- Spatial Information Management, an Effective Tool to Support Sustainable Urban Development   456 kb by    Mueller, Hartmut | mueller@geoinform.fh-mainz.de    Short Outline Spatial Data Infrastructures to manage, access and use information across cities are evolving. Cities are at different implementation stages. Tools include data collection&maintenance, integration&access, analysis, citizen centric urban sensing. Abstract Urbanisation is a major change that is taking place globally. Rapid growth of cities may cause severe ecological, economical and social problems. Administrations in large cities are often confronted with a multitude of key problems, like high urban densities, transport, traffic congestion, energy inadequacy, unplanned development and lack of basic services, illegal construction both within the city and in the periphery, informal real estate markets, creation of slums, poor natural hazards management in overpopulated areas, crime, water, soil and air pollution leading to environmental degradation, climate change and poor governance arrangements. The inevitability of further population growth is a common issue. Monitoring population change effectively and being able to respond through planning and infrastructure development will be major challenges. Spatial information has become indispensable for numerous aspects of urban development, planning and management. The increasing importance of spatial information has been due to recent strides in spatial information capture, management and access. The visionary concept of using a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) to more efficiently manage, access and use spatial information across cities is evolving and large cities are at different stages of their implementation. New tools, techniques and policies are required to baseline and integrate the social, economic and environmental factors associated with large cities. These spatial information tools include data collection and maintenance, data integration and access, data analysis, 3-D city modelling, citizen centric urban sensing The advances in developing city SDIs will only occur when senior management within large cities understand the benefits, through robust business cases based on evidence derived from experience, and the SDI implementation is guided by a supportive city information strategy. This support is difficult to achieve in the complex and multi-layer governance structures that exist around such cities. The more that spatial information is used and exposed to the citizen there is a danger that they will be concerned over privacy issues and start to mistrust its use. It is therefore essential that both legal and policy frameworks are established to guide this use of spatial information. Keywords worldwide survey Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2010: Sustainable City - Developing World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper