The Role of Institutional Mechanisms in Spatial Data Infrastructure Development that Supports Decision-making

Improved economic, social and environmental decision-making are principal objectives for investing in the development of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) at all political and administrative levels. Indeed, Resolution 7 of the recent 5th Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference in Cartagena, Colombia (GSDI, 2001) argued that the purpose of the GSDI is to improve the availability, accessibility, and applicability of spatial information for decisionmaking. While accepting the development of institutional mechanisms to support decisionmaking by promoting the availability and accessibility of spatial information as part of SDI institutional frameworks, many institutional mechanisms fall short of addressing the application of spatial data to decison-making. From an institutional perspective, the motivation for SDI implementation is the impracticality of a single organisation producing and maintaining the wide variety of data and models needed to inform many decisions, resulting in a need for sharing of data and a range of analytical and display tools. This is being seen particularly in the natural resource, environment and government sectors in Australia. These sectors are utilising institutional mechanisms to support spatial decision-making processes in a number of different ways including the development of community resource centres, departmental development of decision support tools, as well as the development of atlases, spatial data directories and on-line land information services. In Australia these institutional mechanisms are playing a crucial role in providing the building blocks for the institutional framework of SDIs and address different levels of the decision-making process. This paper looks at how availability and accessibility of spatial data are being achieved by reviewing examples from each of the institutional mechanisms mentioned. The variety of decision-making levels supported by these different initiatives is reviewed in terms of decision process theory. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the approaches to developing institutional support for decision-making as part of SDI development, as well as a consideration of directions for SDI development in the future to support spatial decision-making processes.