SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW

6. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
The next step of the project EcoGeo will be to define a value chain specific enough for
the Quebec GI sector, encompassing an extensive range of issues including production,
maintenance, distribution, and consumption of GI. The new focus is on developing
and improving the Socioscope functions in order to reach the goal of implementing the
value chain inside the prototype. In particular, the specific components necessary to
fitting the value chain concept requirements need to be added.
A number of variables, which have been for the most part identified in literature (Krek
2003; Longhorn and Blakemore, 2008), will be inserted inside the chain. These attributes
are connected to the way that GI is produced and used (value of the location attribute,
time dependency, quality and others more), to the costs of the GI product (as
the transaction costs), and to the price definition.
In section 3 we said that value is gradually created along the chain, so pricing in a
value chain helps to determine how the value created for the final user is distributed
among the contributors. It is fundamental to know the stakeholders involved in the
value process (data producer and data owner, final users or the entire society) and
understand their roles in defining the value of GI, and Socioscope helps us in this task.
Value is generated both for producers and customers of GI, thus it is essential to establish
a common agreement on the value of GI products to assess the price and exchange
value (Krek and Frank, 2000). The economic value of GI derives from its use in
a decision making process and is measured by the improvement of the process.
The prototype differentiates the economic reality of the GI market
for public and private
sectors.
This distinction is of primary importance, considering the
differences in percep-
tion of the value chain by public sector GI owners (government agencies) who collect
and use the GI for purposes relating to governments of society, involving a quantity of
socio-economical uses and objectives for which the value is more difficult to evaluate
(Didier, 1990; Craglia and Nowak, 2006; Longhorn and Blakemore, 2008; ACIL Tasman,
2008; Genovese et al., 2008). Therefore, while calculating value in the private
sector
means considering only the monetary/exchange value, the socio-economic one
must also be considered when defining value in the public sector.
With the definition of a value chain for the Quebec GI sector, with modalities that are
defined by EcoGeo II, it will be possible to follow, with some approximation, the generation
of added value on a specific network of GI flows, starting from the original producer
and ending with the final consumer. However, just the professional users (the data
owners and vendors) are considered in this first phase of Socioscope. The users attributable
to the democratisation process (final consumers or the society as whole) will be
subsequently
considered and their contribution in the value
chain added in a further
phase.
A formal economic analysis of the value of GI still does not exist in the literature (see
Longhorn
and Blakemore, 2008; Genovese
et al., 2008). This is because of the ex-
treme
complexity of the GI sector and the number of variables connected to GI production
and dissemination. The final goal of the EcoGeo project is the definition of a model
of economical evaluation to be applied on a chosen subsector of the GI market in Quebec,
determining the value added for the activities selected on the local value chain.
The ability to assess economically the GI value will provide key support in strategic
decisions and business efficiency, helping private companies to obtain a positive return
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