[Geodata] What is the value of free data?

[Mark, Jonathan]

I don't know what the value of free data is, but at some point in the
next while, the City of Vancouver will be soft launching a website from
which GIS and other data will be freely available without restrictions
on use.  I would expect comments to come back about what types of
additional data people would like and have value to them and what they
might do with it if we publish it. The data and formats on our site will
grow over time.

Jonathan


Jonathan Mark, GIS Manager
IT Department
Financial Services Group
City of Vancouver
604-873-7987 phone
604-873-7875 fax
vancouver.ca/vanmap



-----Original Message-----
From: geodata-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:geodata-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Wawer
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 8:54 AM
To: Pat Cappelaere; geodata at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: RE: [Geodata] What is the value of free data?

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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