The role of standards in geographic information systems

Territorially oriented information systems are becoming the best fit planning tools for the administration of public services and the control of environment assessment, since they supply a systematized and up-to-date knowledge of the territorial reality and constitute an essential support to the activities of local authorities. In Italy, the representatives of the public users, ANCI (Associazione Nazionale Comuni d'Italia) and CISPEL (Confederazione Italiana Servizi Pubblici degli Enti Locali), together with CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) the greatest Italian scientific research body, faced the problems involved in the definition and implementation of Geographic Information Svstems in the Urban Environment, in order te give advice and policy recommendations on user requirememts definition and systems evaluation and integration. À number of national exchange formats have emerged in recent years, each displaying characteristics which set it apart from the others. To obtain non-homogeneous systems interworking, the issues of both syntactic and semantic standards where faced and the need for a common data model was stated.