At some point in time, most people will have used a street directory to navigate through the city’s streets or a map on a website to find the supermarket nearest to your home.  The information displayed on these maps and websites, such as roads, imagery or shopping centres, is what is termed spatial information or spatial data. 

Technically, spatial information describes the physical location of objects on the Earth’s surface.  It is not only used to make maps.  Spatial data can be analysed, manipulated or modelled to answer questions about past and future patterns or trends.  It underpins many industries and has the potential to support just about every business sector including emergency management, climate change research, infrastructure development and health management.