BACKGROUND

With the amount of development happening nationwide at airports, the need to have current and accurate geospatial data to support the design, delivery, and maintenance of both existing and new facilities has never been more important. Existing facilities’ geospatial data are changing at a pace that is difficult to track, which can result in data inaccuracies.  At the same-time, deploying geospatial-related (i.e., GIS/CAD/BIM) software systems and applications has become easier with the advent of cloud and modular solutions.  The amount of data generated by these systems can, among other things, create security concerns, hinder development, impact costs, and generally increase risk across the organization.  Data governance policies can help drive airports toward an organized and systematic method to ensure that quality data are developed, maintained, and disseminated for specific airport business needs.    

Data governance policies and procedures should at least address issues of data distribution, data privacy and security, information life-cycle, data architecture, metadata management, master data management, and data quality and accuracy.  Furthermore, data policies and procedures have to be resilient to technology and personnel changes.  Federal, state, and local municipalities create regulations and guidance the airports may need to adhere to, for example, the Geospatial Data Act of 2018.       

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this research is to develop a guide to help airports create geospatial data governance policies and procedures.  The adoption of these policies and procedures will be driven by the unique characteristics of individual airports.  The guide will include tactics and strategies that can help airports adopt these policies and procedures.  A roadmap of the data life-cycle will be developed that allows for multiple points of engagements for airports at various levels of geospatial data maturity.  This guide should address the life-cycle of data including development, maintenance, appropriate access and use, security, and archival/disposal of legacy and new geospatial data. 

STATUS: This research has been published as ACRP Research Report 278 Geospatial Data Governance Policies and Procedures.