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GLOBAL AND REGIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DATA PROJECTS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

M. Konechny

Abstract

World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002 in Johannesburg formulated approaches to ensure geographi\'\ical information support of the tasks formulated in Action Plan of WSSD. Author of the paper understands sustainable development as a set of equel and necessary aspects: ecological, economical, technological, social, cultural and ethical. The paper is giving overview of existing global and regional (especially Europen) initiatives and projects which all together should be part of sustainable development efforts. He describes and analyzes projects: Global Mapping, Global Spatial Data Infrastructure, Digital Earth, Geographic Infrastructure for Sustainable Development, activities of FAO (LCC and SDI), and both U.N. Global Navigation and Satellite Systems, and Early Warning II projects. From European projects the GMES and legislative initiative INSPIRE (Information for Spatial Data in Europe) are described and analyzed. In the paper there is also paid attention of the role of contemporary cartography in connection to Spatial Data Infratsructure efforts. SDI is mainly about access to available data and information under certain legal rules, but the role of cartography is (between other things) mainly to visualize data and information for needs of different users. Cartographical methods allow also to realize requests of cognitive cartography and remarkably individualize cartographical products.

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