  In Spatial Data Infrastructure or Cyber Infrastructure, the description of
geographic data semantics is intended to support data discovery, reuse and
integration. In the vast majority of cases the producers of these data generate
descriptions based on particular understandings of what uses the data are good
for. This producer-oriented perspective means that the descriptions often do
not help to answer the question of whether a data set is of use for a consumer
who might want to apply it in a different context. In this paper, we discuss
the role geographic information observatories can play in providing an
infrastructure for observing the context of data use by consumers. These
observations of data pragmatics lead to operational statistical methods that
will support better fitness-for-use assessment. Finally, we highlight some of
the challenges to building these observatories, and briefly discuss strategies
to address those challenges.
