Pierre Gautreau

Spatial Data Sharing: A Pilot Study of French SDIs

Since the appearance of Spatial Data Infrastructure several years ago, there has been a tremendous increase in spatial data available on the Internet. This situation raises several research issues, in terms of identifying the content actually accessible via this medium and its impact on governance and local authority management. Our study proposes a mixed methodology applied to 45 French institutional infrastructures, to compare the objectives stated by their promoters, their content, and the actual services provided. The methodology, based on an analysis of interviews with Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) coordinators and their answers to questionnaires, as well as a study of their websites and an exploration of over 160,000 metadata in their metadata catalogues, produced varied results concerning data accessibility, stakeholder networks, the interoperability of tools, and informational equality in different regions. Despite the proactive stance of SDI promoters, only 15.7% of data are open-access. Their interoperability remains restricted to specific types of actors and themes. Although geocollaboration organised by SDIs is very active, it only concerns the public sector. These disparities also concern their informational dimension, as some regions have considerable resources at their disposal, but others do not.

Le libre accès rebat-il les cartes ?

Cet article vise a presenter les multiples interactions entre OpenStreetMap et une collectivite territoriale qui publie ses donnees publiques. Etant a la fois une base de donnees geographique libre et une communaute, OpenStreetMap permet a une collectivite de creer et d’animer un ecosysteme d’acteurs, necessaire a la reutilisation des donnees publiques. De plus, de nouvelles synergies peuvent apparaitre entre ces deux entites en termes de controle qualite des donnees mises en ligne et d’enrichissement des pratiques cartographiques des services de la ville. Ces differents apports de la cartographie libre lors d’une initiative Open Data seront illustres par l’etude de la cellule Donnees publiques ouvertes de la ville de Montpellier.