It is a Public/Private/Academic consortium established with the aim of improving the environment for collecting, distribution and efficient use of social infrastructural information including geospatial data.

Through websites and information disclosure we have become able to provide a variety of national land information and public facilities data, as well as related social infrastructure data in real space (e.g. forests, weather, airports, harbors, roads and rivers), which has been supplied by the National and Local governments.

On the other hand, due to various regulations and factors, such as those of provision, update frequency, licensing and so forth, in order to provide user-friendly service, the speed of obtaining data, cost minimization, and clarification of data quality will be issues going forward.

Although the effort to improve data distribution began gradually, the method of distribution often differed according to the type or set of data. The demand became greater for private firms, universities and others to participate in an open style, as did requests to take measures to reduce the burden on data providers. In view of these issues, we have to build a framework for sustainable and practical operation using information and communications technology to satisfy the technical demands and organizing requirements of data distribution, as well as identify major causes and issues impeding distribution.

For these reasons, we established the organization of ‘Association for Promotion of Infrastructure Geospatial Information Distribution’ in September 2011. It is a Public/Private/Academic consortium established with the aim of improving the environment for collecting, distribution and efficient use of social infrastructural information including geospatial data.

Our initial goal was to encourage the sustainable promotion of an improved distribution environment for social infrastructural information. For further development, we established the general incorporated association ‘Association for Promotion of Infrastructure Geospatial Information Distribution (AIGID)’ in Apr 2014.