Glenn Vancauwenberghe

KU Leuven | ku leuven · Spatial Applications Division Leuven (SADL)

Executive summary The project “ELISE Lot 1 - Leveraging the power of location information and technologies to improve Public Services at Local Level: An EU-wide Analysis” is part of a broader effort of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Digital Economy Unit (JRC.B.6) in particular. It falls under the ISA2 Action ELISE: Eu...

The new concept of Open Spatial Data Infrastructures (Open SDIs) has emerged from an increased interest in open data initiatives together with national and international directives, such as the EU Open Data Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/1024), and the large investment of European public authorities in developing SDIs for sharing spatial data withi...

Current open data systems lag behind in their promised value creation and sustainability. The objective of the current study is twofold: 1) to investigate whether existing open data systems meet the requirements of open data ecosystems, and 2) to develop a research agenda that discusses the gaps between current open data systems on the one hand and...

With new Earth Observation (EO) and Geoinformation (GI) data sources increasingly becoming available, evermore new skills for data collection, processing, analysis and application are required. They are needed not only from scientists, but also from practitioners working in businesses, public and private EO*GI and related sectors. Aligning the cont...

A body of knowledge (BoK) is an inventory of knowledge or concepts of a domain that serves as a reference vocabulary for various purposes, such as the development of curricula, the preparation of job descriptions, and the description of occupational profiles. To fulfill its purpose, a BoK needs to be up‐to‐date and ideally widely accepted by academ...

Framed within the Open Government and Open Data initiatives and supported by data sharing and interoperability platforms at different administrative levels, the use of spatial data in the provision of e-government services strongly increased in recent years. Better understanding these practical implementations of spatial data contributes to the eff...

Geospatial information infrastructures (GIIs) provide the technological, semantic, organizational and legal structure that allow for the discovery, sharing, and use of geospatial information (GI). In this chapter, we introduce the overall concept and surrounding notions such as geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial data infrastructures (...

In order to facilitate and coordinate the sharing of spatial data, governments worldwide have been developing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) for many years. Recently, technological, institutional and societal developments have caused these SDIs to shift towards more open infrastructures in which non-governmental actors are embraced as key stak...

The effective development and implementation of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) requires governance in order to avoid gaps, duplications, contradictions and missed opportunities in the implementation of different SDI components. Therefore, appropriate governance instruments should be established to coordinate the activities and contributions of...

In the past 20 years, European public authorities have invested considerable resources in the development of spatial data infrastructures. With the European INSPIRE Directive as an important driver, national spatial data infrastructures were developed throughout Europe to facilitate and coordinate the exchange and sharing of geographic data. While...

In today’s information society, geographic information (GI) also referred to as spatial information is extremely important to the operation of society, and thus very valuable. Citizens, businesses, and government use GI for many of their day-to-day decisions. Most of the societal, economic, and environmental challenges they face require spatial thi...

This paper introduces the Open Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) Assessment Framework as a new approach for assessing the openness of SDIs. Open SDIs are SDIs in which non-government actors such as businesses, citizens, researchers and non-profit organizations can contribute to the development and implementation of the SDI, use spatial data with as...

Open data assessment is about collecting, analysing and providing information on the performance of open data initiatives. Open data assessments are used to monitor the progress of open data initiatives, compare and benchmark the performance of different organizations or countries and hold governments and agencies to account for their decisions and...

The effective development and implementation of open data initiatives requires governance in order to avoid gaps, duplications, contradictions and missed opportunities. Appropriate governance instruments should be established to coordinate the activities and contributions of different stakeholders. This chapter reviews the governance of open data i...

This book is about open data, i.e. data that does not have any barriers in the (re)use. Open data aims to optimize access, sharing and using data from a technical, legal, financial, and intellectual perspective. Data increasingly determines the way people live their lives today. Nowadays, we cannot imagine a life without real-time traffic informati...

With the launch of a national data portal, the development of a national open data licence and the publication of various policy reports and action plans on open data, all in 2010, the United Kingdom took several major steps in implementing its open data agenda. In the following years, the UK further developed the various components of its open dat...

Since the 1990s, public administrations in Europe and worldwide have invested considerable resources in the development of infrastructures for promoting, facilitating and coordinating the exchange and sharing of geographic data. A crucial driver in the development and implementation of these spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) in Europe was the 200...

The central research questions this paper aims to answer are: 1) which governance instruments are adopted for governing open spatial data infrastructures in Europe and 2) which tools and instruments do European members states use to monitor and evaluate the performance of their open spatial data policies? The paper will provide a first explorative...

Geographic information (GI) and technology has rapidly expanded and evolved over the past decades resulting in an increased need for experts in this field. However, the academic, private and public sectors active in this domain often have difficulties to find well-trained and skilled employees. The geospatial workforce often appears to be inadequat...

The deliverable will present the results of WP2 “Scoping, positioning and strategy definition”, Task T.2.2 – Analysis of technical and regulatory best practices. Deliverable D2.2 covers the first 3 months of the project. The aim of the deliverable is to report a review and evaluation of best practices and guidelines related to important relevant te...

Location information is of increasing importance for the execution of governmental tasks. Most of the information that is used by government has a spatial component. Like other types of governmental information, location-based information can be collected, managed, used, and exchanged with support of new information and communication technologies (...

The use of spatial data has become a key factor in numerous public sector processes. However, recent evidence suggests that the seemingly obvious benefits of spatial data use and sharing often stay beyond reach. This paper examines whether the performance of spatial data in inter-organisational processes depends on the structural characteristics of...

Location information and location based services support national and European policies more and more. Whether it is to develop a trans-European multi-model transport policy, or to underpin the common agriculture or regional policies, location information is a key asset to find answers to the often complex and challenging questions. To facilitate t...

The European Union Location Framework (EULF) is a set of good practices and actions to promote more effective and efficient use of location information in e-government services. The EULF is part of the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) Programme, which supports interoperability solutions, sharing and re-use among European...

In the past years, various initiatives have been taken to promote and coordinate the sharing of spatial data from multiple sources. These initiatives are often referred to as a whole with the term “spatial data infrastructure” (SDI), which can be seen as the collection of technological and organizational components oriented towards facilitating and...

Spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) are developed at different levels of society to facilitate and coordinate the exchange of spatial data (Crompvoets et al. 2004). Many attempts have been made to define and analyze these SDIs, both by practitioners and scientists (Onsrud 1998; Craglia et al. 2003; Masser 2005, 2007; Vandenbroucke and Janssen 2008)...

The main objectives of this chapter are to introduce Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs), and to explore their potential contribution to good e-government. In order to understand the possible strengths of SDIs for good e-government, the concept, components, governance, and the cost-benefit analyses regarding the implementation of these infrastructu...

In order to provide a basis for quantitative and qualitative assessment of SDI-performance, a clear definition and a theoretical framework for SDI are needed. From the various definitions and frameworks of SDI available in the literature, the productional and the geographic information process perspective were selected, combined and extended. From...

In September 2007, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Vrije Universiteit Brussel started a four-year research project entitled "SPATIALIST; Spatial Data Infrastructures and Public Sector Innovation" funded by Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders. The strategic and generic character of this project is situa...

In april en mei 2008 is in het kader van het SPATIALIST-onderzoeksproject een (on-line) vragenlijst verstuurd aan 509 publieke organisaties die mogelijk geodata produceren, gebruiken en/of uitwisselen in Vlaanderen (40 federaal, 109 Vlaams, 10 provinciaal, 308 gemeentelijk en 42 inter-communaal). Via deze vragenlijst is getracht een zo volledig mog...

So far, most SDI-research is descriptive in nature. In order to tackle the weaknesses of the existing SDI descriptions, this paper introduces a network approach for SDI. However, specific models and methods are needed to analyze SDI from this network perspective. This paper examines how these models and methods can be provided by (social) network a...