The following pages contain the Executive Summary from a report entitled 'Accessing Geographic Information for Ireland'. The Irish Institution of Surveyors gave assistance with the final preparation of this report. This report is based on the results of an information audit questionnaire carried out in Ireland in 1994. Thus, data sources vary from the national to the regional and local level. Data types also vary from paper records to digital maps and remotely sensed data.
Some organisations also capture spatial data by in-house digitising or scanning.
The contracting out of data capture is also quite common. The main issues of interest here are the benchmarking of data, transfer standards and quality control procedures. 1.2 Integrating Data Data integration problems are encountered as a result of using data from different sources. Thus, it may be difficult to find data on different variables that were collected at the same time or to the same level of technical expertise. Similarly, data may be collected at different scales or projections.