20. Characterizing Potential User Groups for Versioned Geodata

We explore the characteristics of different user groups for legacy geodata from the perspective of a long term archive. For the sake of this study, legacy geodata has been defined as all digital information useful for map creation including aerial photography, digital elevation models, LIDAR data, vector data bases etc., of which there exists at least one more recent version with the same characteristics. In the context of the ISO standard for open archival information systems (OAIS) potential user groups are called designated communities. The archive is supposed to adapt its service to their profiles and needs, which in the electronic environment includes taking into account their level of knowledge of technical aspects. A future technique, more precisely a Delphi study, has been used to predict the potential user groups and their need for geodata versions. In two rounds, two international Delphi groups have been questioned about user professions, frequency of access, amount of data needed, knowledge of GIS, age of the data they are interested in, preferred data set, scales, snapshot intervals and file formats. The answers allowed us to identify the following user types: geophysicists, commercial users, lawyers, policy makers, emergency response planning teams, architects and geo-related engineers, social scientists, the general public, archaeologists, historians, culture and arts professionals, conservation agents of the built and the natural environment, geodata creators and undergraduate teachers and students. We classified the user types by their characteristics into six clusters. The application of the user profiles showed that the method did not deliver sufficiently detailed answers for complying with all OAIS requirements, but that it was effective for gathering user characteristics which guide archives in strategic decisions about the designated communities they might serve.