Information Engineering for the Development of Spatial Information Systems: a Research Agenda

Implementing large Spatial Information Systems (SIS) brings very important problems like figuring out what users really want, adapting the technology to the organizational needs, and implementing new operational/administrative procedures. Actually, the field called Information Engineering builds and uses structured information system design methodologies, as well as specific tools (e.g. data models, data flow diagrams) and techniques (e.g. prototyping) to solve these problems for non-spatial systems. Despite claims of benefit in productivity and quality results, it is only recently that Information Engineering has gained large acceptance. This new popularity is closely related to the growing complexity of information systems and the arrival of a new generation of software tools called CASE (Computer-Assisted Systems Engineering). This field, Information Engineering, can be of great benefit to SIS, especially after adaptation. This paper presents Information Engineering fundamental concepts and research issues involved in extending traditional system design methodologies and tools for Spatial Information Systems.