BUILDING SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE AT COUNTY LEVEL USING OPEN SOFTWARE

W. Paluszynski¹, A. Iwaniak², A. Sliwinski³, T. Kubik¹

1 - Wroclaw University of Technology, Instutite of Computer Engineering, Control, and Robotics, Wroclaw, Poland

2 - Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformatics, Wroclaw, Poland

3 - "con terra" GmbH, Munster, Germany

witold.paluszynski@pwr.wroc.pl

One of the main responsibilities of the mapping and surveying service in Poland is collecting geodetic and cadaster data. In particular, the county geodetic agencies acquire huge amounts of spatial data. Making these data available, as well as providing mechanisms for locating desired spatial data over the Internet, is the main purpose of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). Since the responsibilities of the county agencies (with 380 counties in Poland) are all similar, it would make sense to use open software to implement these systems. However, unlike in some other European contries, open software is not much used in GIS systems in Poland.

Making the open software more popular is the main goal of a project undertaken by the authors. We work to create a package of open software which would allow building the SDI at the county level, as elements of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. The Infrastructure thus constructed will contain the following interoperating subsystems: data bases, HTTP servers, WWW services, and Internet and desktop applications. We aim not to write new software, but rather to adapt and configure some of the existing OS packages to Polish local needs, and provide additional functionality, such as processing Polish data formats and coordinate systems, and Polish language user interface. These tasks are defined in the guidelines for building the national SDI at county level in Poland.

In implementing the Infrastructure a collection of interoperational Web services are used, which integrate the spatial data distribution chains between independent organizations and various GIS systems. This technology is based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the 19100 series ISO standards, and gives authorized users access to distributed software systems. At the county level, applying this technology mainly implies implementing the OGC Web Map Service, the OGC Web Feature Service, and the OGC Catalog Service for the Web in order to make available: referential data, selected elements from the land and building registry, and other thematic data bases created in county offices for the Internet/Intranet distribution. This way the access to these data is provided both to the officers of the local county government agencies, and the citizens. It is important that the WWW data be described by metadata (according to ISO 19115) and registered in catalog servers. This will support the creation of a distributed system, based on internet added services, and consequently, the creation of the information society in economic and technological aspects.