tilatietoon

Tilatietoon is a Finnish term describing the field that deals with spatial information—data that describe the location and characteristics of objects, areas, and phenomena on the Earth’s surface. It encompasses the collection, storage, management, analysis, interpretation, and sharing of geographic data. Core concepts include geometry (points, lines, polygons), attributes, time (temporal dimension), and spatial relationships. The field relies on geographic information systems (GIS), geodatabases, remote sensing, GNSS, and cartography, and is supported by metadata and provenance practices to ensure data quality and discoverability.

Data sources and technology in tilatietoon include field surveys, national topographic maps, satellite imagery, LiDAR, and crowdsourced contributions. Data are stored and processed in spatial databases and analyzed with GIS tools, spatial analytics, and visualization software. Common data formats and services include Shapefile, GeoJSON, GML, GeoPackage, and web services such as WMS, WFS, and WCS. Coordinate reference systems and transformations enable integration across diverse datasets.

Standards and policy guidance underpin tilatietoon interoperability. The European INSPIRE directive aims to create a shared spatial data infrastructure, while international standards bodies such as ISO/TC 211 and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) provide classifications, metadata, and service interfaces (e.g., for data encoding and web services).

Applications of tilatietoon are broad, spanning urban planning and land use, transportation, environmental monitoring, natural resource management, emergency response, utilities, and tourism. In public administration and business, tilatietoon supports decision making, visualization, and policy evaluation. Challenges include data quality, privacy and security, licensing and access, and governance across organizations, with ongoing developments in 3D modeling, real-time sensing, and AI-assisted spatial analysis.