The concept of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) was first defined, for the United States, by the Mapping Science Committee of the National Research Council (1993). In April 1994, Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order (nr. 12906, April 11, 1994) for the establishment of the NSDI, forcing the cooperation among federal and local agencies in collecting, spreading, and using geographic information.
In 1996, the GSDI was created to promote global access to geographic information. Also in 1996, the Australian and New Zealand Information Council (ANZLIC) (http://inspire.jrc.it), an initiative to create a European directive to guide national and regional SDI development. The directive entered into force on May 15th, 2007 (European Parliament and The European Council, 2007).
Nowadays, the GSDI Web site lists several dozens of SDI initiatives, local, regional, and national. Generally speaking, most of these initiatives have common views and objectives for SDI, as first defined by the USA NSDI, though of course they are adapted to the different realities (economical, political) of the geographic areas for what they have been established.
Georeference: Information that relates data to a position on the Earth’s surface, typically by means of coordinates.
Gazetteer: A geographical dictionary that associates georeferences to place names.
GIS: A system for capturing, storing, analyzing, managing, and viewing data spatially referenced to the Earth.
Spatial Data Infrastructure: The relevant base collection of technologies, policies, and institutional arrangements that facilitate the availability of and access to spatial data.
Spatial Data: Data related to positions on the Earth’s surface.
Geolibrary: A library containing georeferenced objects and with a search mechanism based on geographic location as the primary search key.