User-Centric SDI Framework Applied to Historical and Heritage European Landscape Research

Spatial scientific research has increasingly become multi disciplinary. The urge of different disciplines to share disciplinary knowledge and information has increased. However, not many Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) have succeeded in facilitating the needs of these multidisciplinary research communities. The article presented offers a methodological framework to develop a user centric SDI and applies it to the community that researches the history and heritage of urban and rural landscapes in the Netherlands. It demonstrates how users’ objectives and Geospatial Information literacy can be determined and can inform the conceptual and technological architecture of a user centric SDI. The architecture of the historical and heritage landscape SDI focuses on developing a user friendly dashboard, placed at the heart of the SDI and developed in close collaboration with the users. The framework and architecture presented functions as an example for other third generation SDIs and forms an anchor point for developing historical and heritage landscape SDIs in Europe.