NAME OF NATION: PORTUGAL

  1. Name of respondent Supplying Information: Cristina Gouveia

    2. Title: Staff member

    Mailing Address: CNIG, Tagus Park, Núcleo Central, Sala 301.

    P. 2780 – 920 PORTO SALVO – OEIRAS - PORTUGAL

    E-Mail Address: cgouveia@cnig.pt

    Telephone Number: (351) (1) 421-9800

    Fax Number: (351) (1) 421 – 9856

     

  2. Does your nation have an active or proposed initiative for developing a national spatial data infrastructure (or its equivalent)?

    3.  

    YES

    The Portuguese NSDI, which is named named Sistema Nacional de Informação Geográfica (SNIG), has been established by a Decree-law in 1990, and it has been fully operationally and available on the Internet since May of 1995. The Portuguese NSDI includes, since then, metadata catalogues that describe the geographical data sets available in digital format as well as other services that intend to facilitate data access.

     

    **** POLICY ISSUES ****

     

  3. LEADERSHIP

Agency/Organization Name: Centro Nacional de Informação Geográfica

Mailing Address: CNIG, Tagus Park, Núcleo Central, Sala 301.

P. 2780 – 920 PORTO SALVO – OEIRAS – PORTUGAL.

E-mail Address: cnig@cnig.pt

Telephone Number: (351) (1) 421 – 9800

Fax Number: (351) (1) 421 – 9856

Name of Agency Head or Primary Contact Person: Rui Gonçalves Henriques

 

5. AVAILABILITY

 

The spatial digital data being made available through the Portuguese’s NSDI cover all types  of data that can be associated to a location, in different forms: topographic cartography, hydrographic cartography, soils cartography, geological cartography, forestry cartography, land cover cartography, urban planning cartography, environmental cartography, digital aerial photography and digital satellite imagery, geo-referenced data bases on air quality, water resources, hydrology and climatology, demography and housing, employment, electoral results, cultural patrimony, among many others.

 

6. MECHANICS OF ACCESS

 

Being the Portuguese NSDI a full distributed system of geographic data bases, the access to the data can be made directly to each of the data providers or though the NSDI clearinghouse (or its regional nodes). The clearinghouse is a distributed electronic network, that is running on the Internet, through which a number of services can be used free of charge. Among these services are the catalogues on the available data, the links to the different data providers, and many others. Regarding the organizational aspect, the NSDI has been enforced by a Decree-Law of the Portuguese Government, being CNIG created at the same time for the task of implementing and managing the NSDI. To become a formal member of the network (a node), each information provider has to sign an agreement with CNIG. That enables CNIG to give support for the task of making the data available on the Internet and to provide free of charge software developed by CNIG for the NSDI.

 

  1. LEGAL AND ECONOMIC FRAMEWORKS FOR ACCESS

    2.  

    Being a distributed network, the policy for accessing to the data varies among the data providers. Some of these make their data available in the public domain, others impose several restrictions to the access and use of the data.

     

  2. DATA COLLECTION AND COORDENATION

    3.  

    Data collection for the NSDI is the responsibility of the organizations in charge of the data production. No change in the legal mandate of the several institutions regarding data production was made in result of the creation of the NSDI. For the cartographic production, there is a Coordinating Committee that was established before the creation of the NSDI and started its operation during the times of the analog cartography.

     

    CNIG, the NSDI coordinator body, is not a data producer. This fact facilitates the involvement of the GI producers within the NSDI and allows CNIG to focus on is its main mission the development of the NGII.

     

    As far as the data needed for the NSDI services (metadata on the available geographic information), the trend will be to have each data producer generating its metadata each time a new set is created, according to a standard that will be managed and coordinated by CNIG. For the time being, this is not yet operational, meaning that the catalogue of the available digital geographic data is coordinated and organized by CNIG, with the collaboration of the data providers.

     

  3. PRICING

    4.  

    The NSDI has no mandate on the pricing policies followed by each data provider. As stated before, there are data providers who make available their data in the public domain, others that license the use of their data through payments, among many other situations.

     

  4. COMMERCIAL INVOLVEMENT

    5.  

    Private firms are involved in helping to build the NSDI only in an indirect way, as they are very often involved in producing data for the public data providers (the ownership of the data, in such situations, remains within the government bodies and not on the private firms). The NSDI provides a catalogue of private firms that operate within the GI sector.

     

  5. PUBLIC DOMAIN DATA SETS

    6.  

    The NSDI site describe the data sets that are available for free and the ones that are not. (http://www.snig.cnig.pt). Among the first type of data sets, special mention should be given to GEOCID (http://geocid-snig.cnig.pt), the citizen portal to the NSDI where most of the free of charge geographic data sets were organized provided that they could be of interest to the citizen.

     

  6. PUBLIC GOODS ASPECTS OF NSDI

    7.  

    Besides the services that are the core of any NSDI and besides the public domain data available through the citizen portal that was built by CNIG within the NSDI, several public services are offered by the Portuguese NSDI. Among these: GPS data for differential correction, A catalogue of GIS products and added value service providers in Portugal, GIS projects, emergency occurrences information, Earth Observation information, webmapping services (to be provided within a few weeks time).

     

  7. PRIVACY

    8.  

    The national laws provide full protection of individual citizens regarding data. Through NSDI there is no possibility to have access to protected data as this type of data is not included within the NSDI.

     

    **** OPERATIONAL ISSUES ****

     

  8. AUTHORITY

    9.  

    YES

     

    The Portuguese NSDI (named Sistema Nacional de Informação Geográfica) was created by the Decree-Law nº 53/90, from the 13th of February of 1990. The task of the NSDI implementation and management has been granted to Centro Nacional de Informação Geográfica, a new agency created by the same Decree-Law.

     

  9. FUNDING

    10.  

    YES

     

    Two types of funds have been specifically budgeted and acquired for NSDI activities. The current annual budgets from 1990 to date for CNIG operation and the investment budgets allocated to CNIG for developing the NSDI. From 1994 to 1999, the second budget (including one third of the total amount assigned to promote GIS technologies within local municipalities) has reached a total of US$ 20 million. The first one has increased annually as CNIG staff was recruited after its creation, being presently of the order US$ 1 million/year.

     

  10. INCLUSIVENESS

    11.  

    CNIG has as its main responsibility the development of the NSDI. Though it was created as a research agency from the Portuguese Public Administration, meaning that it also carries out R&D contract work, part of its staff is dedicated exclusively to the NSDI. Regarding the institutions that are data providers and are nodes of the NSDI, their participation within the NSDI changes form case to case, being most significant in some cases and very scarce in others.

     

  11. COMPONENTS

 

  1. METADATA: YES

  2. CLEARINGHOUSE: YES

  3. DATA STANDARDS: YES

  4. CORE DATA: NO

 

What most people consider core data is part of the content of the NSDI (the full digital version of the 1:25 000 topographic digital cartography). We strongly disagree with such concept, as it means different things for different users.

 

  1. RESEARCH

    2.  

    YES

     

    Since the beginning of the studies on the NSDI concept (that started by a Government initiative, in February of 1986, under the Secretary of State for Science and Technology), R&D has been a constant in every development of the NSDI. CNIG, the agency in charge of the NSDI was created already as a research agency of the Portuguese Public Administration. Projects have covered metadata, remote sensing, multimedia, virtual reality, modeling of spatial distributed phenomena with GIS (forest fires, namely) among other areas.

     

  2. LINKAGE TO GENERAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY STANDARDS

 

It has adopted the CEN TC 287 for metadata. It uses standard web technology and standard commercial web browsers.

 

20. GLOBAL SPATIAL DATA SETS

 

NO

21. GLOBAL OR REGIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE INITIATIVES

 

YES. CNIG has been deeply involved in European initiatives for a European SDI. It keeps contacts with FGDC and with Chinese SDI.

 

22. LONG TERM VISION OR STRATEGIC PLAN

 

YES. There is a strategic plan that is being updated as the technology evolves.

 

23. GRAND CHALLENGES

 

Webmapping developments are pressing the opening of new services to the citizen for exploration of geographic data. At the same time, UMTS developments requires new approaches regarding the way relevant data can be made available for mobile phone access.

 

24. FURTHER INFORMATION

 

http://snig.cnig.pt

 

Several brochures can be obtained from CNIG, which address has already being given above. There is a journal of the NSDI that is published every six months, that also can be made available.

 

Cost benefit analysis to estimate the benefits of building a SDI as such have not been made during the last years. User requirement analysis as such have not been done recently (since the last three years the priorities in development of the NSDI have been targeted to the citizen access and exploration of GI data). However, usability tests have been performed regarding the evaluation of the NSDI sites and can be made available.

 

Lisbon, August 31, 2000

 

Cristina Gouveia