Spatial data interoperability and integration

Spatial data interoperability is the ability to access, share, exchange and manipulate spatial data stored in heterogeneous distributed repositories. It is a cornerstone tenet of a spatial data infrastructure and enables the sharing and integration of spatial data between systems in different organisations and across applications and industries. This unit introduces the concept of spatial data infrastructure, international standards enabling spatial data interoperability, spatial data structures and file formats, the common approaches to spatial data exchange including the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) method, and tools for spatial data exchange and integration such as Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) and the ArcGIS Data Interoperability extension. It has a strong practical element, encompassing a set of hands-on practicals and projects in which you undertake spatial data transformation and integration for various applications using the taught approaches and tools.