WALIS Glossary

ACRONYMS & DEFINITIONS

ANZLIC - The Spatial Information Council (formerly the Australian and New Zealand Land Information Council) is the peak intergovernmental organisation made up of Australian (Commonwealth, State and Territory) and New Zealand government representatives.  It aims to achieve "best practice" in spatial data management and develop the ASDI (Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure).

Australian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD) -  The ASDD is a national initiative supported by all governments under the auspices of ANZLIC - the Spatial Information Council, to discover Australian spatial data through the ability to search metadata.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) - is a meta language that is a subset of Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML).  It is the standard language for metadata.

Government Gazette - Official publication of the Government and is used to publish the WALIS Custodial Datasets.

Information Product - An item that has been derived from spatial datasets and other information to meet a specific purpose.  It is seperated from spatial datasets as it doesn't necessarily have to be digital and can contain non-spatial information.

Metadata - Provides the descriptive information of the what, when, who, how and where of geographic/spatial information.  ANZLIC defines the standard to which metadata should be created and kept.

Shared Land Information Platform (SLIP) - Is a shared information delivery service which will provide access to the state's land information.

Spatial Dataset - A homogeneous collection of data that relates to a location and is managed as a single digital entity.  Also known as Geospatial and Geographic Datasets.

State Land Information Capture Program (SLICP) - It is the state-wide capture of digital spatial data, aerial photography, satellite imagery and map production for state and local government.  It is designed to reduce cost and avoid duplication in data capture.

Western Australian Land Information System (WALIS) - WALIS is a dynamic partnership of government agencies working with business, education and the general community to manage and promote the State’s spatial information.  It is was established by the WA Government in 1981 to coordinate across-government access and delivery of the spatial information held by WA Government agencies, as well as continually improving the quality of this information.  WALIS achieves this through the various WALIS committees and the WALIS Office.

WALIS Advisory Committee (WAC) - Represents business, education, local government and the community to provide high-level strategic advice to WALIS Council and CMG.

WALIS Core Management Group (CMG) - Concentrates on strategic policy issues, including overseeing the implementation of the WALIS Strategy and is comprised of director-level representatives from WALIS member agencies.

WALIS Council - Provides the focus for the coordination of geographic information management with a special focus on improving data accessibility.  The members are from WALIS agencies, the Advisory Committee and Local govenment.

WALIS Executive Policy Committee (EPC) - The EPC is the governing body of WALIS and comprises Chief Executive Officers/Directors General of key WALIS member agencies.  The role of the EPC is to provide strategic direction and endorse overall policy and strategic plans, ensuring alignment with government policies for sharing spatial information.  The chair of EPC is the Landgate (formerly Department of Land Information) CEO.

WALIS Office - The WALIS Office is not WALIS.  The WALIS Office is the central administrative hub around which most activities that constitute WALIS are organised.  It formulates strategies and policies, runs workshops and coordinates the WA spatial community for the benefit of WA.  It also provides other core services such as organising the WALIS Forum and managing WA Atlas and Interragator.

WALIS Endorsed Custodial Datasets - Spatial datasets or information products that are formally assigned a custodian under the WALIS Data Custodianship Policy by EPC.  Also known as a 'Custodial Datasets'.

LINKS (Other general GIS/spatial terminology)

http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/agidict/ - Association for Geographic Information (AGI) and the University of Edinburgh on-line GIS dictionary.

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/gisfiles/ - Ordnance Survey (Interactive learning about GIS)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIS - Wikipedia (free online encyclopedia)

http://www.thepowerofgeography.com/ - Business benefits of using geospatial information

http://biodiversityinformatics.amnh.org/index.php?section_id=6- Remote sensing (American Museum of Natural History)

http://www.anzlic.org.au/spatial_links.html - ANZLIC links

http://www.anzlic.org.au/glossary_references.html - ANZLIC glossary

http://www.ga.gov.au/about/glossary.jsp - Geoscience Australia glossary