Assessing Geographic Information Enhancement

Assessment of geographic information infrastructures (or spatial data infrastructures) is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers in the Geographic information (GI) domain. Especially the assessment of value added GI appears to be complex. By applying the concept of value chain analysis to GI, this paper provides a research framework for unambiguously assessing GI value adding. The paper details the enhancing process that must be employed to turn raw geographic information into new services and products regardless of the organisation performing the enhancement. Not only the differences in technical characteristics of data sets are identified, also the roles in a value chain of government organisations and commercial organisations were explored. The framework is applied to two types of GI in the United States and Europe. The presented research shows that the framework allows for true comparison of GI enhancement in different jurisdictions. This should result in better understanding of the level of GI enhancement in a specific jurisdiction and accordingly in effective decisions stimulating GI enhancement, geographic information infrastructures and information societies.Built EnvironmentOTB Research Institute for the Built Environmen