Systems of Systems as a Conceptual Framework for Spatial Data Infrastructures

This paper proposes Systems of Systems (SoS) as a conceptual framework to support the creation, evolution and study of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). After reviewing the relationship between SDIs and generic Information Infrastructures (IIs), a comparison of the latter and SoS is presented. The conclusions of this comparison lead us to propose that IIs can be considered as SoS with several distinctive characteristics. This would allow the SDI community to consider a new set of techniques, methods and tools, coming from the SoS community to advance in SDI research and development.