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| | Guide to The Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure |
 | | The word infrastructure is used to promote the concept of a reliable, supporting environment, analogous to a road or telecommunications network, that, in this case, facilitates the access to geographically-related information using a minimum set of standard practices, protocols, and specifications. |
 | | A spatial data infrastructure must be more than a single dataset or database; it includes geographic data and attributes, sufficient documentation (metadata), a means to discover, visualize, and evaluate the data (catalogues and web mapping), and some method to provide access to the geographic data. |
 | | The creation of specific organizations or programs for developing or overseeing the development of spatial data infrastructures, particularly by governments at various scales, can be seen as the logical extension of the long practice of coordinating the building of other infrastructures necessary for ongoing development, such as transportation or telecommunication networks (http://www.gsdi.org/pubs/cookbook/chapter01.html). |
| cgdi.gc.ca /publications/Technical_Manual/html_e/s1_ch4.html (1857 words) |
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