Issue and Goals
FAO has a wide-ranging mandate that includes activities as diverse as agricultural development policy and planning, food security, forestry, fisheries and rural poverty alleviation. These as well as other undertakings in the area of sustainable development make use of Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies that support spatial data collection, analysis, and decision making. Spatial data (also referred to as geographic information, geospatial data and geo-information) is defined as data about the location, shape of and relationships among, geographic features. Most of the data collected, analyzed and used by FAO and other UN agencies (e.g. satellite imagery, census, social and economic statistics, reports about the environmental state of a country or region) is linked to a location and will, in many circumstances, benefit from being presented in a map context. Indeed, identifying the spatial component of phenomena such as food insecurity and rural poverty is critical both in designing and implementing short-term interventions and long-term aid strategies.
The Strategic Framework for FAO 2000-2015 explicitly recognizes the relevance of the spatial components of the information collected by FAO to its core mission. In fact, the Organization established two Priority Areas for Interdisciplinary Action (PAIA) to address these matters. The PAIA on «Spatial Information Management and Decision Support Tools» is concerned with standardizing and facilitating access to spatial information coming from a variety of sources and the PAIA on «Definition, Norms Methodologies and Quality of Information» deals with consistency and quality of basic data.
Awareness of the significance of geographic information has grown as a result of a variety of international debates on environment and development such as the United Nations conferences of Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg in 1992 and 2002 respectively as well as other national and regional fora. In parallel, the technical capacity to acquire, process, analyze, display and manage massive amounts of spatial data has increased exponentially over the last twenty years. For instance, during the last decade, technological advancements in remote sensing capacities from a variety of environmental and earth resources satellites as well as GIS and global positioning system (GPS) software have contributed to the creation of many digital spatial databases, map archives and geospatial data clearinghouses. However, the dramatic expansion of this wealth of geographic information has hardly been matched by the ability for the user to access the spatial data themselves. This shortcoming is crucial given the fact that the value of information is measured largely by the ability of potential users to find and use it. Thus, a challenge for FAO, as well as for the whole development community, is to make spatial information more accessible to technicians, decision-makers and scholars who manage and study various aspects of sustainable development.
In order to meet this challenge, FAO, through its Environment and Natural Resources Service (SDRN), has since late 2001 concentrated efforts on improving dynamic and standardized access to its geospatial data holdings, as well as to those generated by and located at a variety of organizations and institutions worldwide with complementary mandates.
This effort has materialized in the establishment of GeoNetwork, a spatial information management infrastructure whose manifold objective is to provide the means to identify, access, search, retrieve and combine geo-information, such as spatial datasets, thematic maps and satellite imagery, from a variety of sources by browsing through the servers connected to the network.
GeoNetwork combines the following four complementary and integrated functionalities:
Ongoing GeoNetwork Developments
Over the last two years, GeoNetwork has proven to be a valuable information management asset toward the implementation of FAO's mandate. The challenges that remain to be addressed are, in part, an anticipated outcome of the evolution of GIS technology and emerge from the intrinsic dynamic developments of standardization initiatives. The international standards and protocols that ensure interoperability are being constantly revised by ISO and OGC. Additionally, the volume of environmental and earth resources spatial imagery, generated by remote sensing and GIS/GPS systems continues to grow very rapidly, with consequent pressures on information systems to manage increasingly larger volumes of data and metadata. Therefore, the GeoNetwork architecture - technologies, specifications and procedures - must be regularly upgraded.
The GeoNetwork capacity is being successfully applied to, among others, key FAO programmes for monitoring the global food supply and demand situation, and forecast and mitigate imminent food crises as undertaken by the FAO Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) on Food and Agriculture. In particular, the GIEWS task of identifying vulnerable populations at risk of severe undernourishment and famine can benefit from the GeoNetwork potential for spatial data and information access. Currently, GIEWS employs a Workstation equipped with spatial data analysis, map-overlay functions and an automated indicator tracking tool. The GIEWS workstation is at present being integrated with GeoNetwork, resulting in an enhanced capacity for accessing and analysis of food security information at global, regional, national and sub-national levels.
Other opportunities to fully realize the potential of GeoNetwork will materialize with the integration of the FAO Advanced Real Time Environmental Monitoring Information System (ARTEMIS) database in the system. Incorporating the ARTEMIS database, a repository of spatial climatological, satellite-derived environmental and agrometeorological data that is updated every ten days, into GeoNetwork will significantly expand the reservoir of information needed for the effective support of early warning programmes for food security and pest control.
The database of the Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS) can also be searched by means of the GeoNetwork metadata catalogue and FIVIMS contributed to the development and implementation of the GeoNetwork distributed search capacity.
Furthermore, additional developments are taking place as GeoNetwork is being identified as the central information management tool for new programmes within FAO Headquarters, such as the EC-FAO Food Security Phase II Programme, «Information for Action», due to start in July 2004.
A major thrust of GeoNetwork activity is to increase the opportunities to share geographic information with UN agencies and research institutes active in the fields of agriculture, environment assessment and natural resource management, food security and emergency operations. FAO is an active and leading partner in various activities of the UN Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG) and is establishing partnerships with various institutions working in development and international agricultural research. Recently, FAO initiated a joint development plan with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that will consolidate and further expand the GeoNetwork capacity and performance by making its architecture more flexible and therefore able to manage a broader spectrum of both metadata and spatial data holdings. Similar partnering discussions are ongoing between GeoNetwork and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University in New York.
The successful technical implementation of GeoNetwork needs to be accompanied by an outreach endeavour. Presently, in order to smooth the diffusion of GeoNetwork and support at the same time a network of users able to install and use GeoNetwork proficiently and autonomously, FAO-SDRN is creating support documents, comprising a GeoNetwork installation manual for technicians, a metadata user manual for analysts and a GeoNetwork compendium for decision makers.
The figures below provide an overview of the GeoNetwork website and the installation procedure which will be further elaborated in an installation manual.
* Environment and Natural Resources Service (SDRN). Status Report. FAO Spatial Information Infrastructure: GeoNetwork. Rome, Italy (19 March, 2004). Environment and Natural Resources Service (SDRN). Complete version of the Report can be found at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/unfao/bodies/coaim/pdf/geonetwork.pdf
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