A Multicriteria Index to Evaluate the Preparation of Municipalities for the Creation of SDIs

Abstract

The use and sharing of geospatial data is essential for municipal management. However, it is not known for sure the stage of preparation that the Brazilian municipalities are to constitute their Local Spatial Data Infrastructures and then be able to integrate state and national initiatives, what could generate important knowledge about local realities. In Brazil, today only 2 of 5570 municipalities are members of the INDE node, as opposed to several organizations at other federal levels. Since the INDE Action Plan, the inclusion of local data was considered vital, and the development of models ends up being hampered by the diversity of municipalities in Brazil and the lack of tools to guide the development of shared solutions for similar realities. This study proposes a method to fill this data gap, based on the State of Play evaluation method, used as an INSPIRE evaluation, for the case of Brazilian municipal SDIs, in order to propose a questionnaire with 25 questions and a set of indicators calculated based on the answers to each question. The proposed questionnaire was applied, after tests in two municipalities and some adaptations, in four municipalities from different population groups. With the proposed methodology, measurement possibilities were found at the level of questions, SDI components and institutions, as well as the need for an objective criterion for defining weights for answers, questions and components, which depends on the Benchmark SDI of the evaluator.