Development of project-oriented spatial data infrastructure using cloud technologies

The article includes the issues of design, development and introduction of project-oriented spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) that build the information space to solve pressing challenges in economy, ecology, social services, in the field of preparation of pre-investment, urban planning, pre-project, project documentation, and natural disaster forecasting.It also provides an overview of a historical development of spatial data infrastructures in Russia and in the world. Based on an analysis of a historical landscape within the challenging area, authors have identified the following system components of SDIs: users and professionals, data, technologies, standards, regulatory frameworks, and institutional procedures. There is a proposed platform solution architecture to build SDI, summarized in a form of a structure-component scheme. It rests upon the hypothesis that in order to optimize spatial data storage and application-related processes, the project-oriented SDI needs to include loosely bound and closely bound subsystems for spatial data storage (cloud or local storages), analysis and synthesis modules, as well as modules for visualization and distribution of spatial data (as geoportal systems)