephone: +1.206.325.6331 Fax: +1.206.325.6735 Email: info@gpcinc.net Post: 191 27th Ave. Seattle, WA 98122, USA GPC GIS CONTACT DETAILS Telephone: +971.2.666.6574 Fax: +971.2.666.3660 Email: info@gpc-gis.ae Post: PO Box 129060 Abu Dhabi, UAE

GPC Whitepaper - Geospatial Standards

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GEOSPATIAL STANDARDS

SOLUTIONS THAT MATTER

An Original GPC Group Document

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

STANDARDS A KEY SDI COMPONENT

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Figure 1: Geospatial Standards component highlighted

Geospatial Standards Coverage

Figure 2: Coverage of Geospatial Standards

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

BUSINESS VALUE OF STANDARDS

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Who Benefits Operational Users

Inside the Stakeholder Organization

Outside the Stakeholder Organization

Benefits and Outcomes

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Table 2: Benefits of Geospatial Standards

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Figure 3: Standards Development Framework

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

GITS Maturity Levels 1 Awareness 2 Project-Based 3 Departmental 4 Central 5 Integrated

Quantifying the Benefits of Standards

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Percentage 20% 10% 10% 20% 20% 20% (15% Stds.)

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

Geospatial Standards A GPC Whitepaper

YOUR STRATEGIC PARTNER

THE GPC GROUP CONTACT DETAILS

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