The establishment of the Egyptian geographic network EGN: review the development phases, lesson learned and the impact on the GIS industry in Egypt

Several initiatives have for long been taking place by many countries around the world to develop the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) as a network for spatial data discovery, access and sharing. Promoting data sharing will provide the necessary support to institutions involved in various levels of decision making for the optimum use of natural resources, the management of utilities in urban areas, the management of land, etc. The SDI concerns with the networking of geospatial databases (mostly distributed and heterogeneous) and other data handling facilities, as well as the complexity of the technological and institutional requirements for the implementation of SDI in a particular technical, political, economic cultural and social environment. SDI also provides the platform to develop and enforce ‘information polices’ and legislation that control access, use, and pricing of spatial data. In order to support the sharing of data in the national context, SDI seeks to develop a set of standards that govern the various processes involved in data handling. Such standards allow many domain-oriented SDI’s to be easily liked into a national frame, commonly referred to as the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, NSDI.