1996 was the last year in which Australian Research Council funding under the Research Infrastructure (Equipment and Facilities) Program was obtained for the SIIASA consortium.

Griffith University joined the ESRI Business Partner Program on behalf of ACASIAN, which is now licensing data sets through the ArcData Program. See the Availability and Prices for Acasian Data Licenses for a complete listing of available data sets. Data can be made available in ArcView, Genamap, MapInfo, and MGE formats, in addition to ARC/INFO .

China GIS Project. The massive job of producing a digital version of the 1:1,000,000 Land-use Map of China (LUMC) was finalised in 1996 with the careful checking of the coding of the land-use polygons. Although available for academic research and government purposes in Australia and China, the LUMC data cannot be otherwise distributed at present, although negotiations on modifying the copyright agreement are underway.

Much was accomplished in 1996 on the Russian Federation and Former Soviet Republics GIS Project at ACASIAN, other wise known as the NIS GIS Project. All 187 map sheets were completely edge matched, and the boundary data were fitted to the DCW coastlines. The process of moving the data from MicroStation to MGE, MapInfo, and ARC/INFO GIS environments was initiated, and by year's end all of the Russian Federation except the Russian Far East had been completed. The remaining work goes quickly, so it is anticipated that the entire former Soviet Union as of the 1989 census will be completed by March or April, 1997. The other Newly Independent States, consisting of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorus, Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turmenistan, have all been completed in MicroStation.

Work on digitizing, vectoring and edge-matching ADM2 boundaries and capitals for Turkey has finally been completed, and the data have been fitted to the DCW.

SIIASA now have administrative boundaries for the Phillipines courtesy of James Cook University, Malaysia from the University of Western Australia, and the Indochina countries from the Flinders University of South Australia. ACASIAN has completed Burma and Thailand. Work on Indonesia is a priority.