ABSTRACT
Geographic core data form the framework for most geodisciplines. These data provide a base on which application-oriented data can be overlaid, or a frame to which they can be attached (URL 8.1). By tradition, National Mapping Organisations (NMOs) are responsible for a country’s geographic core data. However, the leading role of NMOs is becoming less obvious as a result of unavoidable changes in their environment. One aspect of these changes is the growing interest in connecting and sharing distributed databases by means of a national geospatial data infrastructure (see Section 3.5). Data users with access to this infrastructure-presumably via the World Wide Web-will be able to compare the products of various data producers, for instance by cost or quality. This implies that the NMO core data are no longer the only authority in this area. Still, NMOs have an opportunity to anticipate these changes and to play an initiating role in setting up a clearinghouse for a country’s base data. In this chapter it is investigated how well prepared the NMOs are for such a new role by evaluating their use of the World Wide Web, and the challenges that the WWW can offer. For a current overview of NMO websites, see URL 8.2.
