Evaluation of the Proposal of a Spatial Data Infrastructure in Bahia-Brazil and its Potential Repercussions to Environmental Impact Assessments

This paper is the result of a master's research was to assess the potential and major restrictions on the use of geographic data available in a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) as a facilitator in the development of spatial representations in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and its Environmental Impact Report (EIR), to promote compliance with the studies, communication with society and the realization of environmental licensing in order to become more assertive decision making by the public management, particularly with regard to Brazilian law. In this sense, it was considered a model of SDI consists of five elements, namely: data and metadata, technology, standards and guidelines, institutional political and actors. With reference to this model, we evaluated the Spatial Data Infrastructure proposed under the Government of the State of Bahia Brazil (SDIBahia), and the basic geographic information needed for the preparation of spatial representations in an EIA / EIR, from the considerations raised by experts in environmental studies and the analysis of some existing Environmental Impact Reports on the state territory. It can be concluded that despite the SDI-BAHIA proposed technology, standardization and geographic data of interest to the environmental analyst and in accordance with actions implemented or in progress in the world (for example, in USA and Europe), their policies definitions and effective participation of stakeholders, still demands a greater level of detail and commitment to enable its implementation occurs and is actually useful to the development of spatial representations for Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Impact Reports in the state.