Vlado CETL, Miodrag ROIC, Hrvoje MATIJEVIC

A society in lack of information is limited in successful social and economic development. The fact that more than 80% of information contains some spatial component results in a need for building of an efficient spatial information managing system. Many countries in the world have acknowledged this problem and induced the establishment of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) in which the Internet has had a crucial role. The SDI is a significant advancement in data delivery and standardization using the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) to deliver spatial data to users. The process of establishing of spatial data infrastructure has originally started in United States by President Clinton's Executive Order 12906 in April 1994. This Order has promoted building of SDI in USA, Australia, Canada, in Western European countries, and in a last time in transition countries in our neighborhood like Slovenia and Hungary. Development of SDI in mentioned countries were different and also there were different initiatives for starting of this process. An overview of SDI establishment in mentioned countries and the need for SDI establishing in Croatia are presented in this paper.