Clearinghouse چیست؟

Clearinghouse از مهمترین اجزای زیر ساخت داده های مکانی (SDI) است. در منابع فارسی معادل آن مرکز تبادل داده  بیان شده  است اما FGDC آن را چنین تعریف کرده است:

A spatial data clearinghouse can be defined (rather verbosely) as "the creation of a centralized or decentralized (distributed) electronically connected network of servers located on the Internet, which contain metadata and detailed catalogue services that are collected in a standard format to facilitate query and consistent presentation across multiple participating sites that band together spatial data providers, custodians and distributors to promote their available digital spatial data and enable all users to search relevant spatial data nodes, determine what spatial data exist, find the data they need, evaluate the usefulness of the spatial data for their applications and obtain or order the data as quickly and economically as possible" (FGDC, 1995).

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