ABSTRACT
Sustainable development has become an all-encompassing term for environmentally sound economic policies. Improved resource management, in turn, must be based on more informed sustainable development decision making. Exploration did contribute to an ever-improving geographic knowledge base that led to more accurate and scientific data collection. International efforts to improve the collection, analysis, and distribution of geographic information are fundamental to a larger, more difficult process of improving sustainable development decision making. The US Federal Geographic Data Committee, chaired by the secretary of the interior, is tasked with trying to establish the rules and means for geographic information sharing among federal agencies and to support complementary efforts at state and local levels. The US government is attempting to build a National Spatial Data Infrastructure, which has the ambitious goal of ensuring that all geospatial data collected by government agencies are in a form that is compatible and thus shareable.
