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Program History

From 1999 to 2005, with $60 million in funding from the federal government and the support and involvement of hundreds of other organizations across the county, GeoConnections developed the policies, standards, technologies, and partnerships needed to build the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI).

GeoConnections' beginnings: Recognizing the opportunity
Facing a challenge: Too much data diversity
Introducing the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure
GeoConnections' phase I objectives
GeoConnections' phase I results
Stepping into tomorrow

GeoConnections' beginnings: Recognizing the opportunity

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the first known maps of Canada date back to the early 1500s. These maps are characterized by "a perplexing mixture of new information and old, copied from unspecified sources" - not exactly the kind of thing you'd want in hand while trying to find an unfamiliar hotel in a big city.

Fortunately, we've come a long way in five hundred years. Today, thanks to global positioning system (GPS) technology, you can peg your location to within two metres. Explorers and cartographers of yore would have yearned fiercely for that kind of accuracy. And although many people today still rely on paper maps to find hotels in unfamiliar cities, the growing popularity of services such as the OnStar™ system, MapQuest®, Microsoft Virtual Earth™, and Google Earth™ suggest that technology will play an increasingly prominent role in helping us navigate our worlds, both physically and intellectually.

In fact, it was the vast potential of computers, the Internet, and location-based or "geospatial" data that inspired GeoConnections' creation in 1999. At that time, there was recognition that the blending of these factors offered an unparalleled opportunity.

The opportunity? - to better understand our environments and to use this understanding to improve our quality of life - whether to view rush-hour traffic patterns, monitor disease outbreaks, fight forest fires, or protect freshwater resources, to offer but a few examples. In short, the ability to gather, store, process, and deliver location-based information using the Internet was seen as highly advantageous and desirable. ("Geomatics" is the term given to these functions.)

Facing a challenge: Too much data diversity

But Canada faced a challenge: how could the country best capitalize on its growing stable of geospatial databases - i.e. those comprising postal codes... street names... electoral districts... weather data... satellite images... protected-area boundaries, and the like?

Complicating Canada's aspirations was the fact that many databases used different standards and were operated by different entities. These entities often employed different protocols and approaches to compiling, storing, and accessing their data.

Consequently, organization A's road network data wouldn't necessarily integrate with organization B's wetlands data. There was often no way to combine the two data sets to generate a more complete and instructive view of the world. The pieces of the puzzle were there; making them fit was the issue.

Introducing the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure

Taking advantage of Canada's burgeoning geospatial databases, not to mention geomatics' ample potential, required that we create a standards-based geospatial data infrastructure using the Internet. This infrastructure could provide a backbone for the sharing of location-based information throughout the country and across any number of jurisdictions.

And hence GeoConnections was born. Launched in 1999 with $60 million in federal funding, this new national partnership program was mandated to develop the policies, standards, technologies, and partnerships needed to build the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI).

GeoConnections' phase I objectives

    Four main objectives defined GeoConnections' initial phase:
  • first, to collaborate with provinces and territories in making Canada's location-based data more accessible and compatible;
  • second, to collaborate with the private sector in developing technologies to share this data over the Internet;
  • third, to create the partnerships and conditions required to build a national infrastructure; and
  • four, to work with the public sector in developing the policies required to share data.

GeoConnections' phase I results

When its first phase wrapped up on March 31, 2005, GeoConnections was able to look back on a highly productive, successful six years. During this time - and with the invaluable efforts and contributions of hundreds of partners - GeoConnections funded projects, coordinated standards committees, supported end - users, guided applications developers and data suppliers, championed data - sharing and licensing policies, and provided a guiding vision for Canada's geomatics community, both at home and abroad.

    Specifically, GeoConnections
  • leveraged an additional $90 million in new investments through a model partnership with federal, provincial, and territorial governments, and geomatics industry leaders;
  • created some 400 successful projects in hundreds of communities across the country, projects that are helping save lives, create jobs, prevent crime, and protect the environment; and
  • helped roughly 600,000 experts, academics, and industry members tap into common Internet gateways called the GeoConnections Discovery Portal - an information portal with more than 12,000 geospatial databases, 2,000 of which are Canadian-and GeoBase- an information portal that offers six national themes of data.

The extent to which GeoConnections succeeded is a great example of governments and industry working together to apply their combined expertise and technology toward improving Canadians' quality of life.

Stepping into tomorrow

On June 15, 2005, the Government of Canada announced funding of $60 million to renew the GeoConnections program from 2005 to 2010. Whereas the first phase of GeoConnections focused on building the base CGDI, the second phase is intended to maintain, expand, and enhance the CGDI - to ensure that Canadians will further benefit from this resource.

To fulfill this objective, from 2005 to 2010, GeoConnections will not only work with private - sector collaborators to keep CGDI technologies current, but will also pursue partnerships with groups of end-users facing common issues.

Specifically, GeoConnections will seek to better understand the needs of end - users in four key areas (public safety and security, public health, the environment and sustainable development, and Aboriginal communities). GeoConnections' goal now is to enable these people to use the CGDI as a highly effective operational asset for planning and decision making.

For more information on GeoConnections today.