Reducing poverty was the theme of GSDI-9, the 9th international Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference held in Santiago, Chile. Many of us in the geospatial business believe we have made contributions toward that goal.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to the readers of Geospatial Today that members and leaders of GSDI think spatial information and technologies are good tools to reduce poverty. City planning depends of geospatial tools. The design, construction and management of water, sewer, public health, communication and transportation systems and facilities depend on geospatial tools. The management of natural resources and agriculture benefit from these tools. Cadastral systems enable formalisation of property ownership, which can, combined with a fair and favourable legal and banking framework, advance the development of a strong middle class. Geospatial tools can help governments accurately assess their national condition, needs and potentials to support planning and negotiations with corporations, global lending agencies and other nations.

People debate whether progress is being made fast enough to reduce world poverty. Unstable energy prices and some of the effects of globalisation counter gains in areas like public health and farm productivity. It’s a complicated issue. But every year, the cost of bandwidth, computation power, memory and storage falls significantly, and information technology (IT) capabilities become more impressive and useful. Geospatial technologies ride this wave. Developing nations benefit from the steady improvement and falling prices of these technologies. This happens because, in addition to benefiting directly from domestic applications like those mentioned above, countries that embrace IT progress benefit from trade as their service providers learn to serve customers in other nations. India is a prime example. In a short time, supplied with good network resources in major cities, Indian companies have come to be major players in software development, customer support, and geospatial service provision. This has contributed significantly to India’s gross national product and trade balance. Information technology – including geospatial technology -- has also provided a platform for research and development leading to expansion in other IT sectors. China is enjoying similar success in its IT industries. Opportunities are expanding, not narrowing, as companies in the richer nations "outsource" more work. Software is rapidly being replaced by Web services, which reduce costs for service providers in developing nations.

Opportunities also expand as global IT standards, such as OGC’s, become widely used. IIn the case of the OGC’s geospatial standards, these are blueprints for fundamental parts of the GSDI that are too important for any vendor to provide alone. Standards make application development easier, and standard-based applications can reach larger markets than applications that are bound to proprietary infrastructure.

Demand for spatial information is growing in all countries as standards “unbox” the potentials of geospatial technologies. This demand spells opportunity for businesses that are able to compete successfully with service providers in the developed nations.

Politicians in developed nations often find it politically necessary to impose tariffs on imported food or commodities like steel, but corporations have successfully resisted their attempts to put tariffs on outsourcing, which has become a requirement for corporate profitability and competitiveness. When Internet companies, planning departments, infrastructure providers and integrators in the developed nations outsource geospatial work to poorer nations, they get richer. From the perspective of developing nations, this is the promise of globalisation, and open standards such as those from the OGC make such outsourcing easier.