From identification of cholera outbreak by John Snow in London in 1850's to COVID-19, location does matter! Sr CHAN will share his insights based on his experience on how spatial data could provide information to identify various issues, such as public health, spatial analysis may aid policy makers and practitioners to allocate resources effectively, reveal spatio-temporal patterns of infectious diseases, and align adequacy of health services with community needs. Nonetheless, how can we get the spatial data from various partners in the first place? What if they are in different formats? Or even they are currently not readily available? Sr CHAN will talk about his journey in the past 10 years from finding available prevailing data for preparing the reply of a single LegCo question related to land matter in 2012 to the release of Common Spatial Data Infrastructure (CSDI) portal for public use. He would like to walk through his journey on reinventing spatial data in Hong Kong, from system development, to policy formulation, driving the CSDI initiative, and creating policy decision. While the CSDI initiative aims to provide convenient, easily accessible, quality, standardised and up-to-date spatial information and services, is welcomed by different stakeholders and considered as important, driving such initiative falling in the "important but may not be imminent" quadrant is challenging. The process of driving the CSDI initiative involves goals setting, mindset/cultural changes, policy formulation, breakthrough of red tapes, collaboration and partnership, engagement, managing stakeholders' expectations, data sharing and technical know-how.
