Geoinformation infrastructure (GII)

Geoinformation is collected, archived, and utilized in a geographically dispersed fashion. Heterogeneous problems are prevalent in different data, information, processing, algorithm, models, and applications. Geoinformation, however, once collected can be shared in many different applications and at different geographic scopes. An information infrastructure, therefore, is needed to provide interoperating platforms for discovery and access and to share the Geoinformation collected. This chapter provides an overview of the origin and different aspects of information infrastructure needed for Geoinformation sharing, and the U.S. NSDI is used as an example.