Cathy Crooks, project manager of the Australia and New Zealand Spatial Marketplace Demonstrator Project at the Department of Sustainability and Environment (Victoria) showed the crowd spatial@gov the first look at the marketplace that is set to change the way that Australia and New Zealand find, attain, and even create, spatial data.

 

The Spatial Marketplace will be a simple one-stop-shop for finding accessing, and sharing spatial resources, and a major evolutionary step in the discovery, access and utilisation of spatial resources. Not only will it provide complete publishing, discovery, access, distribution and interoperability services for all spatial information resources in Australia, but it will also provide data providers with the means to find gaps in the market for which to capture or create data.

 

In order to attract a broad user base and retain the trust of its providers and acquirers, the Marketplace will be regulated to allow buyers and sellers to transact with confidence. Participants will be able to review products, providing a level of transparency and credibility that encourages participation.

 

There will also be a touch of social media in it, with groups providing places where users can get together and discuss data issues, applications and uses etc.

 

Though not yet implemented, it is hoped that the marketplace will push out updates to any purchased data, as well as provide recommendations of similar data sets, sort of like the way Amazon recommends books you may like.

 

It is also hoped that the Marketplace will be able to link to existing infrastructure, saving custodians from having to upload data to the marketplace’s servers.

 

If you would like to see it in action, and even have a play around with its capabilities, the Marketplace is available now in beta form at:

http://spatialmarketplace.net.au (Australia)

http://spatialmarketplace.co.nz (New Zealand)