[Geodata] What is the value of free data?

[Rafal Wawer]

Interesting question indeed, Pat.

Well, the old Roman wisdom says, that the item is worth as much as customer wants to pay for it. (-;
So I think your first suggestion is close to the objective. (-:

For raster it could apply easily, however for vector... these maybe difficult to use, as even the same themes of the same geometric quality (scale) have sometimes extended attributes, which acquisition in the real world is maybe expensive - in this case I would add total cost of the generation of additional information. A good example would be cadaster parcels. The geometry itself is usually accompanied with plot number, but when it comes with additional attributes of owner and 4eg. commercial value -  well, that's completely different story, because you have to finanse the valuation of the parcels and building/connection of the owner database. Other examlpe could be soil or other environmental  maps - where number of physical or chemical attributes may grow into huge databases. So cost of the geometry itself may be one thing and the cost of the attributes - other.

Best regards:
Raf

Dr. Rafal Wawer
K.U.Leuven
R&D Division SADL (Spatial Application Division)
Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2224
BE-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
Belgium
tel. 0032 16 329731





-----Original Message-----
From: geodata-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:geodata-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Pat Cappelaere
Sent: 11 September 2009 16:57
To: geodata at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [Geodata] What is the value of free data?

It is great to make geodata free.  However, we could get more of it if we could quantify the value of that data.
We need to justify the business case.

Interestingly, for opensource software projects, you can compute the potential cost of developing that software.
This is an approximation of the value of that code [but not the value that is enabled by the code] So I am looking for a similar and still imperfect metric.

Any suggestion?

Cost of similar commercial imagery?
Economic value of imaged area?
Potential damage assessment (disaster)?
Scientific value of imagery?

How do we estimate this?

Thanks,
Pat.
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