An Operation-Based Communication of Spatial Data Quality

Improving users' awareness of the imperfections in spatial data has been a research issue explored within Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) for more than 30 years. However, little practical progress has been made toward this objective. Currently, most spatial data producers document information about spatial data quality as part of metadata. However, this information remains largely ignored by GIS users, which leads to the risk of users making poor decisions based on spatial data. As users increasingly make use of various GIS functionalities, GIS still lack the necessary mechanisms to effectively warn the users of the existence of quality issues in the spatial data being used. This becomes even more problematic in a web environment where data and services of unknown qualities can be shared and combined in the same application. In this paper we present an approach which aims at improving the use of quality information by providing it to the users in a more efficient way than existing approaches used for consulting metadata. We use an operation-based approach to link data quality information to the individual operations used in GIS applications. A conceptual framework for associating quality information with GIS operations is presented. Then, a prototype implementing this concept into a GIS software is described and discussed.