Opening of the Geospatial World Forum

Toespraak | 24-04-2012

Your excellenties, honourable guests,

I am proud that the Geospatial World Forum is being held in the Netherlands this year.

And that one of the organisers of this premium event is Kadaster, the Dutch Land Registry and Mapping Agency.
The agency that has been at ‘the heart of real estate and geographic information’ for hundred-and-eighty years.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The last World Forum took place in India in 2011 and was an success.

If you were there, you will remember the inspiring words of the Indian minister responsible for geo-information, Kapil Sibal: ‘GIS is the power of today and the future. And therefore there is a need to take active steps to advance geospatial technologies in a bigger way. The opportunities are tremendous. […] It’s time for the geospatial revolution.’

I could not agree more.

But we must first overcome a number of serious challenges.

Challenges that we all face together.

And that is where this Forum comes in.
By sharing know-how and experiences with other parties from around the world.
We need to work together on standardisation and harmonising and sharing data; that’s how  we can make the geospatial revolution happen.

This year, you have set up camp in the Netherlands.

Those of you who flew here may have looked down at the view in wonder: this well-tended country with its towns, business parks and farmland squeezed in between rivers and highways.

From above, it looks pretty cluttered. But don’t be deceived.

Spatial planning in the Netherlands is all about precision.

It has to be, considering our limited space and large population.

We need to plan land-use as cleverly as we can.

Where should we build new homes? Or new wind farms?

How can we keep our country accessible and competitive, by road and by water?

How can we protect the Netherlands from the effects of climate change?

How can we keep our country liveable and attractive?

These are all complex issues that demand our attention now and in the coming years.

They call for vision and informed decisions.

This brings me to the crucial role of geo-information.

In the Netherlands, with our high-density land-use, we have great need of detailed information.

Every square metre of land ‘must’ be used well.

We want to know the exact lie of the land in order to make the right decisions.

That is why aerial photographs with a ten-centimetre resolution are taken of the entire country every year.

And why the Dutch master map is so precise that the location of every house on the map is no more than twenty centimetre off.

Of course, it helps that we are only a small country – we only need to map an area some 200 kilometres wide and 300 kilometres long.

There is no comparison with the job that other, much larger countries have to face.

Big or small, geo-information is an important tool for us all.
Geo-information helps us to understand issues of a complex nature.
Decisions can be made more quickly and more effectively.
And are more widely supported by government and the public alike.

In short, sometimes a single image says more than a thousand words.

Through navigation systems and websites like Google Maps, digital information has become part of our daily lives.

Little wonder that the public expects government to use – and share – geo-information.

But the benefits of geo-information do not come automatically.

I would like to tell you about developments in geo-information in the Netherlands.

I am sure that your country’s experiences will also be discussed at this Forum, so that we can learn from each other.

In recent years, the Netherlands has invested heavily in improving and providing access to geo-information.

But we did succeed in launching a number of initiatives with broad public support.

So we can boast a number of major achievements in the last few years, especially in terms of standardisation and data access.

We for example worked on standardising information on addresses, buildings and topography.

We also created a central website that gives public bodies, members of the public and businesses access to all new spatial plans in the Netherlands.

And we contributed to European geo-information initiatives and are working on the INSPIRE Directive.

In Noordwijk, not far from here, is the European Space Agency ESTEC.

This institute plays a key role in two EU flagship programmes on global satellite navigation called Galileo and the earth observation programme GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security).

Ahead of GMES, the Netherlands Space Office last month opened the National Satellite Databank, providing easy access to existing satellite data.

As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, the Netherlands has not been idle these last few years.

And we will continue this ground-breaking work in the years to come.

The next step is about using geo-information to our benefit.

Open data is important for that matter.

The Dutch government aims for all public information to be freely accessible in 2015, except where there are very strong reasons not to do so.

Open data feeds innovation and lowers the threshold for investment in innovative products and services.

Open data does away with costly data transactions, reducing the administrative burden for both government and the public sector.

Earlier this year, for instance, I released the National Topography Database.

Instead of costing fifty thousand euro’s, the database can now be used freely and free of charge.

The initial experiences with the free database are promising.

There used to be two or three applications a day. When the database was released, this increased to nearly forty applications a day. By now its use has tripled.

As you can see, open data is an important concept for research institutes too.

And, importantly, it provides greater transparency about what the government does.
Of course, safeguards must be in place to protect privacy and national security.

The Dutch government also sees open data as a way of boosting information re-use.

Innovation and openness are two sides of the same coin.

Developing new products and services is a lot easier in an open environment where as much information as possible is freely accessible.

Public bodies have a wealth of information.

Citizens and businesses can re-use this data and develop new services, such as apps.

Well-known apps include Weather and Car Spotter.

The motto of the city of Amsterdam is ‘we do the data, you do the apps’.

And that is how it should be.

Over the next few years, I will continue to work on creating access to public data.

I see enormous potential in geo-information applications.
By opening up public data I hope to boost developments in this sector.

I call on you, geo-professionals, to take up the challenge and put open data to use.

So that we can look forward to a wide range of professional applications for all sorts of target groups, all based on freely accessible public data.

And get maximum benefit from an open and innovative geo-information infrastructure.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am proud of the results that we have achieved so far – in both the public and private sector.

And I look forward eagerly to new applications and new challenges.

Improved access to geo-information and greater user-friendliness will create opportunities. Opportunities for better, more efficient government policy on, for example, spatial integration of infrastructure, town planning and flood safety.

Or for better service provision to citizens and businesses.

Improved access to geo-information will also create opportunities for research institutes and businesses to develop new applications.

And for developing the export potential of the Dutch geo-information sector.

Government support and public information will boost the private sector’s capacity, resulting in geo-export products that can be used worldwide to resolve key issues in the area of water, safety and spatial planning.

An important precondition for a prospering sector is closer cooperation within the ‘golden triangle’ formed by government, science and the private sector.

A good example is the ICT Innovation Platform for geo-information (IIPGeo).

In closing, I would like to share with you this quote: ‘Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organised, processed and available to the right people in a format for decision-making, it is a burden, not a benefit.’

It is our job to expand the benefits of geo-information in the years to come.

Thank you.