A bigger picture: information systems and spatial data infrastructure research perspectives

A weakness of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) studies has been the limited uptake of research outside of positivist and scientific-technological perspectives. To put it simply, a study of a SDI without considering other philosophies of knowledge will be greatly constrained to technical and administrative organizational dimensions. The ontological uniformity of SDI studies is unnecessarily restrictive. While valuable in a narrowly defined framework of project, SDI studies should consider the larger set of interactions involving actors in political, administrative and socio-technical domains. We review the development of information system research approaches and consider key positions from its diverse ontologies (positivism and interpretivism) and theories (strategic alignment, interactionism and social construction). We point to possible ways to consider these positions in SDI research.