Re: Baltic GIS Portal opened!

Dear Ben,

Thank you for your interest in the Baltic GIS Portal.

The short answer to your question is NO - this is not a replacement of
grida.no database, and we will not try to incorporate their data into
our database otherwise than giving a web link to their site. The main
idea of the Baltic GIS portal is to provide users with recent public
domain GIS/RS data covering the Baltic Sea region (and ICES area).
There are quite a lot of good seamless global or regional datasets
available for free and without any special copyright restrictions, so
we are trying to find them, make regional extracts and re-project into
the standard European coordinate system (ETRS89_LAEA). This gradually
builds the Baltic GIS database, and our users are free to choose the
layers they need for their purposes.

For me, the grida.no database is an excellent prototype of a free
regional GIS, and I actually borrowed their idea and now try to
continue to extend their initiative of a FREE GIS data to the new
generation of GIS users in the Baltic region. This is in a way an
attempt to introduce the "American" approach to data policy - they give
lots of very good GIS and satellite data for free over the internet,
while the European data policy at a moment is far behind - there are
many expensive attempts to build GIS databases, but very few good
datasets are available on the internet on a public domain basis.

The Baltic GIS portal tries to mobilize the users, provide a forum for
their communication, study their needs, provide some real free data (we
make no profit out of this service), and maybe even influence the
European GIS data policy.

So, grab the data from the Baltic GIS portal, try it yourselve, let us
know if there are some problems, good ideas or free datasets you know
about or have and would like to share with others. Once again - the
Baltic GIS portal is hosted by a scientific research institute in
Vilnius, and being scientists, we are driven by altruistic will to make
the world a better place, not make any business out of that.

My best regards,

Gedas Vaitkus

Ben Discoe wrote:

Gedas,

-----Original Message-----
From: Gedas Vaitkus
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 12:21 AM
To: [email protected]

a new Baltic GIS portal was recently
launched at the Institute of Ecology of Vilnius University.
The internet link (temporarily) is this:
http://www.ekoi.lt/gis

Could you explain how this new site relates to the older Baltic Sea Region
GIS website, at http://www.grida.no/baltic/ ?

Is it a replacement, with all the old data plus new stuff? Or is the old
site still also relevant.

Thanks,
Ben

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