Website to integrate geospatial information in Brazil

Decisions on resource planning and management, as well as the elaboration of public and private policies, will be facilitated with the introduction of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (INDE). Users will have its access via an internet portal, the SIG Brasil. Initially, the portal will integrate geospatial data of federal institutions of the Brazilian government and will permit information visualisation and access, making it possible to mix geospatial information in the internet environment.

In next decade, other national organisations – at state and municipal level, will be able to join INDE. The portal was inaugurated in the presence of Paulo Bernardo Silva, President of National Commission of Cartography (CONCAR); Afonso Oliveira de Almeida, Secretary of Strategic Planning and Investments; Eduardo Pereira Nunes, substitute president of CONCAR and president of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and Luiz Paulo Fortes, the executive secretary of CONCAR and director of Geosciences of IBGE.

The portal SIG Brasil is an initiative of the Federal Government. It aims at cataloguing, integrating and harmonising geospatial data produced or kept by institutions of the Brazilian government, so that they could be easily located, handled in their characteristics and accessed for more diverse uses, by any client with internet access. INDE foresees the establishment of norms and standards for data production, storage, share and dissemination. Also, the celebration of inter-institutional agreements of data share, besides qualification and training for producers and users of such information.

INDE implantation plan has the duration of 10 years and three cycles: the first began in August 2009 and its conclusion is expected by the end of 2010; Cycle II will take place during 2011 to 2014; and Cycle III, during 2015 to 2020. At the end of Cycle I, portal SIG Brasil is expected to count on a minimum infrastructure of hardware, software and telecommunications, with engines of geospatial data and metadata search, handling and access. The portal will be fed and updated with geospatial information from diverse organs.