Introduction

GeoHub NI is being developed as part of the Geographic Information (GI) Strategy for Northern Ireland.

The goals of the GI Strategy for Northern Ireland are to:

• Deliver better services.
• Manage resources more effectively and efficiently.
• Inform policy decisions.

GeoHub NI:

• Is being developed to provide a centralised, scalable web based GI system, housing a data warehouse to serve current and future requirements of Northern Ireland.
• Will include a comprehensive data rights management system, enabling data providers to determine their audience.
• Will include a Spatial Data Warehouse built on market leading database and GIS technologies.
• Will be capable of integrating data from most common GI formats and delivering in open standards.
• Will provide mapping and GIS capability to government departments with no existing GIS resources.
• Is being developed in line with open standards of geographic data and systems, enabling data sharing and joint working between organisations.
• Will provide a one-stop-shop for finding government held GI through a search engine.
• Will provide a mechanism whereby government organisations can comply with the EU Directive, INSPIRE.
• Will store searchable metadata to the UK GEMINI standard.
• Will act as a central store for government spatial data.
• Will enable licensed users of OSNI data to connect and update their own versions, via web services.

Benefits of GeoHub NI

• Reduced overheads on cost of distributing government held GIS data.
• Improved data management - store once, use many times.
• Share and overlay relevant datasets.
• Data with integrated metadata will be held at single location.
• Control of access to datasets.
• Introduces an entry level GI systems within organisations.

Developed using:

• Fujitsu Services Ltd.
• Windows 2003 Server and Active Directory
• Oracle 10g
• ESRI ArcGIS Server
• 1Spatial Radius Studio