| Summary: | "The Arctic SDI is a pan-Arctic cooperative initiative based on input from the National Mapping Organisations of all eight Arctic Council countries. It has the support of Canada, Denmark, the Faroe Island, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States. Preparations for establishing an Arctic SDI have been ongoing for a number of years. At the GeoNorth conferences in 2007 and 2009 the establishment of an Arctic SDI was proposed (http://www.sciencepoles.org/articles/article_detail/paul_jolicoeur_ipy_geonorth_2007_conference _arctic_spatial_data ). During the same period the Arctic Council Working Groups released a number of reports which stressed the need for an Arctic SDI (CAFF 2008, CAFF, AMAP, and EPPR 2009). The Arctic SDI initiative received, after a request from the Nordic Mapping Organisations, the formal support of the Arctic Council at its Senior Arctic Officials (SAO) -meeting in November 2009: “All Member States expressed their support for, and interest in participating in the Arctic SDI project” . The SAOs recognized the value of the Arctic SDI initiative and subsequently Greenland agreed to lead through the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) project in the Arctic Council. The first meeting of the project team with representatives of the National Mapping Agencies (NMA) from all the arctic countries and from the CAFF Working Group of the Arctic Council was held in Brussels in October 2011. At this meeting a protocol was signed which agreed to establish an interim organisation to be responsible for the production of the project plan and preparations for the formal project start. Since then, the interim phase has ended, and the constitution of the organizational structure and the approval of the project plan took place in Reykjavik in April 2011. This has been followed up by several workshops for the technical part, and with Steering Committee meeting to ensure progress. The first Board meeting of the project is to be held in Reykjavik in late March." /./
|
|---|