Interview with Tomislav Ciceli, Head of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Division at the Croatian State Geodetic Office

One of the speakers at the International Spatial Data Conference 2026 on October 8th is Tomislav Ciceli, Head of the division for National Spatial Data Infrastructure at the State Geodetic Administration of Croatia. In preparation for the conference, we asked about his experiences and his opinion abou role of cooperation building the NSDI (National Spatial Data Infrastructure), the broader utilization of spatial data, and what new challenges and opportunities artificial intelligence might bring.

What has been the most valuable lesson learned in developing your country’s National Spatial Data Infrastructure including its institutional, regulatory and collaborative aspects?

Make NSDI a winning club and you will certainly not lack support and interest, because it is an undeniable fact that everyone wants to be a member of a winning team. In the beginning, we based our success on quantity, and now we are intensively dealing with quality.

What makes cooperation successful in the geospatial sector?

Successful cooperation is one that creates a win-win situation. From an NSDI perspective, for us as coordinators, this means published metadata and accessible datasets that can be used interoperable. From the data owner’s perspective, it means greater visibility and accessibility of their data, which in turn can lead to increased demand for and use of those datasets.

What do you see as the biggest challenge in making geospatial data more accessible and widely reusable?

In the early days of NSDI, a key challenge was convincing data owners that publishing metadata would not mean losing their influence or relevance. Today, a similar issue has re-emerged: they are often asked to describe the same datasets again, but on different portals and according to different standards, prompting the question: “Haven’t we already done this for NSDI?” Better alignment between NSDI and open-data framework is therefore essential to reduce duplication and clarify responsibilities.

How will AI shape the geospatial sector in the coming years?

GeoAI represents a new stage of development that is rapidly becoming mainstream. We can already see that it is here, with strong potential to become part of everyday life. Alongside humans, machines are emerging as one of the most important future users of spatial data. This is where I see a major opportunity for NSDI: to adapt its infrastructure to AI as a new category of user—one that will use metadata as the first step in discovering, evaluating, and using the most appropriate data

What is the key message you would like to share and discuss with the audience in Budapest?

The spatial data infrastructure development is not a one-off project with a clear beginning and end. It is a continuous process of change, through which the infrastructure adapts to new ways of using spatial data, new categories of users, and evolving perspectives on spatial information.