Designing the national spatial data infrastructure for Jordan

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Date
2018-08-01
Authors
Ibrahem A. M. Gharaibeh
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Developments in spatial data collection and usage play a pivotal role in developmental activities that perform Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). SDI consist of the technologies, standards, policies (i.e. institutional frameworks), human resources (i.e. people) and organizational procedures to obtain store, process, distribute, and enhance the utilization of geospatial information. Knowing the SDI development status of other countries is essential to intensify the development and liability of spatial data information. In Jordan, there are many agencies, both public and private, that are concerned with spatial data production, use and sharing to meet the needs of the geo-information community. Jordan has no organizational framework, and there is an institutional void in leadership responsibility with regard to GIS. Most organizations prefer to create an independent national GIS committee and provide the committee authority, accountability, and legal mandate to manage all GIS works throughout the country. However, there are several challenges that NSDI might face in Jordan, such as interoperability issues, lack of funding, documentation of data, development of policies on data sharing, and national strategy. Since NSDIs are not identical worldwide (Cetl, Roić, et al., 2009), therefore it is important for Jordan to develops its own national strategy. On the other hand, there are many advantages like barring the duplication of spatial data, eliminating the redundancy of spatial data, raising the collaboration among organizations and different departments, improving the economic development at different levels. In creating the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) strategy, the first step is the awareness on the fact that most environments have various kinds of users who require different levels of functionality and access to spatial data. The second step is focus on the cooperation and coordination that play significant roles in each organization. No organization is able to improve or establish NSDI by itself unless it cooperates between various institutions, governmental organizations, public and private sectors that will lead to successful establishment of NSDI system. Jordan uses two coordinate systems namely the Palestine 1923 Datum, Cassini-Soldner projection (CASS), and the recent “Jordan Transverse Mercator” (JTM). The JTM Projection System is based on the “International Hayford 1927” Datum. The Department of Land and Survey (DLS) is responsible for managing the cadastral maps of Jordan. Maps in the Cassini-Soldner projection cover 17% of Jordan and maps in the JTM projection cover the rest of the country. Part of the study compares CASS with JTM projection system in Jordan in the effort to adopt suitable reference frame that supports the development of SDI in Jordan. In the affine adjustment process that transformed CASS projection to JTM in ArcGIS software, the result produces an accuracy of approximately 10cm. The result inspires the potentiality to transfer of all maps from CASS to JTM. Likewise, the study has shown that the discrepancies between organizations can be eliminated using the JTM projection as the standard reference system in Jordan.
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