Fair and standard access to spatial data as the means for achieving sustainable development goals

Abstract

FAIR, which stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, are the main principles adopted for sharing scientific data across communities. Implementing FAIR principles in publishing increases the value of digital resources, and the reuse of these by humans as well as machines. Introducing FAIR practices to the geospatial domain is especially relevant for the foundation geospatial data, such as precise positioning data. Within the next five years, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), with corrections from internet or satellite communications, will permit national coverage of positioning services with real-time accuracy of several centimetres or better. However, implementing FAIR principles is not yet common practice in the geospatial domain. There are dozens of standards available for defining and sharing geospatial data. These include the ISO 19100 series of standards, OGC specifications and several community profiles and best practice. However, in most cases these standards fall short in ensuring the FAIR distribution of geospatial resources. As our preliminary findings show, current geodetic metadata and data are not yet fully FAIR and data discovery and access is still very challenging. In this paper we discuss the concept of FAIR and its meaning for geodetic data, explore the needs of precise positioning users and their requirement for metadata and present preliminary results on the FAIRness of current geodetic standards.