Spatial Data Infrastructures and Data Mining – An Introduction

Spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) and data mining have been a key challenge of a modern society. SDIs as well as spatial data mining should become a topic of the annual conference EnviroInfo. The main objectives of our paper are: (1) To provide a short overview about spatial data infrastructures (definitions, goals, hierarchy of SDIs, and relations to other initiatives). (2) To describe the three main data mining techniques which have been often used for spatial datasets. (3) To report on the development of a spatial database at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological and Regional Development (IOER) for the key research area “Settlement and Open Space Development Monitor” and to illustrate some applications of the spatial data mining in selected IOER projects such as “Research to Ecological and Economic Performance Potentials of 116 German Regional Cities.