Alexander Boer

Netherlands

Abstract of the presentation

Title: XML for Geospatial Legislation

For a few years legislation in the Netherlands has been available in a standardized XML format; this standard treats all legislation as a searchable document related to other documents in a systematic way. This form of standardization is less suitable for map-oriented geospatial legislation. In the project Digitale Uitwisseling Ruimtelijke Plannen (DURP; Digital Exchange of Spatial Plans) municipalities, provincial governments, water control boards, and the ministry of spatial planning cooperate to develop an open XML standard for geographic data in legislation. The standard will be based on Geography Markup Language (GML) and is primarily intended for use in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The Leibniz Center for Law has been involved in this project to advice on the relation between legislation as geospatial data, as documents, and as a normative system that tells citizens and legislators what they can and cannot do. We will present our views on the nature of geospatial norms and the benefits and problems of using GIS to access legislation. Present GIS are ill-equipped for dealing with the document management requirements typical of legislation. We will present a proposal for a standardized way of coupling a document standard for legislation with a geospatial standard for legislation.

Bio:

Alexander Boer is a computer scientist who has been working for the Leibniz Center for Law, a research institute specialized in developing innovative concepts for the application of IT in the field of Law, for 6 years. In recent years he has been involved in a number of projects involving loose XML interfaces between government bodies and government bodies and citizens. He is also one of the main contributors to the METALex XML schema (see http://www.metalex.nl), a jurisdiction-independent standard proposal for legislation.

Events: Geo Information Systems (GIS)

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