What is DNF?

The Digital National Framework enables and promotes the integration and sharing of location-based information from multiple sources

Background

 To quote the UK Location Strategy, “Everything happens somewhere”.   Location-based information increasingly needs to underpin business services. To do this we need to think beyond geospatial data as digital maps and consider how it can be used to integrate disparate business information that shares a common location.   We need to do this in a way that IT systems and applications can recognise and handle easily and reliably.

Through this change we see significantly better end-user services, improved data integrity and lower operational costs.

 

This transformation is also key to supporting the UK Location Strategy (UKLS) and its obligations under the EU’s INSPIRE Directive   . 

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The DNF Vision

Most organisations' business information can be associated with a location. The ability to combine or use different information based upon a common location, and to do this reliably and easily, is critical in solving regular business tasks.  The Digital National Framework provides technical methods and guidance to support these operations and is aligned with national strategies and international standards.  By adopting a set of principles and using best practice, such integration is independent of who is responsible for its maintenance and where the work is undertaken, thus achieving the goal of "plug and play"  information, essential in a world of web services.

Ultimately this approach has the potential to evolve into a distributed network of information which, when brought together, can be used with assurance.  Business information can be shared in the knowledge that all users have the confidence that they are referring to the same location and object in the real world.

DNF can be applied to many applications and is also a key requirement of the INSPIRE Directive and the implementation of the UK Location Strategy (UKLS).     

The Digital National Framework is intended to be:

1. Definitive maximising the benefits of definitive referencing

• DNF provides a framework using location as the common denominator.  It offers the ability to link information from multiple sources to a definitive location reference through unique identifiers

2. Inclusive reflecting principles of industry best practice

• DNF is an open initiative taking input from a variety of interested parties. It encompasses proven and robust international standards. Although developed in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the DNF concept is transferable to other countries.

3. Structured using effective techniques for a “create once, use many times” model

• DNF features are referenced through unique identifiers enabling explicit and unambiguous linking and exchange of information. DNF’s object-based approach means that data should be collected once, maintained at the most effective level of detail, and then reused in any way the user requires. It offers the ability to create a consistent and structured geographic data model to integrate information easily and reliably.

4. Reliable delivering data integrity for underpinning critical business decisions

• DNF uses a consistent form of referencing to provide information integrity, such that information of all kinds can be used to link ifferent views of the world to a common base.   This provides for a high degree of data reliability and accuracy across a multitude of business applications. 

5. Cost-effective lowering the costs of handling multi-source data

• The greater the take-up of DNF, the more significant the benefits will be for wider data sharing, thereby leading to lower data handling costs, ease of maintenance and the avoidance of duplicated effort.

6. Flexible enabling information exchange and cross-business applications

• The DNF model enables the integration of information from vraried sources,  giving users the ability to share information in cross organisational applications.  It is then easier to associate data from all kinds of sources in a reliable way and to support information transfer in everything from street works and buried services to insurance and civil contingency.   

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The Five DNF Principles

Guiding Principles of DNF

Since its inception in 1999 following principles have been adopted:

1. The concept and methods shall be driven by the strategic needs of the wider GI community and the needs of the information industry.

• the aim of DNF is to serve the wider community of information users using a common framework and approach.

2. Data should be collected only once and then re-used.

• The aim is to avoid unnecessary duplication and confusion and thereby promote faster industry growth
• This in turn can enable a new range of applications based on definitive datasets that are proven, reliable, up to date and easy to use

3. Reference information/data should be captured at the highest resolution whenever economically possible.

• Information reuse in a wide variety of applications is limited where data has been captured at low resolution
• This limits potential data sharing capabilities and downstream value

4. Such information may then, where appropriate, subsequently be used to meet analysis and multi-resolution publishing requirements.

• Organisations that capture will invariably wish to publish this at the level of capture and at lower resolutions in one form of aggregated or generalised form

5. DNF will incorporate and adopt existing de facto and de jure standards, wherever they are proven and robust.

• In common with the reuse principle any standard e.g., OGC, ISO etc should be adopted where it is shown to add value.

"Hence DNF will foster an environment where users should not need to capture information that already exists. In future information can be reused and added together to form new datasets building on existing proven components."
DNF White Paper, October 2004