§ Lord Shackletonasked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they have taken, and propose to take, to establish a distributed national archive of digital spatial data, including the English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish registers of air photography.
§ The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Lord Young of Graffham)In this area we have seen it as right to concentrate first nationally on the creation in association with the present National Remote Sensing Centre at Farnborough of a major new facility, the Earth Observation Data Centre. When this is established under industry management, we expect to look with it at the scope for making the centre a node in a wider distributed network for spatial data. Such a network could incorporate the regional remote sensing centres at Aberdeen, Belfast, Silsoe and Swansea. We are supporting, too, associated developments and studies in the European Space Agency both in the area of space science information and in earth observation. It is not currently proposed to incorporate the various registers of air photography in this new development at Farnborough.