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1Spatial Creates Online Data Quality Library for Geospatial Community

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1Spatial announced the creation and provision of a new Data Quality Library, and is inviting contributions from others in the spatial data industry.

As a result of working in the geospatial arena for almost 30 years with a variety of prestigious and high profile customer and partner organisations, 1Spatial has identified the need for greater information access, sharing and awareness relating to spatial data quality. The library will house a collection of material and links relating to spatial data quality produced by 1Spatial, industry colleagues, independent analysts and academics, providing a free, centralised resource for all spatial data users. There is currently a vast amount of information relating to this topic available, but no single repository for industry access and sharing.

Existing articles from 1Spatial, alongside industry contributions from organisations like EuroGeographics and LogicaCMG, form the foundations of the library. For example, a white paper from LogicaCMG entitled ‘Quality data: How do I recognise it?’ discussing how a common means of identifying and describing quality spatial data can be introduced, is currently available on the site. Other examples include a link to the proceedings from the International Symposium on Spatial Data Quality (ISSDQ) held this year at ITC in the Netherlands where Dr Paul Watson, Chief Scientist of 1Spatial presented the paper ‘Formal Languages for expressing data consistency rules and implications for reporting of quality metadata’.

Crucial industry documents, such as ISO 19113 and ISO 19114 relating to measuring and reporting spatial data quality, will also be accessible via links to the relevant websites, providing users with a one-stop-shop for spatial data quality information. In order to build a framework or model for the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Quality Assurance Web Services, it is necessary to ascertain what organisations involved in the market place currently understand and mean when using the term spatial data quality. The method to describe and communicate spatial data quality measures will reference the categories below. Articles, papers, presentations and case studies relating to these areas are welcome:

– Accuracy (including positional accuracy for re-using spatial data collected before GPS)
– Completeness
– Consistency
– Definition (for semantic interoperability)
– Integrity
– Language
– Projection
– Scale
– Temporality
– Thematic
– Update
– Validity and Classification

As a long-standing and active member of the OGC, 1Spatial is at the forefront of industry activities relating to spatial data quality management. 1Spatial currently chairs the OGC Data Quality Working Group and has also been involved in the OGC Web Services initiatives (OWS4.0 and OWS5.0) through the Topology Quality Assessment Interoperability Program.

The quality of spatial data can impact a huge range of analysis, planning and decision making activities worldwide, activities that implicitly trust or assume the quality of the underlying spatial data is fit for purpose, making users dependent on its accuracy, consistency, integrity and reliability. 1Spatial, as market-leaders in the geospatial data industry, hope that the creation of this online resource will raise the profile of spatial data quality in the minds of other industry partners and users, giving the subject the status it demands, as the importance and use of geospatial data continue to increase.

Graham Stickler, Product & Marketing Director at 1Spatial said ‘There is an enormous global IT market based around data profiling, data cleansing, master data management and other activities geared at delivering data quality solutions. Until recently spatial data quality had a comparably low profile and we hope to change this by offering this industry resource. There are industry commentators like David Sonnen from IDC, Joe Francica from Directions Magazine and Jeff Thurston from V1 Magazine who have highlighted spatial data quality as a major, global concern and we hope to add value by providing material from such industry experts. If you are trying to find or submit information on industry best practice, policy considerations and technical aspects relating to spatial data quality then we encourage you to register for the 1Spatial Data Quality Library.’

If you would like to submit an article, presentation or white paper that focuses on Spatial Data Quality please e-mail: marketing@1spatial.com You can also submit links directing users to relevant material and information held elsewhere to the same address.

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