[OSGeo-Edu] TIGER and status on my FOSS GIS course materials

[P Kishor]

Charlie,

Frank is absolutely correct. US is an anomaly of sorts. I just
returned from the GSDI 9 conf. and representatives from most other
countries were painting a more traditional picture -- govt. agency
takes care of you, produces all the data from scratch to finish, it
costs a lot of money to do so, so it charges for it. In other words,
the govt. ends up acting like a monopoly, which is in complete
contrast to the US model where the very basic level of data are
created by the govt., given away for free, and then the market takes
it and adds more value to it and charges for it.

It will take a lot of work to convert this way of thinking, and I
started addressing that in my presentation that I made there by
introducing this concept of "spatial data commons" instead of "spatial
data infrastructure." (see
<http://punkish.eidesis.org/?t=WhatCanSDILearnFromOpenSource>). But
this is a whole new mindset and will take a lot of work to change.

On the question of standards, you might want to follow the INSPIRE
initiative. <http://www.ec-gis.org/inspire/> and
<http://eu-geoportal.jrc.it/>



On 12/8/06, Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com> wrote:
> Charlie Schweik wrote:
> > Ari (and others),
> >
> > Thanks for posting that Tiger conversion information.
> >
> > One broader question. I assume TIGER is really a US dataset. Are there
> > similar types of census data in various countries in Europe? Are there
> > any standards emerging on census data?
>
> Charlie,
>
> My take is that the US is somewhat unusual in having the census department
> produce a comprehensive set of national road maps with addresses.  I think
> this usually falls to the national mapping agency and it is seldom published
> for free.
>
> Best regards,
> --
> ---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
> I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
> and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org
>
>
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-- 
Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/
Nelson Inst. for Env. Studies, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
Open Source Geospatial Foundation https://edu.osgeo.org/
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