SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW

The definition of assessment strategies is challenging due to several characteristics
and attributes distinctive of GI products, services and infrastructures. Several chief
studies come from the Unites States. The Geospatial Information and Technology Association’s
suggest a formal methodology for the preparation of business cases for
shared data and services for GI technologies within and across multiple agencies
(Samborski, 2007). The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a cost-benefit
analysis of the National Map (Halsing et al., 2004) and the National Aeronautic and
Spatial Administration (NASA) used cost-benefit methodologies to quantify the value of
geospatial interoperability standards, as well as to determine when and for whom the
benefits increase (Booz, 2005).
However, most of the studies focusing on cost-benefit analysis are performed before a
purchase or a project to determine whether the expense is justifiable on organisational
and financial grounds (Didier, 1990; Rodriguez, 2005) and a negative benefit cost ratio
for GI has never been reported (Longhorn and Blakemore, 2008). Analyses of this type
are usually focused on set-up costs and short-term efficiency benefits, which are relatively
easy to assess compared to longer-term social, political and economic benefits
(Craglia and Nowak, 2006). Indeed, since adopting GI technologies can have transformative
effects on organisations, tangible benefits can take several years to materialise
(Samborski, 2007).
Determining the value of investments in SDIs and in the wider GI sector has a further
peculiarity: some benefits are intangible and could include customer and citizen goodwill,
decision making quality, employee morale, quality of life, and environmental
health, among others (Didier, 1990; ACIL Tasman, 2008). These intangible benefits are
not easily estimated. Although they do not affect the monetary analysis, they can be
equally or even more important than the tangible benefits (Genovese et al., 2008).
Therefore, when quantifying the effectiveness of GI solutions, it is significant to consider
both the affect these technologies have on society, as well as society’s influence
on the development of these technologies (Goodchild, 1995; Tulloch et al., 1998;
Roche and Caron, 2004; Chrisman, 2005).
3. VALUE CHAIN CONCEPT
3.1. The value of GI
There are several ways to define value, some are monetarily quantifiable while others
are not, but most depend upon the reason for which GI was initially collected or required.
The commercial value of data or services, also known as exchange value, is
just one of them. In fact, different kinds of value can be assigned to the same information
depending on whether it is used by or for different people, at different moments, in
different formats, or used for purposes different from the one for which it was originally
collected (Longhorn and Blakemore, 2008).
As a result, information has several types of value and therefore different measures will
not apply equally to all information in all conditions. In the private sector, the monetary
value of a GI product must be adequate enough to recover the costs of data collection,
processing, dissemination, and management with a suitable return on investments; if
not, the product will not survive on the market (Krek, 2004).
Understanding the value of a good is essential to defining the issue of pricing in both
the public and private sectors because the price of a good is intimately tied to the potential
buyer’s perception of the value. In order to set a price for GI, the producers are
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