session - EC GI & GIS Portal

The mission of the JRC is to provide customer-driven scientific and technical support for the conception,
development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies. As a service of the European Commission,
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Institute for
Environment and
Sustainability
Organisers
http://www.ec-gis.org/Workshops/12ec-gis
12 th EC-GI&GISWorkshop ESDI: From Inspiration to Implementation
Institute for
Environment and
Sustainability
ESDI:
From Inspiration
to Implementation
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
DIRECTORATE-GENERAL
Joint Research Centre
12 th EC-GI&GISWorkshop
Innsbruck, Austria
21-23 June 2006

12 th EC & EC GIS Workshop
Innsbruck, Austria
21-23 June 2006
Edited by
Karen Fullerton
and
Katalin Tóth
JRC IES

Table of Contents
MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability is to provide scientific and technical
support to the European Union’s policies for protecting the environment and the EU Strategy for
Sustainable Development.
European Commission
Joint Research Centre (DG JRC)
Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES)
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit
I-21020 Ispra (VA), Italy
Contact information
Tel.: +0039 0332 786491
Fax: +0039 0332 789803
E-mail: ies@jrc.it
Website: http://ies.jrc.cec.eu.int/
Editor: Karen Fullerton, Katalin Tóth
Cover: José-Joaquín Blasco
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Table of Contents
Contents
SESSION SDI
INSPIRE FROM THE NATIONAL AND REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE: SURVEY AMONG THE SDI STAKEHOLDERS IN
THE CZECH REPUBLIC ......................................................................................................................................1
E. Pauknerova, P. Tryhubova
THE SPIRIT OF INSPIRE LIVES IN THE AUSTRIAN MINISTRY OF LIFE...............................................................3
F. Lux, W. Fahrner, T. Zelenka
WILL INSPIRE COME UP TO ALL EXPECTATIONS?............................................................................................5
R. Gissing
SDI SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT. USERS’ PERSPECTIVE............................................................................6
F. Salgé, J. Geirinhas, S.Gizzi
FRAMING THE EVOLUTION OF SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURES.....................................................................7
M. Wachowicz, A. Bregt and J. Crompvoets
SESSION PEER GROUP
THE IMPORTANCE OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION IN BIODIVERSITY AND NATURE CONSERVATION ...............9
R.A. Wadsworth, A. Watt
SETTING UP A GI RESEARCH AGENDA FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: THE PEER EXPERIENCE........11
M. Wachowicz, S. Labbé
LANDSCAPE CHARACTER ASSESSMENT AS A BASIS FOR PLANNING AND DESIGNING SUSTAINABLE LAND
USE IN EUROPE...............................................................................................................................................13
D. Wascher, M. Perez-Soba & S. Mücher
EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT AGENCY SDI – PROGRESS AND PLANS TO SUPPORT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A
SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEM..........................................................................................14
M.P. Lund, J. Bliki, A. Sousa, M. Erhard, T. Jessen, C. Steenmans
CONTAMINATED ENVIRONMENTS, RISK ASSESSMENT AND REMEDIATION STRATEGIES ................................15
B. Münier, S. Gyldenkærne, P.B. Sørensen, M. Thomsen, P. Fauser
SESSION NATIONAL SDI
PORTALU – A NEW NATIONWIDE PORTAL TO ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION IN GERMANY.....................16
T. Vögele, M. Klenke, F. Kruse
GI & SDI AS PART OF NATIONAL AND FEDERAL EGOVERNMENT– STATUS AND PERSPECTIVE FOR THE
WORK OF THE CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY..............................................................................18
A. Fritzsche
GEODATA DISTRIBUTION NATIONWIDE - GEOPORTAL OF CZECH LAND SURVEY OFFICE ..............................20
R. Widz, J. Havas, V. Spacek, J. Svaty
THE SPANISH SDI: FROM TECHNOLOGICAL TO ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS....................................................21
A.Rodríguez, P.Abad, E.López, A. Sánchez, J.A. Alonso
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES IN GEOSPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE IN ROMANIA..................................23
A. Ionita, I. Nedelcu, S. Andrei, V. Chendes, V. Craciunescu, M. Bichir, V. Gancz
SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
DISTRIBUTED METADATA CATALOGUES THEORY VS. REALITY.....................................................................24
I. Kanellopoulos, M. Millot, L. Bernard, K. Senkler, U. Voges
NEAR-TERM METADATA CHALLENGES ...........................................................................................................25
M. Gould, J. Rocha, S. Nativi, J. Nogueras, M. Manso
STANDARDS-BASED APPROACHES TO PUBLISHING AND ACCESSING CONTENT IN SPATIAL DATA
INFRASTRUCTURES.........................................................................................................................................27
C. Portele, R. Erstling
STYLEDCAT: DEFINITION OF A SLD CATALOGUE ......................................................................................29
A.Maldonado, M.A.Bernabé, M.A.Manso, M.C.Muñoz, M.Manrique
DISTRIBUTED DATA MANAGEMENT IN INTERNET MAP SERVICES EXPERIENCES FROM LOUNAISPAIKKA
THEMATIC ATLAS...........................................................................................................................................32
A. Vasanen, T. Toivonen
i

SESSION NATIONAL SDI II
Table of Contents
OVERVIEW OF THE INSPIRE THEMES – EXEMPLIFIED THROUGH RUNNING NATIONAL SERVICES IN THE
NORWEGIAN SDI............................................................................................................................................34
A. Lillethun
SWEDISH PREPARATIONS FOR INSPIRE .........................................................................................................36
S. Jönsson, U. Sandgren
INSPIRE AND DANISH E-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES SYNERGY OR CONFLICT ..............................................38
J. Ryttersgaard
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BENEFITS FROM COMPILING THE FOREST DATA BANK PROJECT (DASOLOGIO) IN
GREECE ..........................................................................................................................................................40
D.S. Palaskas, N.I. Stamou
RAVI AND THE DUTCH NATIONAL CLEARINGHOUSE ARE SHARING DUTCH INSPIRE ..................................42
B.C. Kok, M. Reuvers
SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
“WHERE WOULD YOU GO FOR MAPPING SERVICES, [NMAS] OR GOOGLE MAPS?” IMPLEMENTING
“HACKABLE” USER-DRIVEN GI SERVICES WITHIN SDIS..................................................................................43
G. Barrotta, P. Cipriano, S. Pezzi, L. Zanella
CSCAT: CATALOGUE OF COORDINATE REFERENCE SYSTEM DEFINITION AND TRANSLATION WEB
SERVICE .........................................................................................................................................................45
M.A. Manso, M.A. Bernabé
THE ROLE OF FREE SOFTWARE THICK CLIENTS IN SDI: CASE OF GVSIG .........................................................47
M. Gould, C. Granell, M.A. Esbrí, G. Carrión
HOW TO MOVE FORWARD IN IMPLEMENTING SDIS WITH SOA? .....................................................................48
Ç. Cömert, H. Akıncı
PROVIDING WFD REPORTING OVER SDI SERVICES........................................................................................50
M. Á. Latre, R. Béjar, J. A. Álvarez, O. Castillo, P. R. Muro-Medrano
SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI I
OUT SPIRE ...................................................................................................................................................53
S. Carlyle, M. Clark
DEVELOPMENT OF A DANISH INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SPATIAL INFORMATION (DAISI) -
GOALS AND MEANS..................................................................................................................................55
H. Brande-Lavridsen, B.H. Jensen
REACHING OUT AND UNDER..................................................................................................................57
I. Jackson
EU-PROJECT: CROSS-BORDER SPATIAL INFORMATION SYSTEM WITH HIGH ADDED VALUE (CROSS-SIS) ..59
J. Riecken
GEOINFORMATICS AND GISCIENCE EDUCATION: UNIGIS AS SDI BRAINWARE ............................................61
J.Strobl
SESSION DATA HARMONISATION
AN ONTOLOGY BASED APPROACH FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ADDRESS GAZETTEER: THE IDEZAR
GAZETTEER USE-CASE ...................................................................................................................................62
J. Nogueras-Iso, F. J. López, J. Lacasta, F. J. Zarazaga-Soria, P.R. Muro-Medrano
EUROROADS’ CONTRIBUTION TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF INSPRE............................................................64
U.L Sandgren
A NEW PRODUCTION PARADIGM BASED ON A SDI ........................................................................................65
P Trevelyan, G Mallin, Jeremy Tandy
‘FEATURE/OBJECT DATA MODELS’ – A REPORT ON THE EUROSDR/EUROGEOGRAPHICS WORKSHOP,
24-25 APRIL 2006 ..........................................................................................................................................66
P. Woodsford, A. Illert, K. Murray, C. Portele, M. Seifert
DATA CERTIFICATION AND SPATIAL DATA QUALITY MANAGEMENT ...............................................................73
M. Sanderson
SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI II
LOUNAISPAIKKA REGIONAL GI SERVICE AND COLLABORATION INITIATIVE BUILDING A LSDI IN SOUTH
WESTERN FINLAND ........................................................................................................................................78
L. Nurmi, A. Vasanen
ii

Table of Contents
STANDARDS FOR DATA AND METADATA SHARING IN ITALY: THE SIGMA TER INFRASTRUCTURE ................80
G. Ciardi, P. Cipriano
ASSESSING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A X-BORDER SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE EUREGIO
MAAS RHINE ..................................................................................................................................................82
J.D. Bulens, J. Crompvoets, F.R. Kooij, L.A.E. Vullings, A. Ligtenberg
SITAD: FROM A REGIONAL SDI TO A MODEL FOR DELIVERING CROSS-BORDER INFORMATION ON
GEOGRAPHICAL DATA.....................................................................................................................................85
L. Garretti, S.Griffa, R. Lucà
SESSION SDI IMPACTS
A ROAMING-ENABLED SDI (RSDI) OR THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND MARKET
PRESENCE.......................................................................................................................................................87
R.M. Wagner, A. Remke
TRANSPARENCY OF ACCESSIBILITY TO GOVERNMENT-OWNED GEO-INFORMATION ........................................89
F. Welle Donker, B. van Loenen
MOTIIVE EXPERIENCES USING SIMULATION SOFTWARE TO ASSESS SDI COST-BENEFIT ............................97
R.A. Longhorn
TOWARDS THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURES .................................98
M. Craglia, J. Nowak
SESSION REGIONAL SDI
S. I. T. R. TERRITORIAL INFORMATION SYSTEM OF SARDINIA.....................................................................100
G.Pittau, R.Vinelli, M.Salvemini, L.Corvetto
HOW MUNICIPALITIES ARE JOINING REGIONAL SDI: FIRST RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS.............................103
J. Guimet Perenya
NAVARRA IN INSPIRE. INTEGRATION OF SDI AT REGIONAL (IDENA) AND LOCAL
(IDEPAMPLONA) LEVEL.........................................................................................................................104
M. Cabello, P. Echamendi, M.A. Jiménez de Cisneros, A. Valentín
REGIO-GEO.CH – INTER-REGIONAL SPATIAL DATA HUB WITH AUTOMATED DATA SHARING
AND QUALITY CONTROL ......................................................................................................................106
A. Bernath
SESSION DATA SHARING
ELIMINATING OBSTACLES AT THE POINT OF USE: SHARING ORDNANCE SURVEY DATA AMONG PUBLIC
AUTHORITIES IN GREAT BRITAIN .................................................................................................................107
C. Hadley, N. Sutherland
INSPIRE AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS – A THUNDERSTORM OR A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT?...........108
K. Janssen
DATA LENDING FACILITY – THE INNOVATIVE DOWNLOAD SERVICE OF THE FINNISH NSDI........................110
T. Toivonen, R. Kalliola, E. Ennola
AVAILABILITY OF GOVERNMENTAL GEO-INFORMATION, COMPLICATIONS IN PRACTICE..............................113
H. Nobbe
SESSION CLOSING PLENARY AND WRAP-UP
HOW TO KEEP REBUILDING A SDI ? – THE PORTUGUESE EXPERIENCE .........................................................114
R. P. Julião
iii

SESSION SDI
INSPIRE from the National and Regional Perspective: Survey among the
SDI stakeholders in the Czech Republic
E. Pauknerova, P. Tryhubova
1 Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy
2 Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic
Keywords: Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE),
implementation, challenges and benefits, capacity building
This paper introduces an element of INSPIRE related capacity building, which is under development by the
SDI Unit (JRC) in 2006. It presents results of a survey realized in Prague in March 2006, which aimed to
measure the perception of INSPIRE from different users points and specify the areas of concern, and
information needs. The results and experience from the Prague event underpin the guidelines proposal for
organizing future national Information Days in other Member States and Acceding Countries.
Mapping the key-players, achievements and institutional framework in the field of geographic information and
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and surveying of user views has been accompanying the INSPIRE
development process since its very beginning. See the GINIE project on Geographic Information Network in
Europe, www.ec-gis.org/ginie; and the SDI State of Play reports for individual countries of Europe,
http://inspire.jrc.it/state_of_play.cfm , as examples of medium term activities.
Analyzing responses of Spatial Data Interest Communities (SDICs) and Legal Mandate Organizations (LMOs)
to the INSPIRE Call for interest in 2005 provided the practical feed-back helping to better understand the
INSPIRE users, their concerns and expectations, or to detect the stakeholders, which lack in the process. The
under-representation of local governments, and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the INSPIRE
development was recognized this way in 2005.
Therefore in the middle of March 2006, the INSPIRE Pilot seminar and workshop were held in Prague, Czech
Republic, as the 1st stage of the INSPIRE & SDI capacity building activities of the JRC Enlargement and
Integration Program for this year. This national event on INSPIRE was successfully co-organized by JRC and
two national partner organizations: Nemoforum and CENIA. One hundred participants (mainly managers and
high-senior officials) represented a scale of SDI stakeholders in the Czech Republic.
INSPIRE development was described from different views and over 10 SDIs (or SDI elements) existing on
national and regional levels were introduced in the INSPIRE context, see: http://www.cuzk.cz/nemoforum The
accompanying survey of concerns, expectations and information needs was done on the first day and provided
a basis for debates and information services planning on the second day.
The follow-up analysis of the
responses provided by a third of
participants of this event gives an
entire overview about the INSPIRE
related ‘environment’ in one
country. The evaluation of the
Czech SDI stakeholders’ responses
to 13 questions is summed up and
illustrated by a series of graphs (see
examples on positive and negative
aspects of INSPIRE).
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Private companies
1
What is seen as positive on INSPIRE
Universities
Foreign guests
Regional Authorities
Geodesy&Cartography Sector
Other public sector bodies
Avoiding data dupplications
Standardization - unified rules
Data harmonization
Coordination & cooperation of
organizations within the EU, CR
Sharing of geodata

Conclusions
The high number of competent
participants on 14 and 15 Mach,
which represented the entire
spectrum of GI and SDI
stakeholders in the Czech
Republic, reflects the interest in
the development and future
implementation of INSPIRE. It
became obvious, that the
infrastructures of spatial data and
information which had been
developed on regional level or with
focus on a specific theme or
services, started to be considered
as an element of broader national
or/and European context.
SESSION SDI
What you dislike on/in INSPIRE
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Private companies
Universities
Foreign guests
Regional Authorities
Geodesy&Cartography Sector
Other public sector bodies
Low awareness, lack of
information
Unclear funding
Slow development
Unclear legal environment
“Narrow” environmental view
Difficulty to find a consensus
Broad aims, more
interpretations
The foreseen INSPIRE Directive is expected positively, in particular as a needed legal and coordination
framework. The responders believe that it might help bridging or removing barriers between sectors and
institutions.
Many responders expressed their interest to take an active part in the INSPIRE development and
implementation planning process. Several ways were therefore debated during the Prague meetings:
participation in the reviewing (or testing) of the drafted IRs via registered SDIC/LMO and JRC;
informed participation in the national implementation planning process coordinated by CENIA and MICR;
using Nemoforum, the national platform for spatial information and cadastre, for horizontal communication.
A set of awareness-raising activities was defined to be developed by different stakeholder groups in the near
future.
The results and experience, which have been developed thanks this Czech seminar and workshop, will further
serve to elaborate a methodology and awareness raising materials to be used for the future INSPIRE
Information Days in other MSs and Acceding countries.
References:
Annoni A. et al., 2005. Analysis of the Results of the INSPIRE Call for expression of Interest. http://www.ecgis.org/Workshops/11ec-gis/presentations/04annoni.pdf
Craglia M. et al. (Eds.) 2003. GI in the Wider Europe. http://www.ec-gis.org/ginie/doc/ginie_book.pdf
Pauknerova, E. (Ed) 2006. INSPIRE Users Perspective: Analysis of the SDICs’ and LMOs’ Expectations and
Concerns Survey., Report (JRC, ESDI Action)
Pauknerova, E. et Tryhubova, P. (Ed) 2006. INSPIRE and SDI in the Czech Republic. Report (JRC, ESDI
Action)
Probert, M. (Ed), 2003. Survey of key GI players within Europe. http://www.ecgis.org/ginie/doc/ginie_key_players_finalv2.pdf
Vandenbroucke, D., 2005. Spatial Data Infrastructures in Europe: State of play Spring 2005. Summary report
of a study commissioned by the EC (EUROSTAT & DGENV). http://inspire.jrc.it/state_of_play.cfm
Wolfkamp, A. (Ed), 2003. Survey of National Geographic Information Associations in Europe.
http://www.ec-gis.org/ginie/doc/NASurvey_Publish.pdf
2

SESSION SDI
The Spirit of INSPIRE lives in the Austrian Ministry of Life
F. Lux, W. Fahrner, T. Zelenka
1 umweltbundesamt, Vienna, Austria
2 BMLFUW, Vienna, Austria
3 LFRZ, Vienna, Austria
Executive Summary
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (BMLFUW) provides WebGIS
Applications which prove that INSPIRE principles make sense in the real GIS world. Services are available
for the public as well as for the assistance of the daily business of the Ministry. The Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry, Environment and Water Management, in short Ministry of Life, has the experience as a data producer
as well as a data user. It is best prepared to do the work for the implementing rules and to transpose the
INSPIRE directive into national law.
The Ministry of Life (The official name, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water
Management, describes the responsibilities of the Ministry) decided to use WebGIS Applications in order to
benefit from GIS as part of its daily business. The main application for the Ministry itself is called eGIS.
The eGIS application has been developed by the LFRZ. The goal of eGIS is to provide every employee with
harmonised and selected spatial data, as long as he works for the Ministry. Additionally it offers the possibility
to include spatial data from his own department.
The available data are part of the spatial data themes listed in INSPIRE. For the purpose of orientation, Georeferenced
image data of the Earth’s surface (INSPIRE Annex II) are used. These data are overlaid with
Cadastral parcels (INSPIRE Annex II), Administrative Units (INSPIRE Annex I) and Hydrography (INSPIRE
Annex I). Furthermore Bio-geographical regions (INSPIRE Annex III), Soil (INSPIRE Annex III) etc. are
included.
Some data are bought from different data producers, and it is the aim of the Ministry to obtain the most
comprehensive licence to guarantee that the data can be used for the whole Ministry. Other data are developed
in co-operation e.g. with the federal provinces and the rest is produced by the Ministry itself or related
organisations, like the umweltbundesamt – the expert institution for environmental information in Austria.
To comply with the contracts about data-sharing and to ensure confidentiality - where needed - the different
parts of the application are password-protected. To obtain a password, every employee has to prove that he
needs the spatial information for his work for the Ministry.
For the public use special applications are provided like GeoInfo. According to the terms of use, there is a
different pool of geodata.
How does eGIS match the five principles of INSPIRE?
Data should be collected once and maintained at the level where this can be done most effectively*
eGIS does not produce data twice. It searches for the best data and includes them in its own system. The LFRZ
has the experience to store and maintain the data, respecting the present legal framework.
It should be possible to combine seamlessly spatial data from different sources and share it between many
users and applications*
As already mentioned the eGIS combines spatial data of different producers and offers different applications
for the specific requirements of different departments and institutions.
Spatial data should be collected at one level of government and shared between all levels*
The umweltbundesamt is a customer of the LFRZ and a contractor to the Ministry of Life. Therefore the
umweltbundesamt has the possibility to include the spatial data in its own analyses in an easy and legally
correct way. E.g. the umweltbundesamt is the expert institution for contaminated sites. Some boundaries of
contaminated sites are related with the boundaries of cadastral parcels. Therefore the parcels, which are
collected by the BEV, bought by the Ministry of Life, stored at the LFRZ and used by the umweltbundesamt
help to produce a new data quality for contaminated sites. The results of the analyses can be sent back to the
LFRZ and can be used by other institutions and the public.
3

SESSION SDI
Spatial data needed for good governance should be available on conditions that are not restricting its extensive
use*
Respecting the present legal framework, the Ministry of Life bought the data with the option - where possible -
to use them for all related institutions, as long as they do their work as a contractor of the Ministry. Therefore
the data can be used in a fast and effective way with minimal effort.
Under the umbrella of the Ministry the Spirit of INSPIRE is working.
It should be easy to discover which spatial data is available, to evaluate its fitness for purpose and to know
which conditions apply for its use*
The eGIS application is clearly structured, so it is easy to use and leads even unexperienced GIS users to best
results. Fitness for purpose is defined by the experts that develop and improve the application.
Conclusions
From the point of view of GIS for the environment, the Spirit of INSPIRE is working in the Ministry of Life.
The eGIS Coordinators and the involved institutions prove how thematic experts can work together and
produce GIS analyses without losing time for negotiations about licenses and money. In Austria the Ministry
of Life has the experience how INSPIRE can work.
To transpose the INSPIRE Directive into national law and to define useful and effective implementing rules
will be a demanding challenge. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management
and its partners are prepared to do the work.
Web References
*) http://inspire.jrc.it/principles_en.html (29. March 2006)
4

SESSION SDI
Will INSPIRE come up to all expectations?
R. Gissing
Federal Office of Metrology and Surveying, Vienna, Austria
A few years ago, after the aims and principles of the INSPIRE initiative had been published and the benefits of
a comprehensive European spatial data infrastructure had been anticipated, almost everybody and each
institution within the “spatial data community” was filled with hope that a new age, a golden one, of
producing, maintaining, disseminating and using spatial data and services was about to arise. In accordance
with the different roles, tasks and intentions of the various groups of stakeholders, INSPIRE stimulated the
growth of different expectations in a remarkable extent as well. These differences may be seen as the main
reason for the difficulties in the co-decision process for a final INSPIRE directive.
In order to overcome these obstacles it might be helpful to identify the different expectations and requirements
and to point out the relevant conditions regarding technical, organisational, financial and legal aspects. Taking
into account all these facts it should then be possible to create a balanced solution. This presentation tries to
encourage such a process.
The expectations of the producer and the provider of spatial data and services on the one hand focus on setting
European standards for the content and quality of their data and services without losing control over their
national specifications fulfilling individual needs. On the other hand, they expect the establishment of
synchronised access mechanisms and comparable pricing and licensing systems and procedures in order to
increase the use of their spatial data.
The users expect to become fully informed about available data and services, to be able to get adequate
information out of a pool of harmonised data and to choose between the options of downloading data
physically or to use the data via customised services. Availability is expected 24 hours per day and 7 days per
week. The charges for the data and services, if any, have to be minimal, restrictions concerning the re-use and
the dissemination of the data to third parties should not be imposed. One might say that users expect spatial
data and services to be customised for all their different requirements and to pour out of a wall outlet straight
into their computers – easy to use, just like plug ‘n play hard- and software.
INSPIRE relevant conditions comprise inter alia the necessity to distinguish between the basically different
types of data and services. This applies particularly to the fundamental reference data which has to meet the
requirements of the stakeholders of all technical and political sectors and to the thematic data dealing with
specific issues. The different requests concerning these diverse types of spatial data have to be considered
during the discussions of the directive and the drafting of implementing rules.
Another point is the – widely underestimated – complexity of achieving harmonisation and interoperability.
We have to face the fact that automated procedures to generate instantly compatible spatial data from different
sources and producers simply do not exist. Moreover, to interfere with well operating systems and to change
long-term maintained data and its structures without thoroughly anticipating the consequences could endanger
the continuous availability of this data.
Thirdly, all these efforts in order to make INSPIRE come to life will cost a lot of money and require huge
amounts of manpower and technical infrastructure. Even if the figures of the initial impact assessment are
telling the truth and the benefits will be much greater than the expenditures, there is still to be taken into
account that the respective national institutions in the EU member States will have to cope with the additional
expenses.
There are still some other basic conditions influencing the directive and determining the way to its success.
But if we seriously try to regard the circumstances, restrictions and possibilities of all players involved we
eventually will be able to establish the envisaged spatial data infrastructure on the European level.
5

SESSION SDI
SDI Social and Economic Impact. Users’ perspective
F. Salgé, J. Geirinhas, S.Gizzi
EUROGI
Mainly as a result of the activities performed at international and national level in the INSPIRE context,
Spatial Data Infrastructures are now generally recognized as essential tools for:
� allowing the vertical integration of local, regional and National data in an International consistent
framework, through the development of common standards for data content, data access and data
exchange;
� encouraging data sharing and providing easy, consistent and effective access to geographic
information maintained by public agencies;
� promoting the use of geographic information in support of e-government practices and of edemocracy.
However, the specific social end economic impact of the establishment of interoperating SDI’s at European,
National and local level, in different application scenarios and in different countries, has not been fully
analyzed. EUROGI believes that, through its vast representation of GI users and producers, it can contribute to
the collection of information which may prove useful for a formal Socio-economic Impact Assessment of such
infrastructures.
To this purpose, as an initial step, a quick survey is being conducted among the Association members,
concerning the perceived/expected impact of existing, planned and envisaged SDI’s at all institutional levels
and in different application sectors. Benefits of an economic nature are considered as well as those deriving
from an improved capability of assisting and supporting decision making processes, such as those regarding
environmental choices, considering the human welfare aspect.
EUROGI members are first asked to identify, at their best level of knowledge, the main actors in the SDI arena
in their respective countries, to indicate the characteristics of existing national and local existing SDI as well as
plans for future SDI implementation, the interrelationships among them and with European level
infrastructures.
They are then asked to indicate whether, in their view, major benefits are to be expected in areas such as:
� the improved definition of health, environment and risk prevention policies, and the implementation
of more effective ex-ante evaluation, monitoring and ex-post evaluation tools for such policies;
� the support of activities related to policy implementation (e.g. environmental assessments,
establishment of management plans for specific sites or areas, implementation of registration
requirements and granting of permits, establishment of monitoring networks,..);
� more effective and efficient operation of emergency services;
� improved urban planning and urban development control;
� better management of public utilities such as water, gas, electricity and telecommunication networks;
� better planning and management of transport and logistics;
� more effective management and monitoring of agriculture (crop planning, crop growth);
� increased efficiency and competitiveness for industries, operating at local, national and multinational
level, in sectors such as communications, fishing, farming and forestry, mining, property
development; architecture and engineering, surveying, insurance, tourism, etc.;
� better and more accurate analysis of different European markets by commercial data users, leading to
greater competition and creation of new products and services by commercial value added
information providers;
Members are also asked to rank benefits in term of relative importance for their local communities and to
provide any available quantitative evaluation of the expected economic benefits. They are also encouraged to
provide comments and indicate requirements which, in their view, are not satisfied by known SDI
implementations and plans.
The information gathered through the survey shall be available in the next few weeks; it shall be summarized
and. analyzed by EUROGI, with the support of the association Dataset Working and Advisory Group, and the
results shall be the subject of the presentation.
6

SESSION SDI
Framing the evolution of spatial data infrastructures
M. Wachowicz, A. Bregt and J. Crompvoets.
ALTERRA, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Overall, the term infrastructure is widely used for indicating some kind of organised, heterogeneous, and
interdependent components of networked systems that are developed to provide products and services. These
components can be described as being metadata, standards, access, data, policies and institutional frameworks
(Groot and McLaughlin 2000, Williamson et al. 2003). However, Star and Ruhleder (1996) have argued that
infrastructures can not be considered as an arrangement of technological and organisational components, but
instead, they should be seen as “something” that develops in relation to practice. This implies that we should
focus on when “something” becomes an infrastructure rather than what an infrastructure is.
An infrastructure is never developed from scratch because there is always “something” that exists in the form
of organisational practices, social and economical structures, information and communication technologies,
and most often a heterogeneous collection of information systems. One example is given by the Canadian
experiments back in the early 1980’s, when the need for the harmonisation of topographic activities between
federal and provincial agencies has initiated the transfer of spatial data sets among these agencies, and as a
result, the term infrastructure was first used in relation to spatial data (Groot 1997).
The creation of spatial data infrastructures has been characterised by a main focus on dealing with spatial data
sharing rather than the awareness and use of these data sets. Bernard et al. (2005) have recently demonstrated
that the creation of spatial data infrastructures has been mainly concerned with allowing distributed access to
data rather than allowing distributed processing of geo-information products within different sectors of society.
This paper aims at discussing the evolution of spatial data infrastructures in terms of their purpose which has
been a multifaceted process characterised by a combination of factors ranging from an increase of supply of
digital spatial data sets, having the perspective of facilitating the access of spatial databases to improving data
sharing activities among governmental organisations and the private sector. However, it has been the political
interest and leadership that have called attention to the important role of spatial data as the source of geoinformation
for decision making and assessment of policy measures on environmental, social, and economical
issues This evolution also suggests that spatial data infrastructures can vary enormously in terms of their scale
of functioning, from global to national scale, as well as from very specific to generic. Although many
organisations and countries can experience similar organisational problems and challenges in building their
spatial data infrastructures, it is very difficult to identify the driving forces behind a particular development of
a spatial data infrastructure.
The fact that spatial data infrastructures can evolve over a long period of time and be constantly changing their
nature, scale and purpose, has a significant impact on how we can distinguish the measures that describe the
evolution of spatial data infrastructures. When do large-scale GISs become a spatial data infrastructure? When
one or a group of spatial data infrastructures can be considered a regional spatial data infrastructure?
This paper proposes to apply the concepts of information theory to formulate two specific categories of
infrastructures according to their nature, scale and purpose. The aim is to apply these categories to differentiate
the evolution of infrastructure regarding their vertical and horizontal layering. Therefore, the vertical
infrastructure category implies that infrastructures at any point in time rely on a specific networked facility for
delivering data and information to an appropriate community of users. Usually this community of users
belongs to a specific sector of the society, which depends on same standards for ICT functionality, similar
interface design, as well as similar types of products and services.
On the other hand, the horizontal infrastructure category address the structural features for generic design
situations which usually offer one type of service across organisations and sectors, involving various actors to
develop a service, as well as those using this service. The main advantage of this approach is the assumption
that infrastructures can only be identified by matching user requirements within a given context.
This paper also shows that current spatial data infrastructures being developed at the national level can be
considered horizontal data infrastructures providing a distributed access to spatial data sets which are needed
by different users from different public sectors of the society, such as tourism, environmental, transportation,
environmental, and agricultural sectors. They include data producers, standardisation organisations, policy
7

SESSION SDI
makers, research institutes, governmental agencies, and clearinghouses organisations. In general, they focus on
their own sector, and changes in institutional settings are extremely slow with an overall interest to protect
their own interest. They do not differ in terms of purpose as any other horizontal data infrastructure,
predominantly in terms of ICT functionalities and in the domain of policy making, governments tend to
develop general spatial data infrastructure policies for facilitating the sharing of spatial data among different
sectors.
The successful grow of an infrastructure generates changes on their nature, scale, and purpose that in turn, will
demand for adding new extensions to an existing infrastructure or for creating a complete new infrastructure.
Most common is for adding new extensions to an existing infrastructure in the sense that their purpose remains
the same, but the nature and scale are changed. Making or evolving to a new infrastructure means the creation
of a new infrastructure or the change of purpose of an existing infrastructure. The latter usually occurs when
changing from being a horizontal to a vertical infrastructure or vice-versa.
Finally, the paper concludes that spatial data infrastructures are also unique in terms of its evolution process.
This study envisages the evolution of current spatial data infrastructures into the realms of spatial information
infrastructures, which implies the change from data horizontal infrastructures to information vertical
infrastructures. Mainly because the observed trend is not to support generic products (e.g. new data types) for
more users nor improve the quality of spatial data sets, but instead, the trend is focused on developing
complementary geo-information services according to specific needs of a sector and its existing services.
Although large investments have still to be made in the future, geo-information infrastructures having a
vertical structure will provide greater efficiency, more effective analysis and modelling, and as a result, greater
use. It is difficult to identify the driving force behind this particular development, but overall, it is a
combination of the frustration of users and the innovations of technology However, more research is needed to
discover the socio-economical process surrounding such an evolution of spatial data infrastructures.
References
Bernard, L., Craglia, M. Gould, M. and Kuhn, W. (2005). Towards an SDI research agenda. Proceedings of the
11th EC_GIS Conference, Sardinia.
Groot, R. (1997). Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) for sustainable land management. ITC Journal 3/4: 287-294.
Groot, R. and McLaughlin, J. (2000). Geospatial Data Infrastructure: Concepts, Cases and Good Practice.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Star, S.L. and Ruhleder, K. (1996). Information Infrastructure Transition: Challenges with implementing
standardised checklists. Proceedings of 22nd Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia,
T.K. Käkölä (ed.), Finland, pp. 95-110.
Williamson, I., Rajabifard, A., and Feeney, M.E. (2003). Developing Spatial Data Infrastructures: From
Concept to Reality. London: Taylor & Francis.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Bsik Programme – Ruimte voor Geo-informatie (RGI) funding, under the
project Development of framework to assess National Spatial Data Infrastructures, RGI 005.
8

SESSION PEER GROUP
The Importance of Geographic Information in Biodiversity and Nature
Conservation
R.A. Wadsworth, A. Watt
1. CEH Monks Wood, Abbots Ripton, Cambridgeshire PE28 2LS, UK.
e-mail: rawad@ceh.ac.uk
2. CEH Banchory, Hill of Brathens, Banchory, Aberdeenshire, AB31 4BW, UK.
Abstract
All studies of biodiversity and nature conservation make use of Geographic Information. A great deal of
biodiversity research is concerned with extrapolating observations at specific points (geographic place) into
inferred processes (over geographic space). Nature conservation is often crucially concerned with particular
unique locations (such as designated sites), but endless debates rage over how representative these unique sites
are.
The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is the NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) designated data
centre for a wide range of extensive and long-term data sets on biodiversity and the natural environment. The
“flag-ship” of the biodiversity data is Biological Records Centre most of whose 12 million records (on 12,000
species) are accessible through the NBN (national biodiversity network) Gateway project
(http://www.nbn.org.uk). Other major holdings include the four Countryside Surveys conducted in 1978, 1984,
1990 and 2000 (http://www.cs2000.org.uk/) and the two land cover maps LCMGB (Land Cover Map of Great
Britain, part of CS90) (Fuller et al., 1994) and LCM2000 (Land Cover Map 2000, part of CS2000) (Fuller et
al., 2002). CS 2007 and an associated land cover map are in the final planning stages.
Studies of biodiversity and nature conservation can depend on many data sets, which might include habitats,
climate, topography, geology and soils. Activities like the EU initiative INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial
Information in Europe) 1 and the UK Research Councils e-science and GRID initiatives 2 are encouraging
seamless access to data over the Internet. While these initiatives are to be applauded, they are not without
problems;
it is increasingly difficult for the data producer to anticipate who the users of the data are going to be,
data producers seem to expect the data user to share a common understanding of the way the world works and
how it should be characterised,
but it is increasingly less likely that producer and user share a common understanding,
in many cases class descriptions have atrophied to little more than simple labels or ciphers,
the interaction between user and producer necessary to clarify any inconsistencies has been reduced.
The reasons for these problems are not hard to identify. Thirty or forty years ago the map was used to support
a description of the phenomena contained in a detailed survey monograph; a traditional monograph may not be
available to the user and may not even have been produced (Fisher 2003). Not only has the “balance of
power” between the spatial (map) and textual (monograph) changed, but crucially the user may be led to
wrongly treat the map as if it were data (a measurement) and not as information (an interpretation). Over time
scientific knowledge advances, policy objectives change and technology develops these three factors all
contribute to this common problem in the environmental sciences that almost every survey creates a new “base
line” rather than being part of a sequence (Comber et al. 2002; 2003).
Central to the effective use of GI in Biodiversity research and nature conservation within CEH is the new
established Environmental Informatics Programme which has been established
“to provide researchers with access to the coordinated data resources and informatics tools required to deal
with complex, multidisciplinary environmental questions.” It is hoped that the newly established
geoinformatics pillar of the PEER consortium will provide a useful forum to discuss the generic issue of
semantics and ontology of environmental information. Some innovative approaches to the problem of
geographic data to biodiversity problems will be discussed using the issue of land cover as case study.
1 http://eu-geoportal.jrc.it/
2 http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/escience
9

SESSION PEER GROUP
References
Comber, A.J., Fisher, P.F. and Wadsworth, R.A., (2002). Creating Spatial Information: Commissioning the
UK Land Cover Map 2000. pp. 351-362 in Advances in Spatial Data, (eds. Dianne Richardson and
Peter van Oosterom), Springer-Verlag, Berlin
Comber, A., Fisher, P., Wadsworth, R., (2003) Actor Network Theory: a suitable framework to understand
how land cover mapping projects develop? Land Use Policy, 20: 299–309.
Fisher P.F. 2003. Multimedia reporting of the results of natural resource surveys. Transactions in GIS. 7 309-
324
Fuller, R.M., G.B., Groom, A.R. Jones, 1994. The Land Cover Map of Great Britain: an automated
classification of Landsat Thematic Mapper data. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing,
60: 553-562.
Fuller, R.M., G.M. Smith, J.M. Sanderson, R.A. Hill, and A.G. Thomson, 2002. Land Cover Map 2000:
construction of a parcel-based vector map from satellite images. Cartographic Journal, 39: 15-25.
10

SESSION PEER GROUP
Setting up a GI Research Agenda for Environmental Management: The
PEER Experience
M. Wachowicz 1 and S. Labbé 2
1ALTERRA, Wageningen, The Netherlands
2CEMAGREF, Montpellier, France
Much of the spatio-temporal data sets being generated today are from Earth Observation Systems, geopositioning
and tracking, mobile sensors, outcomes of models, and many other sources. Scientists are currently
facing the challenges related to the great increase of data volume of spatio-temporal databases due to
improvements in data acquisition, validation, archiving, and distribution (e.g. instruments, sensors,
computational resources, spatial data infrastructures, and Internet).
Repeated observations have become critical for advancing geomatics to answer environmental, social, and
economical questions- those related to the processes of change. Understanding the causes of these changes,
controlling their impacts on societies and their natural environment, and, at the same time, anticipating
resulting evolutions, are the main challenges for environmental management. Therefore, geo-information is
essential for understanding and modelling environmental processes and, more generally, for supporting
environmental policies.
Two recent initiatives demonstrate the importance of geo-information as a major cross-cutting issue:
� GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems): 61 countries agreed to set up a plan that, over
the next 10 years, aims to set up a worldwide observation system in a way that benefits the
environment as well as mankind (climatic change, sustainable development, risk management, etc.).
GMES is the major European component of GEOSS;
� The EU INSPIRE initiative (INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe) is a step on the way of
establishing an infrastructure for spatial information related to environmental governance and
policies. The goal is to make geographic information from any source (ground, airborne, satellite)
better accessible and appropriated by the general public, through harmonization efforts in the fields of
spatial data specifications, interoperability of spatial data services, and data sharing and disseminating
policies.
The PEER Network (Partnership for European Environmental Research), joining 7 leading national
environmental research centres, is involved in pursuing these research challenges. Through its Geo-
Information Pillar Group, the PEER network is working on connecting researchers and stakeholders to
formulate a vision for future useful geo-information research agenda in support to environmental monitoring
and forecasting on a variety of spatial and temporal scales.
Towards this end, this paper describes the process of setting up such a geo-information research agenda which
has been largely based on the three-space paradigm that has been proposed by Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), a
philosopher of the Marburg school. He describes the human learning process of space and time as a cyclic
dynamic activity of the mind based on its experience: first the space is a perceptual space, observed through
sensors and senses, then an abstract model of space (symbolic space), further to a higher level of concepts
incorporated in an abstract internal space (cognitive space), inducting new ways of observing (cycling back to
the perceptual space).
� The paper shows how the research issues are identified using this paradigm, and how each space is, in
turn, associated to the following domains:
� Monitoring: geo-information contribution to the GEOSS: development of satellite-based (together
with ground and airborne) monitoring systems relating to the management of the environment and
security and their integration with ground-based, ship-borne and airborne components; support to the
production and delivery of GMES data and services.
� Modelling: geo-information contribution to modelling links between economy/environment/society
including market based instruments, externalities, thresholds and developing the knowledge base and
methodologies for sustainability impact assessment on key issues such as land use; social and
economic tensions related to climate change.
� Decision-making support: geo-information contribution to engage environmental decision makers
with researchers to develop and communicate processes and information that help solve or avoid
problems associated with environmental decisions.
11

SESSION PEER GROUP
The design of spatial information systems able to integrate, in a user friendly form, the data, models and
forecasting tools is a major issue to environmental management, and this paper attempts to summarise the
theory, methodologies and tools that have been discussed during the PEER Seminar on Global Earth
Observation and Environmental Monitoring: The Role of Geo-information, which was held in Montpellier,
November 14th-16th 2005. During this seminar, groups of scientists, policy makers, and stakeholders have
delineated the policy issues and research challenges in pursuing such a three-space strategy, as well as the
accomplishment of applying this strategy through the formation of coherent interdisciplinary teams. Teaming
in a wide range of technology development and interdisciplinary activities was crucial to this success, and in
fact, it needs to be closely co-ordinated with sponsoring activities of funding agencies as well as knowledge
transfer activities of the European Networks of Excellence.
12

SESSION PEER GROUP
Landscape Character Assessment as a Basis for Planning and Designing
Sustainable Land Use in Europe
D. Wascher, M. Perez-Soba & S. Mücher
Alterra, Wageningen, The Netherlands
In recent years, Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) has become central to sustainable development and
the management of land. It is recognised as an important tool for policy makers, which provides them with
quantitative and qualitative evidence to reach a dynamic management, adjustable to new demands of regional
identity. LCA is a technique that is scientifically well established, region-specific and stakeholder orientated,
developed by both practitioners and scientists as a toolkit for land use planning and sustainable design. It can
be applied at a range of scales, from the national, though to the regional and local. It may also integrate
landscape character analysis with biodiversity assessments, the analysis of historical character, air, water and
soil quality, and socio-economic functions such as recreation and agriculture. So, in essence Landscape
Character Assessment is primarily concerned with documenting landscape character rather than assigning
quality or value. The latter is considered to be of vital interest for and in the responsibility of stakeholders and
people.
Drawing upon the results of the European Landscape Character Assessment Indicatives (www.elcai.org)
launched by the expert network Landscape Europe in 2003, a series of outputs and targeted products have been
developed. One key output from this initiative was the further elaboration of the European Landscape
Typology Map (LANMAP), a geographic depiction of 375 different landscape types for Pan-Europe,
distributed over 12,000 polygons. The availability of this database and map led to the following applications:
� European assessment of landscape vulnerability in the framework of the project ‘Environmental Risk
Assessment for European Agriculture’ (EnRisk), focusing on the indicators landscape coherence,
landscape diversity and landscape openness. The interpretation of different landscape diversity levels
– deriving from high scores of both Shannon and intrinsic diversity within the same landscape type –
was used as an indication for ‘landscape diversity vulnerability’. In concrete terms, this means that
LANMAP landscape units where very high or very low Shannon diversity is confirmed by equally
high or equally low levels of intrinsic diversity are considered as being vulnerable against certain
agricultural land use changes.
� LANMAP has been recently applied in the comparative study of the transfrontier National Parks of
Arribes del Duero (Salamanca, Spain) and Douro Internacional (Portugal), allowing the stratification
of the territory in landscape types and consequent selection of homogeneous sampling units.
LANMAP facilitated this comparative study because it allowed integrating the existing landscape
typologies from Spain and Portugal which differ in terms of methodology, data and the
conceptualization of landscape.
� The development of a regional profile in the framework of the Integrated Project SENSOR1
(www.sensor-ip.org) as part of the sustainability impact assessment tool set for assessing the effects
of land use changes. The activities included a clustering of administrative regions on the basis of
socio-economic data and LANMAP information, aiming at the development of 30 to 40 regional
clusters which are going to form the basis for developing indicator sets and thresholds for the final
profiling of regions.
� The operationalisation of the landscape functional approach for SENSOR, integrating socio-economic
as well as bio-physical data when identifying thresholds and critical limits of sustainability. Again
LANMAP data and additional data sets provide the key input to geographically present the relations
between land use and landscape functions, opening the possibility to specify the concept of multifunctionality.
The paper will highlight current results and future perspectives of developing LCA-methods towards a tool in
sustainable planning and design
1 SENSOR = Sustainability Impact Assessment: Tools for Environmental, Social and Economic Effects of
Multifunctional Land Use in European Regions
13

SESSION PEER GROUP
European Environment Agency SDI – progress and plans to support the
implementation of a shared environmental information system
M.P. Lund, J. Bliki, A. Sousa, M. Erhard, T. Jessen, C. Steenmans
European Environment Agency, Copenhagen, Denmark
The concept of the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) proposal for the European Environment Agency (EEA)
was drafted in 2002. Since then, EEA has gradually implemented the different components of its SDI, in line
with the visions from Agenda 21, the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association and the INSPIRE
proposal.
EEA focuses on the production, dissemination and quality assurance of environmental thematic geospatial
datasets to support integrated assessment and reporting on Europe’s environment. Priority is given to transboundary
issues. A number of services are provided spanning from metadata discovery over geospatial view
services to download facilities, in line with the vision and principles of INSPIRE.
For a number of years the EEA dataservice at http://dataservice.eea.eu.int/ has been the place where all
datasets compiled or used by EEA are stored, geospatial as well as tabular data. Analytical products like maps
and graphs are also stored here. Metadata are published for each dataset, map or graph and a download facility
is available. A quality label based on ISO19113/4 reporting was recently introduced for European datasets
produced by EEA. The EEA dataservice serves both as an archive internally and as a discovery and download
service for its users, i.e. the European Information and Observation Network (EIONET), European
Commission and Parliament, the public, etc. The dataservice is widely used with at present on average 6000
downloads per month for geospatial datasets alone. Still improvements on metadata and user friendliness can
be achieved.
The EEA metadata standard for geographic information (EEA-MSGI) has been in operation for three years
now. The MSGI is a profile of ISO 19115 and along with an EEA metadata editor and a metadata tool package
it supports the documentation of workflows of geospatial data handling at EEA. Improvements that would
allow for the XML-based metadata to be discovered independently of the metadata provided on EEA
dataservice would need further development.
Since December 2004 prototype view services have been developed. The success of these web map viewers
comes from a tool box concept developed by EEA that allows re-use of the same standard components in
different map services. Thereby the user requirements have been separated from the technology which is a
huge advantage for developing and maintaining the services. The toolbox includes customized layout and
querying. In the longer perspective harmonized tools for analyses will be added. In 2003 EEA had five
operational view services. In 2006 it will be more than 30 operational services. The view services are
developed to facilitate access to environmental information related to nature, emissions, land cover, air quality,
water, etc., and they rely on high quality, harmonised European data that are related to core geographic
reference data.
Direct access to geospatial data between EEA, based in Copenhagen, and its European topic centre on
terrestrial environment, based in Barcelona, has been installed as a first step towards distributed information
management. The advantages of improved data management, maintenance and exchange are manifold, but
poses at the same time new challenges regarding versioning standards and notification services.
Key EEA products and services such as the recent ‘The European environment - State and outlook 2005’
report, the indicator management system, the reporting mechanisms on sectors and environment (i.e.
agriculture, transport, energy) are more and more using SDI as the backbone for data and information
management. These concrete products and services helped EEA to overcome most of today’s technical
challenges for implementation of a spatial data infrastructure and are paving the way towards an operational
shared environmental information system in Europe.
Papers, documentation and tools for geospatial data and SDI developed by EEA are available from
www.eionet.eu.int/gis.
14

SESSION PEER GROUP
Contaminated Environments, Risk Assessment and Remediation
Strategies
B. Münier, S. Gyldenkærne, P.B. Sørensen, M. Thomsen, P. Fauser
National Environmental Research Institute, Denmark
Risk assessment of chemical substances has been an area of increasing concern for many years, in the
beginning mainly related to risks posed by specific substances to humans and to the environment. Recently,
the area of risk assessment has been extended to cumulative effects including other types of stressors, such as
climate, habitat fragmentation, soil quality etc., and human, modified as well as natural ecosystems. The
spatial dimension within risk assessment is thus critical for the cumulative risk assessment. The development
of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and tools for spatial analysis and modelling has substantially
supported this development by greatly improving capabilities for collection, analysis and presentation of
geographical phenomena and data. Ongoing activities are needed, where improvements in GI-technologies and
modelling approaches are adopted to support of cumulative risk assessment through risk mapping.
This paper presents examples of risk mapping and first tasks regarding cumulative risk assessment recently
carried out in Denmark, mainly provided by the ongoing EU research project 'Nomiracle' (NOvel Methods for
Integrated Risk Assessment of CumuLative stressors in Europe). The aim of the 'Nomiracle' project is to assess
cumulative risks from combined chemical exposures of humans and the environment together with stressors
originating from natural and landscape conditions. Denmark features a unique combination of especially
explicit large-scale data on sector activities and monitoring data, together with other detailed spatial data,
which are available for the entire country. Examples cover pesticide emissions from agricultural production,
emissions from road transport and heating and from industry. Exposure is to freshwater ecosystems and
humans and related to value and vulnerability indicators of ecosystems.
Along with this overview, preliminary results exist regarding mapping of potential risks occurring from
pesticide application in agricultural production. Initial investigations of the relationship between the
occurrences of specific groups of freshwater invertebrates indicate negative correlation of Gammarus Pulex
with agricultural activities around the streams. The study was based upon species counts from 80 selected
freshwater monitoring stations, which have been correlated against modelled agricultural activity and pesticide
application within a buffer zone of 50 m on both sides of the water courses for an area until 1km upstream of
the monitoring stations. This has been held up against a nation-wide characterisation and risk assessment of
catchments for the whole of Denmark with regard to agricultural production and target water quality for
Danish streams and other watercourses.
Risk analysis and mapping help scientists explore and understand the nature and effects of environmental
stressors. Risk maps and new technologies like web-based risk assessment must be expected to form powerful
tools to communicate results of complex environmental risk assessment to stakeholders and the public in the
near future. Anyway, there still is a great lack of knowledge mainly regarding the spatial implication of fate
and transport of substances and other stressors, and on their effect on the environment.
Acknowledgement: This research was financially supported by the European Union (European Commission,
FP6 Contract No. 003956). 'NoMiracle' is an Integrated Project (IP) to Call FP6-2003-Global-2. Priority
1.1.6.3 of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6): ‘Global Change and Ecosystems’ Topic VII.1.1.a
(‘Development of risk assessment methodologies’), see: http://nomiracle.jrc.it/default.aspx.
15

SESSION NATIONAL SDI
PortalU – A New Nationwide Portal to
Environmental Information in Germany
T. Vögele, M. Klenke, F. Kruse
Coordination Center PortalU, Hannover, Germany
Introduction
Since May 2006, PortalU (http://www.portalu.de), the new national internet portal for environmental
information in Germany, is online. PortalU is the latest in a series of digital information systems that have
been set up by the environmental administration in Germany to improve public access to environmental
information (Bilo 2000, Kruse 2003, Vögele 2003). One of the driving forces behind these efforts is the EUdirective
2004/3/EC on public access to environmental information (KOM 2003). This directive requires
government institutions on all levels of the administrative hierarchy to make almost all existing environmental
information freely accessible to the public. Only in a few cases is it possible to reject an information request
issued by a European citizen. The directive explicitly points to the Internet as a means to implement the
necessary measures and implies a pro-active implementation strategy: To avoid being flooded by information
requests, at least the most important information and data should be made available “actively”, i.e. online, in a
user-friendly, systematic and understandable way.
Most government agencies in Germany do have informative and well-designed web-sites. However, due to the
complex structure of the administration, to find information about a specific environmental topic is still not
easy. Before they can scan the available thematic information, information-seekers often have to answer a
number of questions: Which agency is responsible for this topic? Is it a federal, a state or a municipal agency?
Where on the web-site of the responsible agency do I find information about my specific problem? Who within
the agency can assist me and provide further information and access to the actual data? To provide one central
national focal point for environmental inquiries is the task of PortalU. The portal offers a common framework
for all government-owned environmental information in Germany. Under one central internet address, PortalU
offers access to environmental information held by public authorities on different levels of the administrative
hierarchy1. Following the definitions given in the EU-Directive, environmental information in PortalU is not
limited to “classic” topics like “waste”, “water”, or “natural protection”. It also includes environmentally
relevant information related to, among others, human health and cultural heritage. Likewise, the “public
authorities” that participate in PortalU are not only government agencies, but are also private firms that have
public responsibilities and functions.
PortalU and the INSPIRE Directive
Although the development of PortalU was primarily targeted towards the implementation of EU-Directive
2003/4/EC, the relevance of the infrastructure for the upcoming INSPIRE initiative is evident: Most of the
environmental information covered by PortalU has some sort of relation to geographic space, and a
considerable part of it can be classified as “geospatial” in a more narrow sense. The close interrelation between
environmental and geospatial information is documented in the three annexes of the proposed INSPIRE
directive. Most of the INSPIRE topics not related directly to reference data are covered by PortalU.
PortalU taps into geospatial data resources nationwide and on different levels of the administrative hierarchy.
Considerable efforts were needed to build the supporting technical and organisational infrastructure. Given the
large overlap between environmental information accessible through PortalU and the thematic geospatial data
defined in the INSPIRE annexes, PortalU is predestined to become an important player in Germany’s
implementation of the INSPIRE directive.
On a technical level, the PortalU software was equipped with a number of features that will support
contribution to a national spatial data infrastructure (Klenke, 2006):
� ISO-compatible data catalog: The data catalog integrated in PortalU uses a metadata schema that is
compatible with the ISO’s international standards for the description of geospatial data (Swoboda
1999, Karschnik 2003). Through active observation of the INSPIRE process and participation in the
1
As of 2006, participation in PortalU is limited to public authorities on the federal and state levels. Regional
authorities will be included at a later stage.
16

SESSION NATIONAL SDI
development of the INSPIRE implementing rules, the institutions behind PortalU ensure the future
compatibility of the PortalU metadata schema with the INSPIRE directive.
� Standardized catalog interface: Build-in interfaces based on the specifications issued by the Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC) ensure that the PortalU and the built-in data catalog can communicate
with other catalogs and search clients (OGC 2004). PortalU will be connected as a data source to the
information portal of the German spatial data infrastructure, GeoPortal.bund
(http://geoportal.bkg.bund.de/), and may be linked directly into a European INSPIRE infrastructure in
the future. On the other hand, PortalU may function as a portal to other OGC-compatible data
catalogs in such an infrastructure. Through PortalU, users may then have access to geospatial
reference data that are relevant for specific environmentally motivated tasks.
� Geoportal functionality: PortalU features a built-in map-viewer to visualize and query geospatial data
sets. Web mapping services that are described in the data catalog and found through the PoralU
search function may be selected and displayed directly in the PortalU map-viewer client. The client
also provides access to attribute data associated with the digital maps. As it is possible to overlay
several web mapping services, customized and task-driven digital maps can be created.
� Spatial reference of all content: In the PortalU expert search mode, spatial queries can be specified
either through the map-viewer client, or by entering an appropriate geographic identifier. In both
cases, a bounding box is created and used to spatially condition the search query. If a spatial identifier
is entered, the bounding box is determined with the help of the Semantic Network Services (SNS,
Bandholtz 2003). SNS is web-service provided by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA)
in Dessau. It consists of an environmental thesaurus and a geothesaurus (which is very similar to a
gazetteer) that covers the area of Germany. SNS is also used to determine the spatial context of webpages
and other unstructured text. Based on this function, spatial searches in PortalU do not only
cover “true” geospatial data sets (i.e., digital maps, plans etc.), but also content like reports, legal
texts, and other documents with an indirect reference to geographic space.
Summary and Conclusions
PortalU was developed primarily to help the environmental administration in Germany implement the EU-
Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information. The portal offers a nationwide one-stop
access to environmental information distributed over different levels of the administrative hierarchy. Because
there is an extensive thematic overlap in the data covered by directive 2003/4/EC and the proposed INSPIRE
Directive, PortalU will also play an important role for the implementation of the latter. For one, it provides the
organizational infrastructure needed to publish geospatial thematic data as requested by INSPIRE. In addition,
the technical features of PortalU make it possible to integrate the portal in INSPIRE-type infrastructures.
Literature
Bandholtz T. (2003): Erstellung eines semantischen Netzwerkservice (SNS) für das Umweltinformationsnetz
Deutschland (gein®). Abschlussbericht, Umweltbundesamt.
Bilo M. and Streuff H. (2000): Das Umweltinformationsnetz Deutschland - GEIN2000 - Fachliche
Anforderungen an ein Forschungs- und Entwicklungsvorhaben. 3rd workshop Hypermedia im
Umweltschutz, Ulm.
Karschnick O., Kruse F., et al. (2003): The UDK and ISO 19115 Standard. In: Proceedings of the 17th
International Conference Informatics for Environmental Protection EnviroInfo 2003, Cottbus, Germany
Klenke, M., Kruse, F., Lehmann, H., Riegel, T. and Vögele, T. (2006): InGrid 1.0 – The nuts and bolts of
PortalU. Submitted to: EnviroInfo2006, Graz, Austria.
KOM (2003): Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on
Public Access to Environmental Iinformation. In: Official Journal of the European Union, L 41/26,
14.2.2003.
Kruse F., Karschnick O., et al. (2003): gein® - Planning the next generation. In: Proceedings of the 17th
International Conference “Informatics for Environmental Protection”. Cottbus, Germany
OGC (2004): OpenGIS® Catalogue Services Specification 2.0 - ISO19115/ISO19119 Application Profile for
CSW 2.0. Voges U. and Senkler K. (eds.), OpenGIS® Catalogue Services Application Profile, OGC
04-038r1, Version 0.9.2, 2004-07-12.
Swoboda W., Kruse W., et al. (1999): The UDK Approach: the 4th Generation of an Environmental Data
Catalogue Introduced in Austria and Germany, Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Meta-Data Conference,
Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Vögele T., Kruse F. and Karschnick O. (2004): Sharing Environmental Data with gein®. In: Proceedings of
the 18th International Conference Informatics for Environmental Protection EnviroInfo 2004, Geneva,
Switzerland.
17

SESSION NATIONAL SDI
GI & SDI as part of national and federal eGovernment– Status and
Perspective for the work of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry
A. Fritzsche,
Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) for Munich and Upper Bavaria,
Max-Joseph-Straße 2, D-80333 Munich,
fritzsche@muenchen.ihk.de, http://www.muenchen.ihk.de, http://www.sisby.de
Introduction
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) for Munich and Upper Bavaria is like any 81Chambers in
Germany a self-administering body under public law for any individual company of industry, trade and
services. Every company in Germany is member of a Chamber of Industry and Commerce, besides crafts
enterprises, professionals and agricultural enterprises. The Chamber of Industry and Commerce represents,
democratically authorised, every particular industrial sector independent from the size of the enterprise. The
main tasks are the representation of interests concerning economy, sovereign functions and assistance for
companies.
The German State has assigned to the Chambers certain tasks which would be in its own responibility like, e.g.
vocational and professional training, issuing and authentication foreign trade documents. In the spatial context
of public functions of the chambers have to make assessments or expert opinions for planning and business
development on local, regional and state level. Against that background it is obvious that the chambers are part
of eGovernment. Also the geographic information has its vital role to play in the economic and social
development of a modern, efficient state. Due to the assigned functions and various services of the Chambers
there is a significant demand of standarized interchanges and services of GI & SDI.
Steps toward SDI in Germany
The German Government recognized relevance of SDI to the national economy and regarding to “cut the red
tape” of GI. Thus a governmental commission already in 1998 established the IMAGI (Interministerial
Committee for Geo Information). On the poltical level in 2003 the CEOs of the Federation and States together
with the Federal State Secretaries for eGovernment set up a new organisational structure, called GDI-DE ®
(Geodateninfrastruktur Deutschland) to promote the development of a German National Spatial Datainfrastructure
and creating an adjusted concept according to ESDI.
One of the fundamental elements of GDI-DE are the harmonisation and implementation of all necessary
geodata with the required services through the internet. To improve cooperation between the Federal States
GDI-BY (Geodateninfrastruktur Bayern) is one of 16 representatives of the German SDI. In this state
initiatives the CCI for Munich and Upper Bavaria is a member in Bavaria of GDI-BY.
On the conceptional level, a kind of interface between Administration and Industry the Commission of
Geoinformation Business (Kommission für Geoinformationswirtschaft, GIW-K) was established in 2004 by
the former Ministry of Economics and Labor (now Technology) where besides most of the GI-interested
associations also the Association for German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) is integrated. On
the conceptional level both, GDI-DE und GIW-K implemented pilot projects following the idea „some-for-all“
based on international standards to get technology and knowledge transfer between Federation, States and
Municipalities.
CCI & SDI first steps on National - Practical Steps on Federal State Level
The DIHK and the CCI for Munich and Upper Bavaria are involved in “Administrative Borders” a subproject
of the Landuse-Project at the GIW-K. Main target in this subproject is the promotion of nation-wide
standarized geowebservices (WMS) for spatial base data and if relevant for economy or site information,
spatial thematic data. These services should be based on practical, uniform contracts with simple billing
models (flaterates) for easy access of the users. In this subproject Bavaria has been selected as a starting
region.
On Federal State level the Land Surveying Office Bavaria already offers (in the framework of GDI-BY)
stanardized OGC-conform WMS for spatial base data and different webbased basic components of GI-
Viewing-Applications for certain topics. GDI-BY is integral part of the eGovernment strategy in Bavaria in
accordance of national and international GI & SDI developments.
18

- Political level
- Conceptional level
Commission for Geoinformation
Economy (GIW-Kommission)
Chair: Ministry of Economics and
Technology
Coordinaton Office GIW-K
Federal Institute for Geosciences and
Natural Resources (BGR)
- Technical level
SESSION NATIONAL SDI
Board of State Secretaries for eGovernment of
Federation and States
Resolutions
consulting
Draft resolutions
Strategic concepts
Steering Committee GDI-DE ®
(Representatives from
Federation, States and
Municipalities)
Problem analysis, resolutions
Coordination Office GDI-DE
cooperation
®
Federal Agency for Cartography and
Geodesy (BKG)
- Data holders and service providers
from public bodies through all administration
levels and private industry
- Working groups, Research groups, Special interest groups
- Industry
- OGC etc.
Figure 1: SDI in Germany
The CCI for Munich and Upper Bavaria uses different GI for its duties and customer services. Therefore GIS
and particularly an OpenIMS is a well-established module at the CCI Munich with three major services or
websites:
� The Site-Information-System Bavaria (SISBY), a marketing instrument of economic development
for municipal industrial sites and properties in Bavaria,
� The Network for Economic Developers in Upper Bavaria (W.I.N.) (Wirtschaftsförderung im Netz
Oberbayern), an integrated Extranet-Application for regional business promotion, and the
Geoinfoservice at the Website CCI Munich.
For instance the area-wide WMS for two layers of Spatial Base Data (1:50.000 and 1:10.000) in SISBY was
the only reasonable way for the bavarian Chambers for an effcient integration with always up-to-date geodata.
In the very fruitful cooperation with the Land Surveying Office Bavaria valuable practical experiences for the
GI-economy and SDI could be transferred to the different adminstrative, technical, conceptional and politcal
levels. It also stretches exemplary the important eGovernment oriented strategy of interoperability by
standardized technologies for citizens, authorities and industry.
The Chambers have an important gateway function with their assigned duties for the Administration on the
one hand and on the other hand the business services for their customers, the companies. Especially for the
CCI Munich as a user and supporter of standardized, easy, and cheap access to GI, SDI is a dominant
economic and location factor.
References
Lenk, Martin (2005): Coordination of the national SDI in Germany. In: 11th EC-GI&GIS Workshop, Alghero,
Italy
Fritzsche, Andreas; Markus Spring (2005): OpenGIS in action - Field-tested Web Map Services (WMS) and
experiences with Web Feature Services (WFS) -. In: CORP2005, Wien.
Fritzsche, Andreas; Markus Spring (2004): The use of OpenGIS in the public Sector by the example of the
public-public-partnership - City of Munich and Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Munich and
Upper Bavaria. In: CORP2004, Wien.
Spring, Markus; Andreas Fritzsche (2003): INSPIRE the users. A twofold evaluation of new possibilities,
demonstrated by means of a free software mapserver. In: ESDI: Serving the user, 9th EC-GI&GIS
Workshop, European Comission, La Coruna, Spain.
19

SESSION NATIONAL SDI
Geodata Distribution Nationwide - Geoportal of Czech Land Survey
Office
R. Widz, J. Havas, V. Spacek, J. Svaty
Intergraph Poland, EU Government Unit
Intergraph Czech Republic, EU Government Unit
Intergraph Czech Republic, Land Survey Office
Intergraph Czech Republic, Land Survey Office
The Czech Land Survey Office is a central administrative body for surveying with nationwide competence,
based in Prague. As a part of its activities, it also administres basic map series and thematic map series
specified by the Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre and the Fundamental Base of Geographic
Data of the Czech republic (ZABAGED®). Having the national mapping agency responsibility, the Czech
Land Survey Office always strives to improve customer service.
In order to comply with a new legislation requiring free distribution of governmental data to central, regional
and local authorities, and to better support commercial access to nationwide Geodata, in 2004 the Land Survey
Office prepared for introduction of a new service for users of map data allowing publishing of map services in
an internet environment. Part of the Geoportal is ordering of map services and files of ditigal data on the basis
of internet business. Emphasis is put on maximum usability of provided map services in public administration,
particularly in GIS systems of regional offices. The Geoportal contains a set of services and clients making
accessible data from data storage to a wide group of users. It has two cohesive parts: the so-called Commercial
Module and Portal of Map Services.The Commercial Module makes highly effective provision of data issued
in separate files not only in existing vector and raster formats, but also, for example, in GML format. The Map
Services allows for on-line access to map data administered by the Land Survey Office via the internet.
On the June 1st 2005 the operation of Land Survey Office Map Services started. The free accessible WMS
service with demonstration data can be tried free of charge by the GeoViewer WMS demo application. The
Land Survey Office also started publishing of metadata information as a map service through the GeoViewer
Metadata.
Types of Provided Map Services:
� WMS service according to OpenGIS WMS 1.1 specification
� ArcIMS service (Image Service and Metadata Service)
Data Sets Included into the Map Services:
� Vector data ZABAGED® (Fundamental Base of Geographic Data of the Czech republic)
� Vector file of administrative and cadastral boundaries
� Raster data of Raster Basic Map RZM 1 : 10 000
� Raster data of Raster Basic Map RZM 1 : 50 000
� Raster data Map of the Czech Republic MCR 1 : 500 000
� Orthophoto of the Czech Republic
The English version of the Geoportal is available at http://geoportal.cuzk.cz/default_en.htm. The project
received "The Best Geo-application of the year 2005" award sponsored by the Minister of Informatics of the
Czech Republic.
20

SESSION NATIONAL SDI
The Spanish SDI: from technological to organizational aspects
A.Rodríguez 1 , P.Abad 1 , E.López 1 , A. Sánchez 1 , J.A. Alonso 1
1 Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Madrid, Spain
Abstract
The Spanish SDI, named IDEE for Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de España, coordinated by the National
Geographic High Council, is open in Internet since July 2004 (www.idee.es) offering five main services at the
moment: Gazetteer, Web Map Service (WMS), Metadata Catalogue (CSW), Web Feature Service (WFS) and
Web Coverage Service (WCS). It integrates under its umbrella 12 autonomous and local servers
corresponding to regional and municipal SDI initiatives, the server holding cadastre cartography for the whole
Spain, and some services hosted by IGN Spain showing thematic data (statistical data and geological
information). The remaining Regional Goverments are planning and developing web services, geoportals and
SDI projects to be connected in an interoperable environment in IDEE in a short time.
IDEE can be seen as a SDI made of other SDI, because of the structure of Spanish government decentralized
in three main levels with a high level of responsibilities and self-government: the General Government; 17
Regional Goverments and 2 Autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla); and more than 8,100 Municipalities. The
idea is to integrate the servers, services, nodes, Gateways and resources of all SDI initiatives in Spain in a fully
distributed, polycentric, open, interoperable system. Each individual SDI shall have at least three minimum
services: Catalogue (CSW), Gazetteer (Gaz) and Web Map Service (WMS). Every Geoportal of IDEE will be
able to perform a waterfall searching in all the resources catalogues included in its area of responsibility, or in
the Gazetteers of its area, and will be also able to view, overlay and analyze the results of those previous
searching. In next future it will be possible to chain geospatial services in more and more complex
functionalities.
We consider the Spanish SDI as a collective work produced by all the relevant actors in the Spanish GI sector:
universities; general , regional and local governments; private companies; users,…All of them contributes in
some way to create the atmosphere, framework and conditions needed for the project. Especially important is
the role played by regional initiatives in Spain, covering its area of responsibility, fostering user’s
communities, involving local level and developing powerful and well established SDI. Is necessary also to
mention the essential contribution to IDEE of the University of Zaragoza that, under the umbrella of a
Agreement Collaboration with the National Geographic of Spain, has developed most of the technology for the
project.
The result is a collective synergetic system, a National SDI, with some emerging properties. It has some
characteristics and behaviour which are not present in any of its component nodes. Those characteristics only
appear in the whole system, are a consequence of the free and synergetic cooperation of components, and are
called emergent, in a similar way to a hive that shows a most clever behaviour than a single bee.
From the technical point of view, the project has reached some kind of matureness and after having
implemented the basic services now the challenge is to expand functionality in new directions such as:
� To develop analysis services oriented to query, analyze and exploit geographic data served by
standard services (WFS, WCS), e.g.: surface analysis, network analysis, DTM analysis. The goal is to
make real the vision of an SDI as an actual “GIS implemented on Internet”.
� To implement distributed catalogue services, based on harvesting metadata using standard
specification Catalogue Service for the Web.
� To link effectively statistical alphanumeric data managed by INE (National Statistics Institute) to GI
managed via the Spanish SDI.
� To use WMS services taken into account the temporal dimension.
� To collaborate in the development of new, dormant or not sufficiently implemented and proved OGC
interoperability specifications, such as Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), Geolinked Data Access
Service (GDAS), Geolinking Service (GLS), IntClient.
� To develop applications oriented to give accessible services from mobile phones and PDAs.
Overall, the main problems and pitfalls for the development of the project are now more on the organizational
side and are related with the outreach and promotion of INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in
Europe) philosophy, the first step of a broad multi-sectorial iniciative to create an SDI of all Europe.
21

SESSION NATIONAL SDI
The times change and the way to work with the geographic information is affected by these changes, the SDI
is a result of this evolution. From our point of view the main problem is to promote the use and applications of
SDI technologies and services in solving geographic data requirements of users in almost all activities sectors:
universities, private companies, public government as well as in different thematic and applications:
environment, road transport and so on.
There is an enormous potential community of SDI users to be discovered, built and fostered and we are sure
that this new technology is going to help them to satisfy their information requirements.
In this communication all the aspects mentioned are presented and analyzed in detail, in relation with the
present and the future of the development of Spanish Spatial Data Infrastructure.
22

SESSION NATIONAL SDI
Strengths and weaknesses in Geospatial Data Infrastructure in Romania
A. Ionita, I. Nedelcu, S. Andrei, V. Chendes, V. Craciunescu, M. Bichir, V. Gancz
1 Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Romanian Academy
2 Romanian Space Agency
3 Romanian Space Agency
3 National Hydrology and Water Management Institute
4 National Authority for Meteorology, GIS&RemoteSensingLaboratory
5 Romanian Standards Association
6 Forestry Research and Management Institute
Despite a large number of experts having important activity and enough resources to initiate programs or
projects related to geospatial data infrastructures implementation exists, this type of infrastructure doesn’t
really exist. On one hand, some positive effects can be mentioned from this, such as the existing large number
of geospatial data producers and users. On the other hand, isolated work and the lack of communication leaded
to existing situation in which many versions exists for the same datasets, without metadata.
This paper is a point of view regarding the evolution of basic approaches on Geospatial Data Infrastructure in
Romania based on the experience of the experts and the first results from the running projects. In the first
section it is presented the history and evolution of conceptual and strategical approaches. The second section
mentions the legal, organizational/institutional aspects in connection with Geospatial Data Infrastructure. The
next section is dedicated to the presentation of some implementation candidate to Geospatial Data
Infrastructure. Conclusions and lessons to be learned regarding the new steps on the short and medium term
for the development of geospatial data infrastructure are the subject of the last section.
23

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
Distributed Metadata Catalogues
Theory vs. Reality
I. Kanellopoulos, M. Millot, L. Bernard, K. Senkler, U. Voges
1 European Commission – DG Joint Research Centre,
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
2 con terra GmbH
Catalogues of geographic resources are one of the core components of a Spatial Data Infrastructure.
Geographic data catalogues are discovery and access systems that use metadata as the target for query on
geographic information. In addition to catalogues that contain metadata about geospatial data, there are also
catalogues that describe geographic services.
Metadata is the information and documentation, which makes geographic resources understandable and
sharable for users over time. Metadata are usually stored in a catalogue, and accessible to applications and
services via catalogue interfaces.
Catalogues have three essential purposes:
� To assist in the organization and management of diverse geospatial resources for discovery and
access,
� To discover resource information from diverse sources and gather it into a single, searchable location,
and
� To provide a means of locating, retrieving and storing the resources indexed by the catalogue.
The scope of this presentation is to provide a state of the art overview of distributed metadata catalogues based
on a recent project by JRC on “Access to Distributed Catalogue Services”. The project by JRC focused on
catalogue services compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium CSW 2.0 catalogue specification. The
presentation will discuss in particular the problems and technical issues associated with both catalogue
services and related specifications which currently make catalogue interoperability a challenging task.
For the purposes of this work emphasis was given on the diverse solutions that exist for the discovery and
retrieval of metadata for geographic resources from distributed catalogue metadata services. These may also be
distributed catalogues themselves (cascading catalogues) and they may be based on different application
profiles or protocols. These solutions include:
� Real time search of distributed catalogues. To evaluate the complexity of distributed catalogue
searches, assess the interoperability of potentially diverse protocol binding and application profiles.
Appropriate software tools were developed and tested to allow access to selected distributed
catalogue services.
� Harvesting: the ability to access distributed metadata repositories and retrieve metadata to a local
catalogue. Subsequent searches are then performed on the local catalogue.
The creation of metadata and the implementation of discovery services are required by the proposal for a
directive on the establishment of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE). This
distributed catalogue project provides support to the technical developments within INSPIRE and in particular
towards the development of the European community geoportal. The software system implemented allows
users to indicate what type of geographic information or services they look for, using the criteria referred to in
the INSPIRE proposal for directive.
24

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
Near-term metadata challenges
M. Gould, J. Rocha, S. Nativi, J. Nogueras, M. Manso
1 Information Systems, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain
2 Computer Science, Universidade de Minho, Braga, Portugal
3 Inst. Methodologies for Environ. Analysis, CNR-IMAA, Italy
4 Computer Science and Engineering, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
5 Topographic Engineering and Cartography, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Based on experience from the AGILE Working Group on interoperability, SDI component development
projects, and from the INSPIRE metadata Implementation Rules Drafting Team, we describe our personal
views on near-term metadata challenges in support of a fully functional and useful SDI under the INSPIRE
umbrella. We address both current (and legacy) issues as well as future needs, focusing on advances that are
judged as possible within the coming 5 years.
Our views and recommendations fall under the following seven categories.
Shift from cartographic to informatics viewpoint
Geodata are collections of digital objects. Particular assemblies of these objects, when displayed, become
maps. Spatial metadata need to facilitate discovery and description of historical and current data in the form of
map series and even individual paper maps, however this will soon become the rare legacy case. Modern
metadata need to be able to provide discovery and description of objects: features encapsulating geometry,
associated thematic attributes, self-description, and behaviour rules. Other related multimedia fields of study
have much to offer here.
Automated production and extraction
Metadata text editors are also destined to become legacy applications. The geodata collection or creation
process needs to explicitly include the metadata creation process, as is now common in the remote sensing and
other communities. The geodata community needs to change its mindset, through education initiatives, so that
the next generation of geodata specialists naturally expects metadata to be present and attached or associated
with the geodata payload. Automatic extraction from within a GIS environment currently can collect an
estimated 50% of the core metadata necessary to provide discovery-level interoperability. For this practice to
become commonplace mindsets also need to change to accept the fact that users may, and will, create their
own metadata, being geodata experts or not, as they become user-providers.
Separation of discovery and description
Current metadata standards include the ability to discover and describe geodata resources. However it is clever
implementation practice, and not the standards themselves, that creates innovative, useful services based on
metadata. Much work is needed in order to educate the community on the key differences between discovery
metadata—determining what is available—from the secondary description of what is discovered. Current
standards mix these two metadata types among the (often) hundreds of elements in the same document, and
this causes confusion as it mixes the user/discovery and provider/cataloguing communities.
Linking metadata to data to services
The three worlds of creation and publication of metadata, data, and services continue to exist in parallel rather
than in an integrated form. Work on the creation and use of identifiers linking these three aspects, facilitating
the use of registries, is direly needed.
Enabling an optimal use of thesauri to aid multilinguality
True pan-European network services need to support automated multilingual support. This will involve linking
various parts of the user experience to multilingual thesauri and gazetteers, permitting queries in one language
to be handled using metadata in another language, with responses in perhaps yet another. The SDIGER
(INSPIRE pilot) project, among others, has provided interesting input to this issue.
Treatment of imagery and other Earth Science data
As observational and model output datasets in the Earth Sciences (ES) increase in resolution, there is a
growing demand for information systems that interoperate between GI and ES domains. However, differences
25

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
in the way the two communities think about and describe their data can give rise to difficulties in integrated
analysis and display of datasets from the two disciplines. Improved geospatial data integration and GI
Management is especially important for the European GMES initiative, which aims to provide society with
certified and documented data from Earth observation sources and in situ measurements and surveys.
The GI community has been working on solutions for treating ES datasets. These efforts lead to the definition
of “more general” models for geospatial information. Such models distinguish two kinds of geospatial
information: boundary and coverage data. Boundary data is often called "vector data" and is almost always
feature oriented. Generally, ES datasets are thought of as imagery or coverages and they often involve gridoriented
data. GI data and metadata models have been reshaped and extended. A valuable example is
represented by the ISO 19115 Part 2: Metadata for imagery and gridded data; it extends the existing
geographic Metadata standard by defining the schema required for describing imagery and gridded data.
In order to understand to what extent GI data and metadata models are suited for representing ES datasets,
there are significant questions to be addressed, such as: 1. How well is time modeled? 2. How much of ES
semantics are effectively captured? 3. How important is the documentation of acquisition process or measuring
equipment for discovering and evaluating ES data?
In the Web era, the GI and ES different data and metadata models produce diverse content models generating
disciplinary Markup Languages (e.g. GML, ncML, ESML, etc.). Mediation approaches, such as crosswalks
languages, represent a valuable solution to harmonize GI and ES models.
Testing Onsrud’s Geodata Commons
GI professor, lawyer and GSDI president Harlan Onsrud has advocated a geodata commons, with set rules for
creating geodata, documenting it with metadata, publishing both geodata and metadata (in a semi-automated
manner) and also preserving rights while openly sharing the geodata with the community. This model, which
is not at all incompatible with INSPIRE, needs to be tested to determine viability and possible benefit to the
wider SDI community.
26

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
Standards-based approaches to publishing and accessing content in
Spatial Data Infrastructures
C. Portele, R. Erstling
1 interactive instruments GmbH, Bonn, Germany
A challenge for Spatial Data Infrastructures is the ability to provide mechanisms for an ad-hoc, but to some
extent seamless integration of content from a variety of sources. This challenge is particularly evident
whereever the various content providers offer their content structured according to thematically related yet
structurally and semantically different informtion models. In the process of establishing an European Spatial
Data Infrastructure as targeted by INSPIRE, this task requires special attention considering that it is planned to
eventually specify European Data Specifications and all member states will be required to provide information
contained in their existing datasets according to these European schemas.
This paper looks at the state of the art and the practical experiences with respect to the above mentioned issues
from the perspective of two complementary technologies that have been tested in various projects and
initiatives. In particular it provides an overview of what these technologies can offer already today and
highlights topics for further research.
Using a model-based approach as specified the ISO 19100 series of International Standards:
In an ISO-19100-series-based approach, the concepts of an application or application domain are captured and
documented in an application schema. The application schema specifies the application-specific feature types
describing the specific view of the real world based on the information requirements of the particular
application. The feature types iterate the core concepts of the domain in a meaningful way (e.g. “forest”,
“parcel”, “building”) along with their definition, their properties, possible constraints, etc.
These domain specific feature types will use the same types modelling general GI concepts like “point”, “grid
coverage”, “accuracy”, “time instant”, etc. that have been specified by the GI community in a consensus-based
standardisation process.
Application schemas will typically be described in UML as specified in ISO/TS 19103 [1] and ISO 19109 [2].
This paper will summarize experiences and best-practices for this process [3, 5, 8, 9].
Since interoperability must be achieved not only on the conceptual level, but also on the system level, the
conceptual application schema must be mapped to implementation platforms in a well-defined way. Because
of the tendency to aim at web-based, service-oriented architectures in most current SDI developments, XML is
currently the most important platform in this respect, i.e. the creation of XML Schemas according to GML [3],
which is currently in the process to be standardized as ISO 19136, and according to metadata schemas, most
notably ISO/TS 19139 and Dublin Core.
GML [3] specifies normative rules for the mapping from ISO 19109 conformant application schemas in UML
(and vice versa) and there are tools available implementing these rules, for example [4]. The paper discusses
the capabilities and limitations of such mappings. It also discusses how implementation decisions, i.e. a
specific platform-dependent mapping of a component from the conceptual model to the implementation
platform, can be represented in this process without compromising the conceptual application schema.
Application schemas with appropriate metadata can then be published in catalogues [10] and thus enable their
discovery, the assessment of their fitness-for-use and the access to the schemas themselves. This was studied,
for example, in the recent OWS-3 initiative of OGC [9]. The results show that while the basic technologies are
there, additional work needs to be done to achieve interoperability for schema metadata - or feature catalogue -
registries.
The result of this process is a conceptual application schema with a well-defined realization as a GML
Application Schema. GML Application Schemas are constructed in a way that enables software components to
perform a dynamic analysis of the schema ("GML schema parsing") to understand the contents of instances to
some extent without prior knowledge about the application schema. This paper will explain the schema parsing
process.
27

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
Schema translation
Establishing, documenting and publishing a vocabulary by means of an application schema is an important
step. Still, it should be clear that there will be a more or less complex gap between the internal schema of an
application and the published schema that needs to be bridged. Since re-engineering of the applications to align
the internal schema with the published schema is usually not an option, because it would be too expensive or
simply inappropriate, technologies providing such a bridge are required.
To describe such a capability, the term of a translating Web Feature Service (WFS-X) has been coined by
OGC. A WFS-X enables the providers of content to configure a mapping from a published to an internal
schema. The emphasis here is on configuration instead of hardcoding the mapping in software.
This approach has, for example, been explored in several OGC initiatives [6, 7] using different technologies to
describe the mapping including XSLT- and XQuery-based approaches.
Interactive instruments has developed rules for a mapping from a GML Application Schema to SQL databases
and implemented these rules in their XtraServer product. The mapping rules are specified as part of the GML
Application Schema documents in XML Schema annotations, or in a separate configuration file,
and is based on Xpath expressions. The mapping allows to encode rather complex mappings from the
published schema to the internal database schema.
The mapping takes into account:
� the encoding of the database contents in XML (GML) according to the published application schema
and vice versa;
� an efficient encoding of queries that were formulated on the information model of the published
application schema as SQL queries acting on the internal database schema.
The paper will describe the approach, provide examples and discuss limits of such approaches based on our
experiences.
The technologies discussed in this paper are a promising approach to leverage existing datasets into the
emerging infrastructures for geospatial services and data. In particular the topic of automatic translation
between different schemas will require further research – and testing using real-world test cases from different
application domains.
References:
[1] ISO/TS 19103 (http://www.iso.ch/)
[2] ISO 19109 (http://www.iso.ch/)
[3] GML 3.2.0 = ISO/DIS 19136 (http://www.iso.ch/)
[4] ShapeChange (UML to GML Application Schema conversion tool, http://www.interactiveinstruments.de/ShapeChange)
[5] OWS-2 Application Schema Development (http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=8071)
[6] OGC CIPI 1.2 initiative (http://www.opengeospatial.org/initiatives/?iid=64)
[7] OGC GOS-TP initiative (http://www.opengeospatial.org/initiatives/?iid=8)
[8] GeoInfoDok of the German AFIS-ALKIS-ATKIS project
(http://www.adv-online.de/exteng/broker.jsp?uMen=01a700d3-6ed6-0bfb-8f23-50376a112976)
[9] OWS-3 Schema Tailoring and Maintenance (to be published as an OGC Discussion Paper)
[10] OGC Catalogue Services – ebRIM (ISO/TS 15000-3) profile of CSW
(http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=7048)
28

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
STYLEDCAT: Definition of a SLD Catalogue
A.Maldonado, M.A.Bernabé, M.A.Manso, M.C.Muñoz, M.Manrique
Department of Topography and Cartographic Engineering, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid(UPM),
Madrid, Spain
1 amaldonado@topografia.upm.es , 2 ma.bernabe@upm.es
3 m.manso@upm.es, mmunoz@topografia.upm.es5 maytemanrique@upm.es
Introduction
The vector information shown by a WMS usually appears as a set of points, lines and texts with a standard
style not conformant to any regulation. This standard style does not hold the graphic characteristics intended to
improve geographic information visualization, contrary to what happens with maps. In order to enhance
visualization and facilitate the classification of the features contained in maps, styles may be applied to map
elements, so that they will be more easily distinguishable.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) describes in one of its specifications a language called Styled Layer
Descriptor (SLD), enabling graphic styling of visualization (colour, weight, typology, etc) to maps returned
from requests made to map servers. With this specification, it will be possible for maps obtained from a WMS
to have the appearance of traditional, paper maps produced by any cartographic service; it will just be
necessary to have the style corresponding to the symbology that service is applying to its maps.
This paper deals with the creation of a repository for storage of the style parameters to be designed,
conformant to one or several cartographic series of one or several agencies, so that users will be able to apply
the vector data visualized by a WMS, thereby generating cartography with an aspect similar to the one the
particular agency uses as an organization.
Any of the parameters stored in the repository (colours, weights, sizes, etc.) could be applied to the different
geographic features (roads, rivers, contour lines) which will be hierarchically defined (highway, road, path) by
the cartographic service on the basis of the feature attributes. This hierarchical structuring will be carried out
through the application of selective filters to attribute values, as allowed by the SLD Specification.
Every specification corresponding to the agencies’ styles is stored in a database where the repository is
actually realized. This repository replies to the requests it receives by acting as a catalogue to search and
download styles thereon. The repository should be harmonized (GetCapabilities, GetStyle) with the remainder
of OGC Specifications. We are mainly concerned with the definition of a repository for storage of the feature
customized styles with interaction capability for insertion, deletion and update by user’s choice.
Since the main task of this catalogue service is obtaining maps from requests to WMS, when downloading of a
particular style is requested, the predetermined output format will be the SLD format, though a SVG or even a
text format could also be requested.
Rationale for this project
Since maps are valuable tools for decision-making and since adequately categorized, generalized, laid out
graphic information facilitates decision-making, it is advisable for the information to be visualized in as legible
a form as possible. This is achieved by implementing on the vector information the graphic semiotics
governing cartographic communication. Mapping agencies do it by applying styles to the information being
presented on their maps (roads and constructions in red, railways in black) and providing information about the
importance of features by means of different visualization sizes (line weights, text size). Map reading and
understanding may be hindered by the lack of these regulated styles.
Although the SLD Specification is currently operative and can be applied to information from a WMS, we run
into difficulties of application by users (it is described through XML!) and the visual quality of resultant maps
is not ensured. Therefore, a collection of available, easily applicable, styles is needed.
Thus work on this project is reasonable in view of two facts as mentioned above and presented as follows:
1. Lack of a symbolization normalized style catalogue at the present time.
29

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
Mapping agencies have a normalized symbolization system for each one of their series or products. If this
capability is made accessible to the public through an Internet Geo-service, any user – with or without
cartographic knowledge – could provide his/her maps with the standardized, normalized symbology designed
by these agencies.
The lack of a service storing, managing, structuring and providing access to this symbology has been detected.
Its existence would facilitate the provision of visually appropriate maps to a host of scientific professionals in
the fields of geology, communications, farming, environment or any other where the creation of mapping
documents is necessary.
For this reason the creation of a style repository-catalogue is proposed providing users with the symbology
corresponding to every style normalized by the different mapping agencies in their cartographic series… We
also propose that this catalogue should provide users with a searching service allowing them to locate and
select the style best suited for their needs
2. Loss of cartographic quality in maps obtained from WMS.
The numerous advantages offered by WMS in obtaining maps contrast with a great inconvenience, namely the
lack of cartographic quality of the rasterized vector maps obtained through these agencies. In order to resolve
this drawback, the possibility of application of the SLD Specification to customize maps may be taken
advantage of. Nevertheless the manual preparation of an XML document consistent with the SLD
Specification by any user involves the following obstacles:
On the one hand, the lack of knowledge about graphic semiotics. This type of knowledge deals with some
aspects of geographic information (qualitatively, quantitatively, in an ordered manner), it also deals with the
way the information is distributed (continuous, discrete) and with the visual perception of the information
(visual variables and perceptive properties thereof). In addition, it concerns other aspects external to
geographic information, such as scale, purpose and thematic type to be represented, among others. In order to
decide about symbolization of each geographic feature best suited for a particular map, all the consideration
above should be taken into account. Furthermore, symbology should be aesthetically integrated as a whole.
On the other hand, SLD document-making process turns out to be very tedious. These documents model and
assign parameters to the symbolization styles (they define colours, weights, fonts… for each symbology in a
structured way) by means of XML. WMS users needn’t have that much knowledge!
Therefore these considerations have led us to propose a style repository-catalogue providing users with the
SLD document properly built from the style normalized by a mapping agency, the particular style being
chosen by users themselves. This way you would have to simply download the style from the repository,
directly applying it on a desktop GIS-SDI or through a WMS to get the styled map.
Objective
The objective sought is the creation of a style repository-catalogue providing SDI users with the styles
normalized by the different mapping agencies which, when applied to the WMS, give rise to normalized or
regulated maps in accordance with those agencies.
The styles returned by the catalogue should be provided in several different formats (txt, sld and svg) so as to
enlarge their varied uses and applications:
� txt: For simple descriptive purposes: definition of the chosen symbology style.
� sld: For direct application to WMS to obtain maps.
� svg: Visually provides, as a legend, the style being downloaded.
The repository should act as a catalogue service that provides search and downloading services, conformant to
OGC Specifications.
Style Repository-Catalogue Characteristics
The catalogue will be made up of a Postgres database that will store in relational structured tables the data
defining each style and the agency generating it.
This geoservice (catalogue) will have the capability of interacting with the database as mentioned above in
order to carry out searches, downloading, insertions, updates and deletions. To that end a series of requests will
30

SESSION METADATA AND CATALOGUES
be designed allowing these interactions. The requests may be classified in four groups according to their
functionality:
� Search requests: They allow covering the database introducing several search parameters. The style
identifier is included in the returns from the catalogue to these requests.
� Requests for obtaining or downloading styles: The style with the identifier specified in the request is
returned. Format will be the one requested (possible formats: svg., sld., text.)
� Transaction requests: They allow accessing the database to carry out inserting, editing and deleting
operations.
� Requests for instantly creating and obtaining a new style: It allows definition of a new customized
style in order to simply get it in SLD format and to apply it to a WMS or to visualize it in SVG
format, however without storing it. It is similar to the insertion request; though the generated style is
not saved in the database.
The styles are automatically and dynamically generated by the catalogue in the different formats from the data
stored in the database after each request for downloading.
The entire system will be integrated in a service similar to others already in existence (OGC Specifications)
thereby achieving a more intuitive use for the SDI user community. The same request schemas will be in place
so as to facilitate access either manually or through clients.
31

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
Distributed Data Management in Internet Map Services
Experiences from Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas
A. Vasanen1, T. Toivonen2
1Regional Council of Southwest Finland, Turku, Finland
2University of Turku, Turku, Finland
The standardisation work of the Open Geospatial Consortium and ISO has notably increased the possibilities
to build internet map services in a distributed manner. The number of map services offering map data through
standardised interfaces, such as Web Map Service (WMS), has increased particularly in the United States, but
also in Europe. In this paper, we will concentrate on describing the characteristics of distributed data
management in Internet map services using the Finnish Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas as an example.
The Finnish national geographic information strategy suggests that, as a part of the National Spatial Data
Infrastructure (NSDI), a general map view service should be established to provide users with easy access to
general purpose maps. The service should draw on up-to-date data and underpin public services offered at
national, regional, municipal and local levels (Finnish National... 2004). The view service should be, on the
one hand, an easily accessible Internet service, intended for all citizens. On the other hand, the national
geographic information strategy obligates data providers to set up technical interfaces that can be utilized by
various national as well as regional scale and thematic map services (Finnish National... 2004). The first step
in implementing this strategy will include the development of standardised Web Map Services (WMS)
distributing the core data sets of the main public data providers (Paikkatietoasiain neuvottelukunnan... 2005).
Service Architecture of the Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas
The preparatory work to create a national network of WMS services was started in early spring 2006.
However, there are already a number of WMS services available in Finland and a number of internet sites
utilising their services. The Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas covering the region of Southwest Finland is
probably one of the most advanced of these services in terms of distributed data management. The service
utilises virtually all public, non-profit WMS services available in Finland. The Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas
is the main Internet map server of Lounaispaikka, the regional geographic information service and network in
Southwest Finland.
Currently, the WMS data available through the Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas consists of three WMS services
providing topographical and geological maps and satellite images (Figure 1).
Fig 1: The service architecture of the Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas.
As the implementation of the Finnish NSDI proceeds, more and more data content from the Thematic Atlas
map server will be replaced with WMS services, thus increasing the level of distribution. In addition to WMS
services, also distributed database connections are included in the Thematic Atlas. The Ornithological Society
32

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
of Turku maintains a bird observation database, from which bird observation data can be queried and
visualised on the map. Currently there is only one distributed database connection within the Lounaispaikka
Thematic Atlas. However, new connections are planned to be established to other biodiversity-related
databases. Also metadata are planned to be imported from distributed metadata catalogue, as soon as such a
service becomes available as part of national spatial data infrastructure.
Lessons Learned from Distributed Map Services
Traditionally Internet map services have included all the needed data on the same server as the map service
operates. Distributed data management is often considered beneficial as it decreases the responsibility of the
map service administrator in updating and maintaining all the data. However, as illustrated in Figure 2,
distributed map services also have effects on the service administration, which may not be desirable in all
circumstances.
Figure 2. The impact of increasing the level of distribution on map services.
There are certain undoubted benefits of increasing the level of distribution of a map service. First of all, the
required data maintenance effort of the map service reduces as e.g. the updating responsibility lies on the
provider of distributed service. Secondly, the required server capacity is directly comparable to the level of
distribution; the more distributed system, the less server capacity is needed. Furthermore, data availability
increases and its acquisition become easier if the data can be obtained directly from the data provider’s service
interface. Standardised distributed data management systems, such as WMS, allow data to be acquired easily
from both commercial and open source map servers.
However, certain limitations for the map service emerge when including distributed data. The most severe
limitation is probably the lack of GIS functionality when using certain distributed data management systems.
For example, WMS services do not support most of the GIS tools provided by commercial software. In some
cases, even simple attribute data queries may be difficult to perform, not to speak of more advanced GIS
functionality, such as buffering. Furthermore, the control over the cartographic visualisation of distributed map
services may decline, as the provider of the distributed data service usually defines the visual expression of the
data. Also possibilities to combine map layers from different data sources may decline if the topmost layer
overlays the rest of the data.
Finally, in spite of decreased effort in data maintenance, the reliability of map service may suffer from having
data in several different servers. However, this can also be seen beneficial, as a situation where all the servers
would crash simultaneously, becomes rather unlikely. Thus, when building a distributed map service, one has
to consider carefully what functionalities are needed and thereby what means of data distributing are the most
suitable.
Acknowledgements
This work is carried out with support of the Life Environment project ENVIFACILITATE.
References
Finnish National Council for Geographic Information (2004). National Geographic Information Strategy
2005−2010. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Publications 10a/2004.
Paikkatietoasiain neuvottelukunnan Tietopalvelut- ja yhteiskäyttöjaos (2005). Paikkatiedon kansallinen
katselupalvelu. Ajatuksia katselupalvelusta osana kansallista paikkatietoinfrastruktuuria.
Accessed 15th March 2006.
33

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
Overview of the Inspire themes – exemplified through running national
services in the Norwegian SDI
A. Lillethun
Technical director, Norwegian Mapping Authority, Hønefoss, Norway.
(Inspire drafting team member)
The Inspire draft directive defines a broad spectrum of themes. The specification of the themes means that
different actions need to be undertaken by the member states to bring geographical information corresponding
to the themes into the spatial data infrastructure.
The knowledge about the Inspire themes defined in the three annexes is limited. It is therefore relevant to
interpret the theme definitions and describe which kinds of geographical information the themes may include.
The presentation will give focus to themes described in all three annexes of Inspire. Examples about the
themes will be drawn mainly from the Norwegian spatial data infrastructure.
The Inspire themes
The definition of the themes may be interpreted in different ways. The drafting teams will work out definitions
to be provided to the European Commission. Spatial data interest communities (SDICs) and Legally mandated
organisations (LMOs) will be invited to participate and comment upon the definition and interpretation of the
themes. The process will be coordinated by the Commission.
In order to get an overall understanding of the themes, brief interpretations or the themes are outlined.
According to the further processes outlined by the Commission, more detailed work on defining the themes
will follow in 2007, e.g. development of rough data models.
There will be an overview of Inspire themes defined in
� annex I
� annex II
� annex III
The actual content of data corresponding to a theme may vary according to the "scale" of data – if data are
being used at the European, national, regional or local level. By looking at the implementation of a national
infrastructure, valuable knowledge can be gained on how to work with the different themes. Here the
Norwegian SDI can be relevant as an example, since many of the Inspire themes already function as web map
services and are available to a wide variety of users.
Digital Norway – the Norwegian spatial data infrastructure organisation
The public sector has entered into a comprehensive cooperation around geographic data that is called Digital
Norway. Digital Norway was established in 2005, coordinated by the Norwegian Mapping Authority. The
Government wants all public bodies with responsibility for geodata, or which are major users, to collaborate in
the establishment, operation and maintenance of this common national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI). The
dissemination of information is based on new technologies for Internet distribution. The technologies used are
based on international standards (ISO and OGC). At present national and some regional and municipal
institutions provide a long series of web map services (WMS), web services, map viewers, metadata and
portals with download possibilities.
Each partner is responsible for providing own data, both reference geodata and thematic geodata. Basic
reference data (topographical, properties, ortophoto etc) and thematic data are distributed in the infrastructure
through the use of web map services and other interoperable internet services. Thematic data include a broad
range of information produced by national institutions and municipalities and the local level. The themes cover
aspects such as land use plans, demography, risks and risk management, protected sites, biodiversity and
nature values, pollution, fisheries, geology, mineral resources, agricultural and forest resources, cultural
heritage and outdoor recreation facilities.
Digital Norway has an important function in regulating the interaction between the partners, both in
administrative terms and technically. The data must be clearly and easily available. Agreements/contracts
define common standards and the long term provision plans for metadata and data. A significant amount of
34

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
public sector information is currently offered through this cooperation. There is a rapidly growing interest
among the partners to disseminate data as web map services (WMS). Downloadable data are available on
standard formats. Metadata is delivered together with the data. Municipalities and regional organisations are
important providers and users that will be in particular focus in the coming years.
See www.norgedigitalt.no and www.geonorge.no, the former being the site for administrative and technical
aspects within the cooperation, the latter being the geoportal functioning as the focal point for content
overview of available data and services in the infrastructure.
Examples of thematic data and web services
The provision of different themes can be of different kinds of delivery. Download data, web map services
(WMS), and web services are common today, web feature services (WFS) is at present being implemented for
some data sets. There is a wide range of application found among different public institutions in Norway. In
the context of Inspire preparations it is interesting to see how such services are being implemented,
problematic implementation issues etc. The examples will be drawn from applications at different
administrative levels and different sectors.
The need to for standardised web services
When each institution is providing geographical web services into the infrastructure, users can start build
applications based on the services. The users become dependent on the services, and are vulnerable to both
services not running or changes in database structure. The more the users develop applications and utilise
geographical web services in running operations, the more also providers of data need to focus on stability of
the services. In order to be prepared for such a development Inspire gives focus to standardisation of themes,
about theme specific data models, and to some extent standard feature types and data elements. Here the
standardisation work in Norway will be relevant – having a 10 year experience in developing the national
feature catalogue as a joint effort among a wide variety of public and private organisations.
35

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
Swedish preparations for INSPIRE
S. Jönsson, U. Sandgren
Lantmäteriet, Gävle, Sweden
This paper summarises the Swedish preparations for the foreseen implementation of the proposed INSPIRE
directive.The general situation on spatial information in Europe is characterised by lack of harmonisation
between datasets at different scales and with different data themes, duplication of collection and maintenance
of data, and difficulties to identify, access and use data that is available. Therefore, Lantmäteriet – the National
Land Survey of Sweden – supported by the Government has taken an active part in activities aiming to
overcome these problems and create interoperability between data within Sweden as well as cross-boarder.
Lantmäteriet has an active role in the European and international standardisation of geographic information
and in EuroGeographics activities aiming to support interoperability and easy access to national maintained
databases. We are also leading or participating in different projects aiming to harmonise and make available
information easier to access, e.g. EULIS, EuroRoadS and RISE.
Also the handling in Sweden of geographic and cadastral information has been changed during the last years
based on an SDI approach. Instead of being a “map factory” Lantmäteriet has developed as the national
coordinator of SDI and the guiding principles for this development are, in fact, the same as the basic principles
for INSPIRE. This means that standards and processes are developed to make it possible to collect and
maintain data at the level where this can be done most effectively, to share data between different
administrative levels and to combine data from different sources.
Saying that, it has been logically to give a general support to the INSPIRE initiative. A legal framework will
support a coordinated approach and be of advantage for more efficient governance, lead to better services to
citizen and support market development. In the long run cost savings in production and maintenance of data
will be achievable, while the costs (or the financing of costs) for the transition from today’s situation might be
a problem. Another advantage with the initiative is that geographic information has been placed on the
political agenda. We who are active in this sector have a good opportunity to show the benefits from efficient
handling of geographic information and GIS tools.
Swedish preparations
A number of activities have been carried out in order to prepare Swedish standpoints during the negotiation
process as well as to prepare for the implementation of the proposed Directive.
A reference group was established to support the Swedish participants in the INSPIRE Expert group in order to
widen the discussions to a larger group representing data producers and data users as well as researchers. This
has given the representatives in the Expert group a clearer and better defined mandate as they – as far as
possible – can speak for common Swedish interests. However, during the active phase of negotiations the
timetable made it impossible to send documents to the reference group for review, why the Swedish positions
only could be sent for comments to concerned ministries.
Sweden also had a full and active representation in the working groups, which prepared different matters
before the Commission presented the first proposal on the Directive. These groups looked into technical as
well as organisational, financial and administrative issues. The outcome was position papers on Implementing
structures and funding, Reference data and metadata, Data policy and legal issues, and Environment thematic
user needs.
In 2005 Government presented a bill to Parliament on priorities within information technology developments.
This bill included proposals on how to organise and coordinate the future development of the Swedish SDI,
including the foreseen handling of issues raised by INSPIRE. This bill has later on been approved by
Parliament. The decision includes a stronger coordination role for Lantmäteriet and the setting up of a National
Advisory Board on Geographic information. This Advisory board will handle strategic issues on the national,
European and international level and coordinate development of standards and specifications, metadata and
metadata services, services for data access, policies for data use, etc.
In the letter of regulation Government commissioned Lantmäteriet in December 2004 to work out a report
describing effects from the proposed Directive and actions needed in order to prepare the implementation.
After consultation with a number of authorities and other interested bodies Lantmäteriet presented this report
36

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
in August 2005. The report includes proposals on the organisation of the work – with Lantmäteriet as
coordinator organised within an INSPIRE Secretariat and with a high level advisory board appointed by
Government and with a continuation of standardisation within the Swedish Standards Institute. The report also
outlined a national INSPIRE strategy and regulations needed for the implementation of the Directive. It also
contained a survey on main actors for each data theme in INSPIRE Annex I, II and III. This included a
definition of each of the data themes, ideas on responsible administrator for each data theme and other major
stakeholders for each data theme, as well as a time-plan for the Swedish preparations.
INSPIRE and the local authorities
An important questions for the Swedish view on INSPIRE has been the involvement of the local authorities.
The Swedish SDI concept includes a close co-operation between the state and the local authorities. This means
that the development of the European SDI should be build upon these principles and make use of the benefits
from established and well-functioning technical, organisational and financial solutions for the co-operation
between the local authorities and the state.
INSPIRE and the private sector
Also the private sector has shown a great interest in INSPIRE as the proposed Directive will create new
business opportunities. Easier access to geographic information, harmonisation of data and better transparency
concerning conditions for data usage will widen the market. The private sector will also have the possibility to
participate in standardisation work and development of technical solutions, e.g. geo-portals, schema translation
tools, as well as in data production.
EU Interparliamentary Conference
The Speaker of the Swedish Parliament has invited to an Inter-Parliamentary conference on the INSPIRE
Directive in April. The main objective of the conference is to share expectations on the consequences of an
increased access to high-quality harmonised spatial information, taking into account both developments in
individual Member States and the Union as such, and comprising different sectors of society. In the light of
this, focus will be given to how the Directive will deal with access to spatial information for the public and
public authorities
This initiative shows the positive Swedish view on INSPIRE and a serious wish to help forming an efficient
and well-balanced Directive as well as a thorough prepared implementation. By that, the initiative will trigger
the creation of a European spatial information infrastructure that delivers to the users integrated spatial
information services with high quality and interoperable data.
37

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
INSPIRE and Danish e-Government Initiatives
Synergy or Conflict
J. Ryttersgaard
National Survey and Cadastre Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
For a number of years there have been targeted initiatives promoting e-government in the Danish public sector.
The initiatives have partly comprised specific implementations partly activities that support interoperability,
elements in an e-government infrastructure. In a near future the implementation of INSPIRE will start. An
analysis of the possibilities for creating synergi between the two infrastructures shows, that there is a harmony
between the general developments in Denmark and the provisions in the INSPIRE proposal concerning data,
services and architecture.
INSPIRE and Danish e-Government initiatives
As early as 2001 the Danish e-government initiative was initiated by the central government and the regional
and local administrations in order to promote and coordinate the transition to e-government in the public
sector. A "Digital Task Force" (www.e.gov.dk), with employees from the Ministry of Finance and the local
and regional government organisations, has been the operational base.
The e-government project is based on the idea that the responsibility for the implementation of e-Government
is at the decentral level, but that in several cases, there can be a need for common guide lines and solutions to
general problems of legal, technical, and organizational nature in order to support the transition process. This
unconventional organization has initiated a number of concrete activities as for instance compulsory use of email
between public authorities.
In parallel the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has taken the initiative for a number of
standardisation activities as well as they have established structures for preparation of domain specific
standards and for approval of standards in general. The initiative, named OIO www.oio.dk (public
information on-line) is necessary to secure a sustained implementation. The repository for services and xml
schemaes ("Infostrukturbasen"), catalogue on public IT-standards and the web-service architecture model
(OWSA-T) are examples on specific results. The OIO-Committee on standardization of data, the OIO-
Committee on IT-architecture and Committees on standardization of sector specific data are examples on the
organisational structures.
A number of Service Communities has been
established. One is "the
Spatial Data Service Community". A number of
ministries, Local Government Denmark and the
Association of County Councils participate
actively.
The Spatial Data Service Community
(www.xyz-geodata.dk) has established a
metadata committee and a reference data
committee. It has approved a report on basic
data, a specification on shared object types
(FOT vers. 3.0), etc. and it has initiated and
partly financed cookbooks on WML and WFS
and GML basic geometries.
The Danish infrastruckture model
There are several examples on effective use of the available technology in delivery systems, for instance webservice
based access to data and functionality.
The Public Information Server and the Environmental Portal are examples on available portals.
As mentioned there is harmony between the general developments in Denmark and the provisions in the
INSPIRE proposal concerning data, services and architecture. Until now the development of spatial data
infrastructure components have been based on consensus between the key-players. In many ways this has been
very effective, but with e-government one becomes very much dependent on access to data via standardised
interfaces, that data is updated regularly in accordance with approved standards, that nationwide data sets are
38

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
available, that common keys exist and are maintained, that users and providers respects technology standards,
etc. INSPIRE offers us a legal regulation of the spatial data infrastructures.
The Ministry of Environment has the overall responsibility for INSPIRE. The National Survey and Cadastre is
responsible as well for bringing into force the necessary laws and regulations as for the different the
implementation.
In 2002 a Danish INSPIRE committee was established, with participation from the expected legally mandated
organisations, Local Government Denmark and
� the Association of County Councils in Denmark.
� the Danish Geoforum (participates as an observer).
A national homepage has been in place since 2002. Danish experts participate in two of the drafting teams
(Metadata and Data and Service Sharing).
The foreseeable main implementing activities will be related to:
� Metadata
� Interoperability of datasets and services (data)
� Network services (architecture)
� Data and service sharing (economy and rights)
� Monitoring and reporting
As described above there are several organisational units who are involved in activities that correspond at least
three of the five mentioned items. The most appropriate way to handle the implementation will be to involve
those units and utilize their networks of local experts.
This means that the implementation of new metadata profiles will be coordinated with the existing Metadata
Committee. The realisation of interoperability of datasets and dataservices will as far as possible be carried out
in cooperation with the Reference Data Committee and the FOT-organisation (shared object types). The
implementation of standards and the necessary activities for establishing of Network Services (it-architecture)
should be coordinated with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Regarding Data and Service
Sharing (economy and rights) we foresee a co-operation between the parties behind implementation of the PSI
directive and probably the ministry of finance. According monitoring and reporting there is no considerations
at the moment.
The necessary organisational structures for a sustained implementation of INSPIRE exist. There is conformity
and harmony between INSPIRE and the e-government infrastructures, but there is a risk for conflict. At the
same time as we experience a delay in the INSPIRE legal process, the developing of infrastructures in the
member countries proceeds. Probably it is not problematic regarding the data. But in a few years digital egovernment
infrastructure is established in the individual member countries. Then the clay is hardened, and it
could be difficult to create the necessary interoperability between INSPIRE and the national e-government
infrastructures.
The Commission and the European Parliament should consider this situation.
39

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
Social and economic benefits from compiling the Forest Data Bank
Project (Dasologio) in Greece
D.S. Palaskas, N.I. Stamou
1 Forester, Msc, Thessaloniki, Greece
2 Professor, Faculty of Forestry and Natural Environment, Thessaloniki, Greece
The lack of cadastre and validated forest maps in Greece have formed a peculiar legal status of forest and
natural environment protection which relies on as the case may be certificates issuing (Characterization Acts)
from Forest Authorities, a temporary procedure according to the Greek Law 998/79 but still persisting until
today, although judged as constitutionally dubious from the Supreme Court of Cassation from year 1997. This
rather time – consuming procedure creates additional real and bureaucracy load both for Forest Services and
citizens. As a result the citizens get involved in continuous conflicts with the State and this fact becomes
subject of abuse from both sides either for claiming public forest areas, either for canvass reasons respectively.
Moreover, the State trying to cover weakness in other sectors relevant with planning and implementing
development programs, due to the lack of general and special zoning plans, accuses the Forest Service of being
too strict at the protection of natural wealth. These phenomena will probably vanish definitely with Forest Data
Bank Project (Dasologio in Greek) compiling, a constitutional order already from 1997.
“Dasologio” is a dynamic forest land data bank where the protected from forest legislation areas are registered
(mapped) and classified according to their characteristics and their functions. Its data integration in public
spatial information infrastructures will not only serve the principle of publicity but also render accessible
particularly useful environmental information for the citizens and the involved authorities. The oncoming
benefits are very important and assessed in thousands of man-hours yearly: a numerous scientific personnel
will undertake again substantial tasks in forest management and forest development projects, the juridical load
will decrease effectively and finally the practitioners’ networks living from bureaucracy load (engineers,
lawyers, foresters, surveyors etc) will lack existence reasons.
In Greece, two mapping projects have been implemented or are at the phase of proclamation by OSDE
(Integrated System for Management and Control) and National Cadastre (ortho-basemaps production for the
whole country), while exists already coverage from orthophoto maps in scale 1:5,000 and 1:20,000 of
Surveying and Forest Service, respectively. On the latter, there has been made from decades and is continued
until nowadays the mapping – classification according to forest species, foliage density and woodstock class,
but these data, although being a good background and a remarkable know-how source of the scientific staff, do
not consider to fulfill the high accuracy standards (geometric especially) of “Dasologio”. The absence of a
permanent system of periodic inventories obsoletes and scorns this work as a credible forest data source. What
finally connects all the mapping projects of Greek territory, though limited in area, from whichever authority
or organization, is fragmentation and limited accessibility even for public authorities of the same Ministry!
This (greek) phenomenon derives from distrust sensation and bad cooperation caused by confusion and
dispersion of jurisdiction among the competent authorities, situation with deep roots at the competition among
the scientific branches.
The rapid development of new technologies (Very High Resolution satellite imagery availability, software
improvement, powerful computers, web mapping) combined with political will at European Union level leads
Greece to one-way, on the beginning of the new Programming Period 2007 – 2013, for the instant effectuation
and integration in the developing infrastructures of a far-sighted project like “Dasologio”. The example of the
projects CLC2000 and IMAGE2000 completed in only 3 years at a cost of 13 M€ (corresponding to an
average cost of 3 € / ha), covering an area overcoming the today’s EU of 25 (JRC 2005) is an undeniable
witness for the feasibility of the proposed venture.
The convenience of elaborating “Dasologio” is supported even more if the data concerning the impacts and the
benefits get quantified economically using the most popular methodology for investment choice, the Cost
Benefit Analysis. One particular characteristic of this methodology is the integration of the so-called
externalities, since it is obvious that the public works related with environmental protection and improvement
have little economic reciprocity. This is totally true for the inventory of the national capital of forests and
forest areas, unlike Cadastre which is mostly funded by the registered citizen rights. The estimates made by
analyzing relevant data gathered from regional forest authorities for the last three years indicate an extremely
high degree of staff occupation in the pre-mentioned temporary procedure. The total estimated cost includes
40

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
forest employees’ wages, equipment occupation, juridical expenses, publication costs, rewards of private
engineers and foresters etc.
The demand for free access to the environmental information and the recommendations of the Directive
INSPIRE render the distribution of “Dasologio” products to the public via digital platforms an obligatory
procedure, unique for Greece. Meanwhile, the State ought to encourage even more computer use, utilizing the
Internet capabilities from larger number of citizens in order the free access advantage should not concern the
few.
References
COM (2004) 516 final. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing an
infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE). Brussels
Council of the State. Decision No 2818/1997
European Commission / DG JRC, IES, EEA, 2005. IMAGE2000 and CLC2000 Products and Methods. Nunes
de Lima, M.V. (editor), Italy
Greek Law no 998/1979.
Greek Law no 3208/2003.
Iscan, L., Aksu, O., Onder, M., Atak, V.O., Lenk, O., Gurdal, M.A. Accuracy Assessment of High Resolution
Satellite Images Commission IV, WG IV /7
Johnston, C. 1998. Geographic Information Systems in Ecology. Blackwell Science Ltd
Lin, C., Paivinen, R. Remote Sensing and forestry information needs in the 21st century
Menoudakos, K. 2005. The demand for general planning and overall estimation in Council of the State’s Case-
Law. http://www.nomosphysis.org.gr
Ministry of Rural Development and Food, Direction of Forest Maps, 2005. Instructions for compiling
“Dasologio”. Decision No 90523/174/16-3-2005
National Network for Research and Technology S.A. 2005. National Research for new technology and
Information Society 2005. http://www.v-prc.gr/2/1232/22_gr.html
Potsiou, C., Volakakis, M., Doublidis, P. 2001. Hellenic cadastre: state of the art experience, proposals and
future strategies. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 25, 445-476
Stamou, N. 1985. Forest Economics I. Publications Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
The Constitution of Greece. FEK 84 A’/17-4-2001
41

SESSION: NATIONAL SDI II
RAVI and the Dutch National Clearinghouse are Sharing Dutch INSPIRE
B.C. Kok, M. Reuvers
Amersfoort, The Netherlands
The presentation is concentrated on the way in which we are organizing the design, implementation and
execution of the INSPIRE process in the Netherlands.
In our Strategic plan and our Action Plan for 2006 we our working on:
� the implementation of the general Dutch GI standards
� the specific GI standards in the several sectors in the public domain
� on the development and maintenance of meta standards and web services
� on innovation of standards in the international context and the Dutch administration
� the design of a cross border knowledge centre with Nord Rhein Westphalia
� INSPIRE drafting team activities focussing on standardization
� Preparatory actions on the design of a central INSPIRE portal
These actions have been started in the beginning of the year 2004. In our presentation we give an overview
which results have been made and how we are organizing the communication with our stake holders resulting
in a broad national support and consensus for the INSPIRE process
Our second action line is focussed on our advising role for the central government in the priorities which have
to be taken in the INSPIRE process on national and international level as well.
Both of these action lines are of vital importance for the right adjustment between the activities on technical
and professional GI level and the decision makers which are responsible for the GI policy in the coming years.
The third action line is the way in which we are organizing the communication process with the producers of
the main core data sets which are of vital importance of the European Spatial data infrastructure and how the
communication with these producers is organized in the coming years.
42

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
“Where would you go for mapping services, [NMAs] or Google Maps?”
Implementing “hackable” user-driven GI services within SDIs
G. Barrotta, P. Cipriano, S. Pezzi, L. Zanella
Core Soluzioni Informatiche, Bologna, Italy
Introduction
The following quote is taken from Oxera “Public information, private profit: how should government agencies
compete?” document 1, recently cited in EGIP mailing list 2 :
Google Maps / Earth and now MSN Live Local have been big drivers for public awareness of digital mapping
and location technology. All of those services make some use of publically funded, state-collected geodata
(mostly in aerial imagery). Google Maps got so much interest because it was so “hackable” […] this is
something that any kind of spatial data infrastructure model needs to be addressing.
The abstract of the candidate paper describes how the implementation of “hackable” GI web service solutions
is possible, within the development of SDI frameworks and according to geospatial standards.
Lesson learnt from Google
Google Maps API represent an interesting phenomenon running parallel to SDI implementations and
geographic standards discussions over the world.
Actually, many authors already made evidence of how Google (and others) affect, or disrupt, the direction and
future of the geospatial community 3 .
At the moment four main solutions exist to satisfy the “million or more” 4 agog users and to let them to “play
like in a Google Maps game”:
… just using Google Maps API (“So I started experimenting with the Google Maps API. In less then 5 minutes
I was able to create a basic map” 5 );
alternatively to the previous, using PushPinTM solution (by Placebase) to have something like Google Maps
API without Google’s licensing “disadvantages” 6
using Google Maps API and adding your-on-WMS layers (“I have created a simple JavaScript library, gmapwms.js
through which you can add your own WMS layers to a Google Map” 7 );
using CubeWerx OGC WMS Connector to integrate WMS connector to Google Maps service 8
Solutions #1 and #2 allow to integrate maps into web pages, but force you to use proprietary API and
proprietary un-controlled data.
Solution #3 allows you to add your-own WMS data, … but force you to use proprietary API.
Solution #4, on the other hand, allows users to interface Google data via WMS without the need of Google
Maps API, but without ready-to-use API to integrate into web pages.
Apart solution #4, others seem not to be integrated enough within SDI developments.
Developing OGC-compliant API available to third parties’ portals within SDI implentation
Within the implementation of two different SDIs at regional level in Italy9, we were asked to provide
WMS/WFS services via API to be made available and integrated into CMS- created10 web pages.
1
http://www.oxera.com/cmsDocuments/Agenda_Oct%2005/Public%20information%20private%20profit.pdf
2 rd
EGIP mailing list, 3 March 2006, reply message by Max Craglia to Jo Walsh
http://egip.jrc.it/200603/1569.html
3
“Recently, the product manager of Google Maps was asked about supporting OGC APIs, he said he was not
aware of who or what OGC is.” Taken from: ISO/TC211 Newsletter Num. 8, 2005, Editorial: Standards for
Whom, http://www.isotc211.org/Outreach/Newsletter/Newsletter_08_2005/TC_211_Newsletter_08.doc
4
ibidem
5
http://www.justobjects.org/blog/index.php?p=14
6
“If you need more than a limited number of transactions, you are out of luck. If you need to have the app
branded with your, and not Google's name, you are out of luck. If you don't want to see ads on your maps, you
are out of luck. If you need support beyond the basic documents and a bulleting board, you are out of luck.”
(taken from: Schutzberg A., 2006, Google Maps Licensing Got You Down? Try Pushpin!, Directions
Magazine, Mar 30, 2006)
7
Ibidem
8
http://newsblaze.com/story/2005070812300100001.ew/topstory.html
43

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
API developed are Javascript libraries, allowing to add WMS-generated maps into third-party developed
portals.
API can be easily configured and integrated into the organisation SDI: they just require maps to be served by
WMS services, and client browsers interpreting Javascript in accordance to ECMAScript specifications11.
API offer interface methods to serve maps (with/without overview) and navigation tools (ToC, toolbar, …).
Like Google Maps (and others), caching techniques are extensively used to better perform map interactions,
and to increase usability.
AJAX technique12 is also used to perform feature/objects selections through Web Service / EJB server-side
components; AJAX also allows to provide many challenges in adhering to WAI accessibility guidelines, as
also remarked into the recent CEN/TC287 prTR 15449 “Standard, specifications, technical reports and
guidelines, required to implement Spatial Data Infrastructure”13 (chapter 10 – GeoPortals).
Information requested (GetFeatureInfo) are provided in XML format, and through XSL transformation HTML
page is generated and integrated into a DIV 14 element.
Conclusions
Efforts have been focused on the possibility to implement Google-like API solutions within the SDI
framework, so that to interface API to data managed by the organisation providing WMS services.
In this way organisations developing SDIs are able to made their own data through WMS services, using XML
format for the GetFeatureInfo response; geodata can be then accessed via simple API available to GIunskilled
programmers, and completely configurable within complex geoportals and/or simple web pages.
9 Regione Emilia-Romagna and Regione Autonoma della Sardegna
10 Content Management System – see at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
11 European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) - ECMA-62 specification
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript)
12 Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX) – see at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29
13 CEN prTR15449 (ballot for vote document), pag. 54 -
http://www2.nen.nl/cmsprod/groups/public/documents/bestand/218397.ppt
14 http://www.html-reference.com/DIV.htm
44

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
CSCAT: Catalogue of Coordinate Reference System Definition and
Translation Web Service
M.A. Manso, M.A. Bernabé
Department of Topography and Cartographic Engineering
Universidad Politécncia de Madrid (UPM)
Campus Sur, Carretera de Valencia, km 7. 28031- Madrid (Spain)
m.manso@upm.es, ma.bernabe@upm.es
This paper presents a Web Service (WS) prototype implementation of CSCAT acting as Coordinate Reference
System (CRS) catalogue and code space translation system for CRS, datum, ellipsoid and projection
definitions. The main task of this catalogue is to interpret and dynamically parsing (translating) the private
code space types used by the software manufacturers (Esri, Intergraph, MapInfo, Autodesk, Oracle, IBM,
Erdas, et) to standardized code space (i.e. EPSG), Well Known Text (WKT) format definitions, ISO 19115
XML schemas or GML CRS XML schema.
This WS prototype implements and expands the WS design proposal presented in GISPLANET 2005
Conference by the same author. The problem is presented first and an original solution proposed. Finally the
current solution model and functional prototype is described and shown.
Presentation of the Problem
A previous analysis of the geographic information storage formats was carried out and the conclusion reached
was the need of CRS homogenization. Two problems were detected in this research:
� different ways of conveying that information: WKT format text, alphanumeric mnemonics or integer
numbers.
� every data format innately uses a different form to express that information:
After careful examination of data format, two pseudo-standardized forms were located to represent that
information. The first one is in text form, Well Known Text Format and the second one is in EPSG numerical
encoding form.
Text code space encoding, either WKT or mnemonics, are legible and understandable by human users,
allowing to infer that two definitions are equal, equivalent or different. Next examples of these types of
encoding are shown
� WKT: DATUM ["Israel", SPHEROID["GRS 1980", 6378137, 298.257222101]
Mnemonics: GCS_European_1950.
� Numerical encoding makes human interpretation difficult, though it facilitates its automated use
based on programmes. Next some examples by the same CRS are shown:
� Erdas’s encoding:
Projection: 1 Datum: European 1950 Ellipsoid: 5
� Intergraph’s encoding:
Projection: 7 Datum: 4 Ellipsoid: 5
The interoperability of data and services in the context of SDI intend to be capable of being automatically used
with the least human intervention.
Next a few significant samples are presented showing the interoperability problems in the interpretation of
CRS from different sources.
CRS representations in WKT format:
DB2 & Esri ECW MapInfo & Oracle PostG
iS
GCS_European_1950 European_datum_1950 Longitude /latitude
(ED50)
GCS_North_American_1
927
North_American_1927 Longitude /latitude
(NAD27)
45
ED50
NAD
27

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
GCS_WGS_1984 WGS_1984 Longitude /latitude
(WGS 84)
Mnemonics and projection numbers:
Table 1: CRS WKT format examples.
Projection Proj4 PCI Ermapp
er
OBLIQUE
MERCATOR
LAMBERT
AZ EQU
AREA
EQUIDISTA
NTE
CYLIND
OME
R
LAE
A
OM obmerc
_b
LAE
A
lambaze
a
Er
da
s
Dg
n
MapIn
fo
WGS
84
EPSG
- 12 - 9815
11 25 29 9820
EQC ER - 35 37 - 9823
Table 2: Projection encoding examples.
From observation of the examples above, it can be stated that it is not easy to identify the CRS, therefore
interoperability problems exist.
There are also interoperability problems caused by the different name definitions of the cartographic
projections. A single projection, even within the same language may have two different names. For example,
Mercator Projection / Orthomorphic Cylindrical Projection or Plate Carré Projection / Equidistant Cylindrical
Projection. The problem is made worse by translation to different languages.
Interoperable Solution Proposal
When approaching the problems of interoperability, a first solution is proposed based on a catalogue for
registering the proprietary code space encoding used by each software manufacturers to the CRS, datums,
ellipsoids or projections. This catalogue must relate each proprietary code space value to any code space acting
midway between all of them. This simple solution can be useful for most use cases of geospatial users. The
second solution approach is to give parsing solutions to CRS definitions thereby avoiding the need of stored
relations between the source encoding and midway code spaces.
The main objective of this purpose and prototype implementation is that Web Service operations and
parameters must be similar to Open GeoSpatial Consortium Implementation Specifications.
The oral presentation and the final paper present the status of implementation, and show some use cases.
46

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
The role of free software thick clients in SDI: Case of gvSIG
M. Gould, C. Granell, M.A. Esbrí, G. Carrión
1 Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain
2 Generalitat Valenciana, Valencia, Spain
We discuss the unique role of thick client applications within the SDI architecture and its typical workflow.
Specifically we focus on free software thick clients, because in addition to connectivity to network services
they add benefits of local geoprocessing power and the ability to manage large local datasets, while at the same
time—as products of the open source development process-- providing a unique economic and communitybuilding
incentive to become involved in, and contribute to, the SDI.
Although our paper covers all such clients, as concrete instantiation we describe the emerging thick client
gvSIG, developed as a free software project sponsored by the Infrastructures and Transport agency
(Conselleria de Infraestructuras y Transporte) of the Valencia Autonomous Community. gvSIG is available as
binary and Java source code, and has a user interface currently in 6 languages including Czech.
According to most SDI definitions such as those of GSDI, FGDC and now INSPIRE, geodata are accessed
remotely, and then are either processed remotely or downloaded –or otherwise acquired—for local processing
in a client application. This geoprocesing dichotomy, essentially on-line or off-line, is supported by a range of
thin to thick clients, ranging in complexity from a simple web browser to a full GIS application including
HTTP or similar communication capability. The web services paradigm (www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/)
assumes or allows that the entire information system (spatial in this case) is available as interconnected
components available via the web. While this is a laudable goal, in the near term quality-of-service and other
interoperability issues are still a concern, and so many end users of geodata prefer the ability to access data
periodically and also to save and process that data locally.
Gilberto Câmara, director of Brasil’s Space Research Institute (INPE) and free software pioneer (creator of
Spring and TerraLib), has described emerging SDIs as highways awaiting vehicles. By that he means that SDIs
do not reach their full potential until they go beyond the role of data transfer architecture, to better support
geoprocessing, that is, beyond the means to the end. The gvSIG thick client was developed with that spirit in
mind, to allow users to access geodata from the SDI, but also to create, process, document and contribute
geodata to the same SDI.
The gvSIG client was created within the framework of a large-scale migration experiment, across the entire
agency for Infrastructures and Transport (CIT), involving more than 200 users, from commercial proprietary
software to free software. This included operating systems, desktop office suites, database management
software, GIS and CAD. After an extensive user survey regarding the actual needs of the many GIS users at
the agency, it was determined that a full GIS was not necessary for 90% of the users. Instead they needed
access to spatial data, simple query capability, the ability to overlay and check for consistency, and basic
output. Therefore the CIT published a call for tenders to build such as thick client application, with main
restrictions being that the software should be open source and available for testing in both Java and C++
versions, and on both Windows and Linux platforms. The winning bid, consisting of a working prototype, has
since been developed into a rather fully-functional GIS client, now in its version beta 0.6. The development
process has been a 4-way effort between the government agency funding the project (CIT), the company
selected to implement (Iver), a university consultant on interoperability matters (Univ Jaume I), and the wider
open software developer community.
The full paper will describe the benefits accrued from the open source development process, helping to create
a key part of the Spatial Data Infrastructure in the region, as cartographic data providers cannot alone fill all
necessary roles in a SDI.
47

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
How to move forward in implementing SDIs with SOA?
Ç. Cömert, H. Akıncı
Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry Engineering
Karadeniz Technical University, 61080 Trabzon, Turkey
The highly dynamic and competitive nature of Today’s World requires that any “service provision” be fast,
economical, and of high quality. This goal could only be reached through cooperating applications. Spatial
Data Infrastructures (SDI) are indispensable for enabling local, national, and global cooperation. There exist
various definitions of the SDI in the literature such as those of MSC (1993) and GSDI (2004). In our view, an
SDI is an interoperability infrastructure functioning on top of a technical and organizational framework for
enabling cooperation among its participating partners. The “participating partners” refers to any data/services
provider or requestor within an SDI. The technical framework will define and determine the technologies and
standards for technical implementation of SDI. The organizational framework will guide to the management of
SDI by defining the rights and responsibilities of the participators. The two frameworks will guide to both
building and maintenance of a SDI. Therefore, setting aside the technical and organizational frameworks is a
highly complicated task especially for large scale SDIs. INSPIRE action plan (INSPIRE, 2005) is proof of this
indeed.
Recent developments and trends in Information and Communication technologies make this task even more
difficult if not impossible at the moment. The particular ones of these developments and trends concerning SDI
are Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services (WS), and Semantic Web. Enabling A2A integration,
Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been accepted as the way to the Web of the feature which is the
“Semantic Web” as coined by Lee et al. (2001). And Web Services (WS) has been accepted as one of the best
and currently the most popular way of implementing SOA (Colan, 2004; McGovern, 2003). With a high level
view, a web service can be defined as a piece of code that can be invoked over the internet to perform a certain
task. A web service may call another web service to perform its task. A Web Services environment may be
conceptualized as the one where various “providers” advertise their web services via a “service registry” and
“requesters” discovering services from the registry and requesting them from the providers perform their
applications. The roles of being requestor or provider are application-dependent. That is, a web service
requestor in one application may be the provider in another application. This indeed refers to the P2P (Peer to
Peer) realization (Sivashanmugam, 2004). In our view, the main deriving force for the SOA is twofold. One is
the flexibility which is needed for developing “on-demand” applications and the other one is the
interoperability for enabling these applications to “talk” to each other. These applications may all be
syntactically and semantically different from each other, which is usually called “semantic heterogeneity”. As
already implied, we realize interoperability as the ability by which heterogeneous applications can “talk” to
each other. Indeed, it would not be wrong to reduce the principal goal of SOA to interoperability. If
interoperability could be achieved, the other main goal, flexibility would already follow. In reaching its goal
SOA follows a philosophy which is rather different from the traditional approaches of interoperability. SOA
does not care how heterogeneous the applications are and where they are located on a network; as long as they
can communicate and request certain tasks (services) from each other then they can interoperate.
SOA and particularly WS has opened up new dimensions for SDI design and implementation. The need for
service-oriented SDIs has already been realized by the researches in the area, some of which being (Aditya and
Lemmens, 2003), (Cömert, 2004), (Cladoveu & Alves, 2005). Moving from this point on, to explore the value
and to evaluate the feasibility of Web Services Architecture (WSA) for implementing NSDI of Turkey, we
have designed and implemented a number of Web Services for Trabzon Municipality in Turkey (Cömert &
Akıncı, 2003). We also wanted to show that e-municipalities can be built through the same architecture. Web
services were implemented using Cape Clear (Cape Clear, 2003) web services development and deployment
software. We have also designed a SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) toolbar for client side functionality. This
work has shown that WS is a viable and a very valuable approach to implement an e-municipality which is
indeed a local SDI. We have realized, however, that when it comes to the NSDI or to large scale SDIs there are
many unresolved issues involved. This is because of the fact that WS technologies are still maturing. There
has been a great interest towards WS from both industry and academia with many successful implementations.
Inherently, the pace of the activities of the major standards bodies in the area such as W3C, OASIS, OGC, and
ISO has been very high. It seems that the desired level of maturity and the harmonization of the work of those
standards organizations will take some more time. The issue we intend to deal with is given all these facts how
one should go along in trying to build and implement an SDI with WSA.
48

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
Therefore in our ongoing work we have been investigating the major issues involved in implementing an SDI
with WSA. As a result of our work we intend to derive a framework which would guide the designers and
implementers in designing an implementing a SDI with WSA. We do not intend to deal with the issues such as
security (Medjahed vd., 2003), quality of services, transaction management etc. Instead we concentrate on the
more fundamental issues such as service composition, service design, service cataloguing and user interfaces.
There are related works such as (Evans, 2003), (OGC, 2005a), (ISO, 2001) (OGC, 2005b), which are either too
general or not at a level of detail that would guide to a practical implementation of a large scale SDI. Given the
complexity of the issues involved and the immaturity of the WS technologies, this seems an ambitious
undertaking. This paper will summarize the findings of our work.
References
Aditya, T. and Lemmens, R.L.G. 2003 Chaining distributed GIS services, www.itc.nl/library/Papers/2003.
Cape Clear, 2003. Cape Clear 4 User’s Guide, CapeClear Software, http://www.capeclear.com.
Cömert, Ç., 2004. Web Services and National Spatial Data Infrastructure, International Society of
Photogrametry and Remote Sensing, XXth Congress, Commission IV, WG IV/4, Spatial Data
Infrastructures, 12-23 July 2004, İstanbul, Turkey.
Cömert, Ç, Akinci, H. 2003 Web Services: An e-Government Perspective, 2nd FIG Regional Conference,
Marrakech, Morocco, December 2-5.
Cladoveu A. Jr., Alves, L.L. 2005 Local Spatial Data Infrastructure based on Services Oriented Architecture,
Geoinformation , Brasil.
Colan, M., 2004 Service-Oriented Architecture expands the vision of Web services, Part 1, Part 2
Characteristics of Service-Oriented Architecture,
IBM Corporation.
Evans, J.D. 2003 A Geospatial Interoperability Reference Model (G.I.R.M.), Prepared by the FGDC
Geospatial Applications and Interoperability (GAI) Working Group, Editor: John D. Evans (NASA
Geospatial Interoperability Office), Version 1.1, December.
GSDI, 2004 Developing Spatial Data Infrastructures: The SDI Cookbook,Version 2.0, 25 January 2004
Editor: Douglas D. Nebert, Technical Working Group Chair, GSDI.
INSPIRE, 2005 Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe, http://www.ec-gis.org/inspire/
ISO, 2001 Geographic information — Services, ISO/DIS 19119, ISO TC 211/WG 4.
Lee, T. B., Hendler J., ve Lassila, O. 2001 The Semantic Web A new form of Web content that is meaningful
to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities, Scientific American, May.
Medjahed et al (2003). Medjahed, B, Rezgui, A., Bouguettaya, A, and Ouzzani, M., Infrastructure for E-
Government Web Services. IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Computer Society, Volume 7, Number 1,
January/February.
MSC, 1993. Toward a coordinated spatial data infrastructure for the Nation, Mapping Scince Committee,
National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
OGC, 2005a Web Feature Service (WFS) Implementation Specification, OpenGIS Implementation
Specification, Ed: Vretanos P.A.,Version 1.1.0, Open Geospatial Consortium Inc.,
OGC 2005b Server Architecture Models for the National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDI), OGC White
Paper, Author: Brandon Fisher, Editor: Carl Reed, Open Geospatial Consortium Inc., Document
Number 05-030.
Sivashanmugam, K, Verma, K., Sheth, A., 2004 Discovery of Web Services in a Federated Registry
Environment, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS'04), June 6-9,
2004, San Diego, California, USA.
49

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
Providing WFD Reporting over SDI services
M. Á. Latre, R. Béjar, J. A. Álvarez, O. Castillo, P. R. Muro-Medrano
Computer Science and Systems Engineering Department, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) [OJ, 2000] introduces a new approach to data and information
collection and reporting of hydrologic data and WFD implementation state from member states to the
European Commission. This work proposes to use INSPIRE [CEC, 2004] principles for fulfilling the reporting
requirements imposed by the WFD, i.e. the required data and information will be directly accessed within a
spatial data infrastructure.
This work has dealt with a subset of the information described in the 2005 Reporting Guidance document,
which collects typology information for the different types of water bodies, as stated by the article 5. The 2005
reporting guidance document [EC-DG Environment D.2, 2004] distinguishes between 28 reporting sheets of
which a subset has been implemented.
The final result of the work has been a web application that presents to the user the WFD information
according to the reporting requirements. The application offers to the user the possibility of choosing a report
sheet:
� typology of surface water bodies (SWB1),
� identification of surface water bodies (SWB 2),
� artificial
and heavily modified surface water
bodies (SWB 3),
� reference conditions
(SWB 4),
� significant pressures summary ( SWPI 1),
� surface water bodies at risk (SWPI 2),
� point source pollution (SWPI 3),
� diffuse source pollution (SWPI 4) ,
� water abstraction (SWPI 5),
� flow regulations and morphological
alterations (SWPI 6),
� data gaps (SWPI 8) and
� recommendations for surveillance
monitoring (SWPI 9).
Additionally,
the application allows the user to
customize the kind of information to be considered
when showing the request trough a window (Figure
1) where restrictions to the features to be included in
the report can be made. In addition, the user can
specify if they want to visualize the features of the
report with their real geometry (lines for river water
bodies and polygons for lake, coastal and transitional
water bodies) or only as centroids (points) and the
legend to be applied to the features.
Figure 1. Restrictions window
� The reports corresponding with each
selectable sheet are structured in three sections:
� geographical data, that it is provided both graphically in the form of an interactive map (Figure 2) and
in tabular form (Figure 3, left));
� aggregated data (that are automatically calculated depending on the restrictions put on the features to
include by the reporting sheet, the user restrictions and the geographic extent shown on the map)
(Figure 3, right) and summary texts provided as part of the reports (Figure 3, right).
50

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
Figure 2. Geographical data of the report visualized as a map
Figure 3. Tabular data of a report (left); aggregated data and summary texts (right)
The application obtains its data from a set of OGC standard, web interoperable services that form part of
different SDIs. In particular, WFD data is obtained from Web Feature Services belonging to the WFD
Competent Authorities, and it is served mainly according to the data model proposed by the WFD CIS GIS
Working Group in their guidance document [Vogt 2002]. It is visualized through a WMS with Style Layer
Descriptor capabilities where visualization options are included, together with the restrictions provided by the
reporting sheet and the user, which are set in filter encoding when querying the WFS. Additional data needed
for the sake of visualization is provided by Web Map Services provided by National Mapping Agencies.
This application has been developed as part of the SDIGER (A Cross-Border Inter-Administration SDI to
support WFD Information Access for Adour-Garonne and Ebro river basins) pilot project on INSPIRE [Latre,
2005].
51

SESSION SDI TECHNOLOGY
References
Commission of the European Communities (CEC), 2004. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament
and of the Council establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE).
COM(2004) 516 final, 2004/0175 (COD).
EC-DG Environment D.2. (2004) Common Implementation Strategy for the WFD. Reporting Sheets for 2005
Reporting. Version 5.0
Latre, M.Á., Zarazaga-Soria, F.J., Béjar, R., Muro-Medrano, P.R., Nogueras-Iso, J. SDIGER: a cross-border
inter-administration SDI to support WFD information access for Adour-Garonne and Ebro river basins.
11th EC-GI&GIS, Alghero, 2005.
Oficial Journal (OJ) of the European Union, 2000. Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of
the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water
policy. The EU Water Framework Directive - integrated river basin management for Europe. L 327,
22/12/2000 pp. 0001-0073 (2000)
Vogt, J. (ed.), 2002. “Guidance Document on Implementing the GIS Elements of the Water Framework
Directive”, European Communities.
WFD CIS. (2004). Towards a Guidance on Reporting under the Water Framework Directive.
http://forum.europa.eu.int/Public/irc/env/wfd/library?l=/framework_directive/reporting_guidance/report
ing_2004doc/_EN_1.0_&a=d
52

SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
OUT SPIRE
S. Carlyle, M. Clark
Environment Agency, United Kingdom
A central aim of the Spatial Information Repository (SPIRE) Programme is to enable the use of consistent,
concise and up-to-date geographic information to support the objectives of the UK Government’s Department
of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), its Executive Agencies and other associated public
bodies by developing a culture of active data management and the provision of appropriate information
technology.
DEFRA’s strategic objectives demand access to a cohesive and consistent pool of information, including
spatial or geographic information,
The importance of geographic information was clearly highlighted during the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth
disease, and, more recently, a Report on the review of rural delivery arrangements, published at the end of
2003, recognised the importance of geographic information to DEFRA, one of its recommendations being that
DEFRA should develop an integrated rural database. Hence, there are clear drivers to join up the use of
geographic information across the DEFRA family.
SPIRE is a three year programme that will implement a corporate Spatial Information Repository consistent
with the principles laid out in DEFRA’s IT Strategy and GI Strategy. It will promote the use of geographic
information as a corporate resource and support the Department’s strategic sustainable development objectives
for land, coastal and marine environments. The Programme’s focus is wider than just the terrestrial
environment, recognising the fact that DEFRA has considerable marine interests.
SPIRE will seek to meet the needs of the marine community through the provision of required datasets, e.g.
UK Hydrographic Office data.
The key Programme objectives are:
� To make core geographic information layers available to all DEFRA ‘s delivery partners by
December 2006
� To provide robust contextual data, for example Ordnance Survey’s MasterMap, against which other
geographic information can be viewed
� To secure the necessary technical infrastructure from DEFRA’s IT suppliers
� To have robust geographic information management arrangements in place
In terms of storing data, SPIRE proposes a federated approach, whereby some geographic information will be
held in a central repository with the rest distributed. Hence, those parts of the organisation that currently hold
and manage spatial data sets locally will continue to do so, should they wish, making them available to the
SPIRE system. SPIRE itself will be a single virtual, or logical, repository.
The programme is currently split into two work streams: the Data Project and the System Project.
The main focus of the System Project is the development of a Proof of Concept to test whether it is possible to
develop an architecture to support the goals of the overall project that is in line with the overall IT strategy.
The Data Project initially provided a limited number of data sets for input to the Proof of Concept to test
certain issues, for example, to assess how the system handles data sets with different projections (e.g. OSGB
and WGS84). Lessons learnt from this work informed the development of the operational SPIRE system.
The first full phase of the Project was designed to deliver around 70 datasets, driving out the strategy for
convergence with other GI projects and systems with DEFRA as well as the strategy regarding Aerial
Photography, Positional Accuracy Improvement (PAI) and Change-only-Update.
Phase 2, due for completion during 2006, is the introduction of the fully functional online repository,
delivering around 200 thematic layers. In Phase 3, scheduled for March 2007, this will increase to over 300
thematic layers.
53

SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
The underlying intention is to provide fit-for-purpose geographic information to populate SPIRE in support of
sustainable development and the strategic objectives of customer focus, e-service delivery and evidence-based
policy making. Later phases will provide fit-for-purpose geographic information to meet wider national,
European and global information requirements.
Project activities have been grouped into three broad areas:
� Identifying users’ data requirements – to date this has been focused on DEFRA’s needs but will be
expanded in due course to include Executive Agencies and other bodies
� Developing a SPIRE data standard – with increased sharing of geographic information it is important
that data sets adhere to a common standard
� Assessing the quality of geographic information and devising migration plans to enable their use
within SPIRE
In order to deliver these activities, it is recognised that it is vital that the various components of the business
and the SPIRE Programme work closely with each other. To help facilitate this a SPIRE Data Working Group
was established. It provides a steer to the programme and includes representatives from the programme team,
DEFRA, its agencies (which include the Environment Agency) and associated non-departmental public bodies.
The impact of the EU INSPIRE Directive on the programme has been extensively and carefully assessed and
all of the key proposals contained within the draft have been taken into account. INSPIRE’s guiding principles
have been an important driver of the planning and development of the SPIRE Project.
54

SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
DEVELOPMENT OF A DANISH INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SPATIAL
INFORMATION (DAISI) - GOALS AND MEANS
H. Brande-Lavridsen, B.H. Jensen
Department of Planning and Development, Division of Geo-informatics
Aalborg University
Fibigerstræde 11. 9220 Aalborg Oest
Digital management (e-governance) is on its way in most EU countries, strongly urged by the EU commission.
The visions for a digital management are that digital technologies are systematically used to think forward and
change organisations and work processes to raise the service quality and efficiency.
Digital management also has a high priority on the political agenda in Denmark, and many public resources
are set aside to realize the visions. Concurrently with a new structural reform the scene is laid for large
changes in the public sector in the coming years. The reform is carried out because many, especially local
authorities simply are too small to lift the t asks a modern society has to solve. Important is also expectations
from among business and the citizens about efficiency, better service and increased democratisation in the
public administration.
The life nerve in digital management is electronic case and document handling systems where all data and
documents can easily be found and processed in electronic form. This also applies to spatial information
including maps.
The presence of and access to current and reliable information – including spatial data and spatial information
(geo-data and geo-information) – is therefore of vital importance to both the economic and social development
of a country, globally as well as locally. The ongoing reforms in the Danish society – including the mentioned
structural reform and an ongoing reform of the land registration system - also make new demands on
structuring and organizing of spatial information.
At present, Denmark has no official policy for the passing of a Danish Infrastructure for Spatial Information
(DAISI); however, during late years initiatives have been taken both within the public and the private sectors
which are good steps on the way.
“The Service Community for Geodata”, an initiative under the state financed project “e-Government” 1 is one
of the central actors in this connection. The Service Community has been working goal-oriented for the latest
couple of years with the problems connected with the infrastructure field – a topic which is also expected to
get great attention in relation to the implementation of digital management in the public sector in the years to
come.
In relation to a continued further development of the present work regarding a Danish Infrastructure for Spatial
Information it is important to be aware partly of the desired goals, partly of the means to be applied to achieve
the goals.
1 The Danish project ”e-Government” (www.e.gov.dk) was started as a two-year project by the state sector, the
counties and the local authorities in 2001. The purpose of the project is to support an improved and more
efficient solution of management tasks through the use of information technology. The project is controlled by
”The e- Government Board”, but the implementation takes place via ”The digital Taskforce”, which was
appointed in 2001 with the purpose of promoting the readjustment to a digital management across the public
sector. Under The digital Taskforce more service communities have been created, including ”the Service
Community for Geodata” (www.xyzgeodata. dk). One of the visions of the Service Community is that maps,
geo-data and geo-information, which as mentioned previously make out an important element in the digital
management must be a natural tool for citizens, enterprises and public authorities. This may among other
things happen through the use of information technology, including use of the Internet as distribution channel.
In June 2003 the government and the municipal bodies agreed to extend the project to the end of 2006 which
has provided an opportunity to revise the strategy for e-Government. In a report from January 2005 the Service
Community for Geodata has put forward a proposal for a common Danish basis data set. The geo-data set must
be part of a future Danish Infrastructure for Spatial Information /Brande-Lavridsen, Hanne, 2003
55

SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
With a presented paper we wish to discuss the following central topics in relation to both the ongoing and the
future activities in connection with the establishment of a functional Danish Infrastructure for Spatial
Information:
� Assessment of the concept for infrastructure for spatial data (a master data set) which is drawn up by
the Service Community for Geodata as well as an assessment of the central elements in this
connection.
The challenges in the years to come among others refer to the following topics:
� Specification of reference data to secure standardizing in the use of geographic references and to
secure that common basic concepts and data structures are developed.
� Linking of multi-sector data and geo-data within the single sectors.
� Specification and identification of the multi-sector data to be included in relation to the ongoing local
reform and which are to contribute to secure a broadly founded co-operation in the geo-data field so
that the perspectives and the demands in relation to the future digital management are met.
In relation to the above topics specific problems and experiences will be presented and discussed. It includes
ongoing co-ordination activities in the geo-data field – FOT (common topographic object types), standardizing
of road and traffic data, property development, planning data together with environmental and natural data. On
this background specific recommendations/ideas are attempted drawn up in relation to the future development
work with development, implementation and maintenance of a DAnish Infrastructure for Spatial Information.
Both technical aspects and also useful effects and utility values will be referred to.
Finally, the Danish initiative with the development of an Infrastructure for Spatial Information is compared
with the activities taking place in our Nordic neighbour countries and in the EU e.g. within INSPIRE.
References:
Informationssamfundet Danmark, IT-status 2004, www.dst.dk
Den offentlige sektors strategi for digital forvaltning 2004 – 2006, www.e.gov.dk
Forslag til opbygning af en infrastruktur for geografisk information i EU (INSPIRE) 2005, www.inspiredanmark.dk
Ny struktur på geodataområdet, 2005, www.geoforum.dk
Brande-Lavridsen, Hanne: Towards a Danish Spatial Information Infrastructure – what can the Danish
authorities offer the citizens today? Proceedings ICA-Conference, South Africa 2003
Brande-Lavridsen, Hanne: The Spatial Information Market in Denmark, Proceedings GSDI 6. Conference,
Budapest, Hungary, 2002
Brande-Lavridsen, Hanne, Daugbjerg, Poul: Infrastruktur for Stedbestemt Information, Geoforum Perspektiv
nr. 1, 2002
Brande-Lavridsen, Hanne: Spatial Information Management, publication No.9, The Danish Association of
Chartered Surveyors, 2002 (www.ddl.org/thedanishway)
Jensen, Bent Hulegaard: Forståelsesramme og analysemodel til kategorisering af basisdata,
Servicefællesskabet for Geodata, 2004
Jensen, Bent Hulegaard: Formidling og distribution af geodata via Internettet, Geoforum Perspektiv nr. 1, 2002
Jensen, Bent Hulegaard: Plandata i Danmark, Geoforum Perspektiv nr. 2, 2002
56

SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
REACHING OUT AND UNDER
I. Jackson
British Geological Survey, Nottingham, UK
Introduction
A number of European Geological Surveys have now reached the conclusion that in order to truly meet the
needs of society it is no longer enough to produce geological maps, or digital geological maps, or even applied
thematic data within a GIS. Even the latter is often insufficient to fully explain the relevance of our science to
a particular problem. We need to reach out even further if we want to get our message across. The
“understanding gap” between the tiny minority in society who are trained geoscientists and the overwhelming
majority who are not, is huge, and we geoscientists have to be innovative and imaginative and flexible if we
want to bridge that gap. This short paper describes two very different initiatives from the UK. The first is the
development of an automated reporting system for ground stability for the British house buying and selling
market – a system that has the capacity to automatically deliver a report on geo-hazards for every house
transaction that takes place in one year; ie 1.4 million reports or over 5000 reports per working day. The
second initiative is completely different and for a completely different set of users – it is a system to allow
users to have easy, intuitive and dynamic access to 3 dimensional geological models and to create their own
maps, or sections or even virtual boreholes. Finally, the paper will take a brief look at future developments.
A ground stability report for the property market
This initiative is a joint venture between BGS and the UK Coal Authority, a public sector body which
regulates the UK coal industry and provides information to home buyers on potential subsidence due to past
coal mining. The Coal Authority has for some years operated a high volume automated service to supply this
information to the market. The system uses transactional GIS querying and analysis of an extensive coal mine
plan database to automatically generate reports for specific properties. BGS has developed high resolution (50
metre) spatial databases for natural ground instability factors for the whole of Great Britain. Damage caused by
natural geo-hazards causes more than 450 million Euros of insured losses every year in Britain. The two
organisations agreed to form a partnership to develop a system that could produce a combined Ground
Stability Report. The report and the system have taken over 4 years of work, much of its being devoted to the
content and format of the report for homebuyers. But we have also had to address major challenges in
developing the delivery system and ensuring we address and mitigate the risk of liability. The presentation will
describe the system and report in detail and also discuss the important issues of due diligence (professional
responsibility) and liability, which have been a significant area in developing this service.
Why did we do it?
We did it because we believe it is part of our mission - we have knowledge that can help people make
informed decisions about factors that cause damage to health and property (eg radon induced cancer causes
approximately 2000 deaths pa and natural ground stability causes >£300 million of insured losses to property
pa in the UK). We did it beacuse being a due diligence element of the property transaction process strongly
reinforces BGS’s role and future. And finally we did it because our annual grant from the UK government
covers only 50% of our costs: so this venture has the potential to generate considerable revenue to allow us to
do more and better science.
The geo-hazard data and the ground stability report
In the first phase of the venture we will be producing a report on 6 natural geological hazards, coal mining and
brine extraction. The 6 natural hazards are:
� Swell shrink clays
� Soluble rocks
� Landslip
� Compressible deposits
� Collapsible deposits
� Running sand
The Combined Ground Stability Report is specific to a particular address and states whether these particular
hazards are present, how likely they are to cause a problem and what the homeowner should do to avoid or
mitigate the problem. Guidance, terms and conditions inform the buyer of the report how the report should be
used and what its limitations are. The report can be ordered and delivered on-line or by post and fax.
57

SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
Professional responsibility and liability
If Geological Surveys are serious about applying their science and benefiting society they have to
communicate it to those who don’t speak our science language. That means new, simpler, products for users
who do not understand geological science and its uncertainties. This increases the need for legal advice to
ensure we properly and responsibly explain the product and its limitations. BGS has spent substantial time and
money with lawyers making sure that we describe the Ground Stability report fully and appropriately for the
user and provide as much protection as is possible for BGS against litigation.
Providing access to geological models
Many Geological Surveys are now producing 3 dimensional geological models. From 2000 to 2005 the BGS
invested more than 10 million Euros in developing a corporate system and protocols to develop, manipulate,
store and present such models routinely (The Digital Geoscience Spatial Modelling – DGSM - project). From
April 2005 the production of such models became a part of the BGS operational programme with a strategy
that would progressively move the organisation from a mapping to a modelling culture – ie every geological
surveying project would be expected to deliver 3d models rather than simply 2d geological maps. However,
this paper is not about the development of the overall 3d modelling system, or any of the pieces of modelling
software we use, rather it focuses on one particular issue that became very apparent once we had built and
delivered to clients a number of 3d models for parts of the UK. The issue is this – we Geological Surveys can
build and view and manipulate geological models and show them to our customers, but those same customers
rarely if ever have either the software or the expertise to use the models or get the full dynamic, benefit from
their 3 dimensional information. Essentially, we were building 3d models, proudly showing them off to our
customers on our software and then either leaving them with static paper print outs or with digital data which
they could not use to its full extent because they did not have the software to view or interrogate it
dynamically. The solution was a simple to use and inexpensive 3d Viewer, which we provided free with each
set of 3d model data. The Viewer was developed by InSight GMbH in association with BGS.
The 3d Viewer
The Viewer software allows the user intuitively to interrogate and manipulate the model. They can zoom and
pan, select specific units, rotate the model, change the vertical exaggeration; but most significantly they can
construct cross sections at will along any set of vectors, and even “drill” a virtual borehole at any location.
This simple to use functionality empowers the user, whether they be a planner or an engineer, to get full and
dynamic access to the full model – without having to come back to BGS. The Viewer has been very well
received by our clients, but has also made a big impact within BGS. The presentation will demonstrate the
Viewer and present and discuss its functionality.
The future
BGS is continuing to develop innovative systems for delivering its geoscience knowledge in new ways. We
already have a prototype system for delivering the same geo-hazard report information to mobile phones fitted
with GPS – Location Based Services or LBS. Your phone knows where you are and thus the location that you
want information about! We are also working with clients on dynamic delivery of our data via web services –
secure real-time internet access obviating the need to provide multiple (and soon-to-be out of date) copies of
our data on DVD etc. Systems using portable immersive technology (3d virtual reality) are in development,
providing enriched access to the wealth of spatially related data that BGS (and every Geological Survey)
holds. The possibilities for exploiting geoscience knowledge through new technologies are limited only by our
imagination.
Conclusions
The two systems described above are very different but what they have in common is an acknowledgement
that we need to understand the real needs of our clients and then use the new technology to work to meet those
needs. What we cannot do is try to impose our science and technology on society and then, when society fails
to understand it and rejects it, sit back and sigh and grumble about the ignorance beyond our walls – for
Geological Surveys that would be a recipe for rapid decline.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the input and efforts of all those in BGS, the Coal Authority and other
stakeholders who contributed to the development of the Ground Stability Reporting Service. I would also like
to thank all who worked on the DGSM project and on the development of the 3D Viewer, in particular Hans-
Georg Sobisch of Insight GMbH, Holger Kessler and Steve Mathers of BGS.
58

SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
EU-Project: Cross-border Spatial Information System with High Added
Value (CROSS-SIS)
J. Riecken
Surveying and Mapping Agency NRW, Bonn, Germany
and several colleagues from Lower Austria (Austria), Gelderland and Overijsel (The Netherlands), Navarra
(Spain) and North-Rhine Westphalia (Germany)
In the developing Information Society the access to spatial information will be a key factor for spatial related
decision making and could be defined as an infrastructure component. Therefore, Spatial Data Infrastructure
(SDI) developments are currently under development on different levels from local to European. A set of
organisations collect geographical data but they have little or no contact with other organisations doing similar
work in neighbouring regions (from the European point of view the INSPIRE directive will focus on the
harmonisation of the European developments).
The CROSS-SIS-project is partly financed by the European Union within the Interreg III C program with the
aim to enhance the use of spatial data for spatial decision making in crossborder settings, promoting the
modernisation of the regional administrations, the use of INSPIRE and the development of the information
society (www.cross-sis.com). Some further objectives are to achieve greater efficiency in the acquisition,
maintenance, management and distribution of spatial data both at regional and cross-national level. The
ambitions of the project are closely related to the directives of INSPIRE (http://inspire.jrc.it/) – so a
decentralized approach is favoured, also to go further in modernizing the regional administrations and finally
arrive at e-government.
In 2005 all participants Lower Austria (Austria), Gelderland and Overijsel (The Netherlands), Navarra (Spain)
and North-Rhine Westphalia (Germany) analysed the available SDIs in their regions. A method to evaluate
and asses SDI initiatives in a cross-border context was developed by the Institute for Geoinformatics at the
University Münster and used to identify a best-practice in each region. Based on this exchange of knowledge
and experiences two pilot-projects are currently implemented in 2006. They should serve as an “opener” for a
European spatial data infrastructure as envisioned by INSPIRE.
In the CROSS-SIS project pilot applications are currently set up cross-border SIS services in two specific
areas:
Statistics
In the area of statistic the difficulties in harmonizing European data are obvious, showing living conditions in
Europe. However, with CROSS-SIS it will be demonstrated that with distributed interoperable web service
technologies, which constitute the base for any modern SDI, it is possible to discover, retrieve, visualize, and
analyze spatial data regardless of the factual physical location of spatial data repositories and geoprocessing
facilities. This is a precondition for a seamlessly integrative application of spatial data by statistics
professionals in cross-borer settings. But the demonstration will not avoid addressing current semantic data
problems. In contrary, it shall also reveal fields for future research. The purpose of the statistical pilot is to
develop a WEB-GIS-client that presents regional statistical data as interactive maps at a European level. The
added value of this pilot is to present statistical data in a cross-border context, free of charge via the internet,
and also to follow a service-oriented architecture by utilizing OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium)-compliant
technologies. Using these, the statistical data is integrated into the WEB-GIS-application via standardized
Web-Map-Services (WMS) that each partner will set up. One advantage of this process is the fact that the
preparation and the up-dating process for the data are both done decentralized by each partner region. Another
major advantage of the WEB-GIS client is the easy-to-use approach for both beginners and experts. The
technical architecture is structured to conveniently enable users to interact with the application (choose indices,
change colours etc.). As a special option it is possible to search for customized selected indicators from
EUROSTAT on a regional European level. The search results are visually represented in maps.
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SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
Planning
The purpose of the planning pilot is to develop a WEB-GIS-client that presents comparable regional planning
data as interactive maps at a European level. The added value of this pilot is not only to present planning data
in a cross-border context free of charge via the internet, but also to follow a service-oriented architecture by
utilizing OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium)-compliant technologies. Using these, the planning data is
integrated into the WEB-GIS-application via standardized Web-Map-Services (WMS) that each partner will
set up. One advantage of this process is the fact that the preparation and the up-dating process for the data are
both done decentralized by each partner region. Another advantage of the WEB-GIS-client is the easy-to-use
approach for both beginners and experts. The technical architecture is structured to conveniently enable users
to interact with the application (choose regions, level of plans, show the related documents).
Conclusions
The author wants to give an overview of the CROSS-SIS project, including the state-of-the-art of the SDIinitiatives
in the participating regions. He also wants also explain the basic principles that have been developed
to implement a spatial data infrastructure at a regional European level and that direct the specification of the
two pilot projects.
As the project is closely linked to the INSPIRE principles the main objective of the project is achieved if the
prototypical system provides the platform for European regions to represent their kind of data. Introducing the
project to a wider audience can refer to that possibility. This function which will be realised in 2006
emphasizes the added value for other regions that may join the application in the future.
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SESSION NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI
Geoinformatics and GIScience Education: UNIGIS as SDI Brainware
J.Strobl
Centre for Geoinformatics – Z_GIS, Salzburg University, Austria
Building a (European) Spatial Data Infrastructure is widely considered as the most important move towards a
better and more effective organisation of our living spaces. Information infrastructures clearly are the
backbone of today’s information society and the foundation of a knowledge economy. While SDI’s require
different components like distributed data services, catalogues and positioning services, any successful
implementation will also need a range of competences as skills and knowledge. This brainware component
contributes to the overall organisational SDI fabric through pertinent qualifications attained by academic
education. While many universities aim at educating future entry-level experts with various undergraduate and
graduate programmes, the global UNIGIS consortium of universities offers in-service distance education
through online courses to active professionals in the GIS workforce.
Recognising worldwide resource limitations, we all are working towards a more sustainable society.
Increasingly, we are confronted by the scarcity of one clearly non-extensible resource, the surface area of our
planet. This constraint is compounded by pressures on the usability of living spaces, caused by environmental
factors, climate change, resource degradation and societal factors. Managing our world today is a complex
task, supported by digital models for documentation, scenario evaluation, impact assessment and process
simulation. These models serve as experimental ‘sand boxes’ to predict actions and to assess policy options.
Of course models need to be connected to the real world, which is achieved with the help of spatial reference
systems and real time coordinate measurements by positioning services. This entire framework for managing
our world is based on GI Science and operational geoinformatics methodologies. Openly sharing a common
basemap and accessing distributed data sets and communicating through a common language protocal are a
key requirements for the spatial data infrastructure helping to manage our world’s assets. In turn, highly
qualified experts are needed to design, build and operate an SDI. Industry continues to challenge academia to
relieve the bottleneck of competent knowledge workers in the GI field.
The UNIGIS consortium has started to respond to this challenge in the early 90ies. Based on a modular and
highly structed concept of learning objects and intesive communication, online distance learning addresses
GIS professionals worldwide, leading to professional diploma and Master of Science qualifications. Originally
focussed on spatial data acquisition, geodatabase design, spatial analysis skills and cartography, UNIGIS
studies (see www.unigis.net) offered eg from the UK, the Netherlands, Austria / Germany, Spain, Portugal,
Czech, Hungary and Poland are now oriented towards providing qualifications required in a world of SDI’s:
understanding distributed systems architectures, open standards and interfaces, protocols for geographic
communication and development of server-based applications accessible from thin as well as mobile clients.
The presentation will highlight the impact of UNIGIS education on the current geoinformation workforce,
outline the development of UNIGIS programmes towards a focus on qualifying geospatial professionals for
contributing to SDI’s as the ‘critical information infrastructure’ for our society, and assess the impact of
innovative elearning concepts (collaborative forums, virtual summer schools, supervision) on achievement.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
An Ontology Based Approach for the Construction of an Address
Gazetteer: the IDEZAR Gazetteer Use-case
J. Nogueras-Iso, F. J. López, J. Lacasta, F. J. Zarazaga-Soria, P.R. Muro-Medrano
Computer Science and Systems Engineering Department, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Visser, P.R.S., Jones, D.M., Bench-Capon, T.J.M., Shave, M.J.R.: An Analysis of Ontological In order to
create the contents of an address gazetteer service that forms part of the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) of
local administrations such as a city council, the SDI developers must perform a work of analyzing and
harmonizing all the existent repositories containing address information in the different offices of the council.
In our case, we have faced the problem of creating an address gazetteer service for the Zaragoza council SDI
[Portoles-Rodríguez et al., 2005], which is specialized in the Urban Networks of this city. And analyzing the
information related with addresses and urban transport networks in the Spanish local administration, we have
faced that different taxonomies are used for the identification of urban network feature types in different
administrative processes. For instance, one of these taxonomies is the one used in the central database
repository managed by the council Informatics office. However, when the city council needs to exchange
information with external organizations like the National Cadastre Office or the National Statistics Institute,
the information needs to be reformatted in order to comply with the feature types accepted by these
institutions. Moreover, it is usual that this reformatted information is stored in parallel repositories (e.g., tax
office databases, urban planning office databases) whose updates are not synchronized with the central
repository.
In order to overcome this existent heterogeneity in the different repositories, it seems sensible to establish a
unified model of the feature types that can be found in this domain, and make the necessary mappings to the
particular taxonomies that must be used in external organizations or in the different repositories maintained at
council level. This feature type model could be formally represented by an ontology that defines explicitly the
concepts and relationships between these concepts in a domain [Gómez-Pérez et al, 2003; Visser et al., 1997].
Having observed this necessity of defining an ontology for feature types in the urban networks domain, the
objectives of this work are three-fold. The first objective is to analyze the different taxonomies in the public
administration for urban networks [Levoleger and Corbin, 2005].
The second objective is to use these source taxonomies in order to define later a unified urban network
ontology overcoming the existent heterogeneity. On the one hand, this unified ontology will facilitate the
interoperability with external administrative organizations. And on the other hand, it will enable the modelling
of the contents served by the Gazetteer service in the Zaragoza council SDI (IDEZAR,
http://www.zaragoza.es/idezar/).
And the third and final objective is to use this experience of defining this unified ontology in order to provide
some guidelines for the construction of ontologies. More specifically this work will provide feedback to the
Towntology project (http://www.towntology.net). This project is funded by COST (intergovernmental
framework for European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) through the action
COST C21 in the Urban Civil Engineering (UCE) domain and it aims at increasing to increase the knowledge
and promote the use of ontologies in the domain of Urban Civil Engineering projects [Teller et al., 2005], in
the view of facilitating the communications between information systems, stakeholders and UCE specialists at
a European level (Groupware).
The full paper version of this contribution will analyze the use-case selected for this work explaining the
different urban network databases (including their different feature type taxonomies) that must be used for the
creation of a gazetteer. Then, it will be described how the contents of the gazetteer can be created using two
different approaches. Whereas the first approach will describe an ad-hoc manual mapping among taxonomies
used in the source repositories, the second one will describe how to establish a formal urban network ontology
that integrates the mappings among the different taxonomies. For the formalization of the ontology in this
second approach we will explore the use of ontology editing tools like Towntology [Keita et al., 2004] (visual
tool to facilitate the discussion among experts of the ontology construction) or Protegé [Noy et al., 2000]
(enabling the use of more formal language specifications). The main aim of this experimental part of the work
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
is to demonstrate that the second approach provides more flexibility and scalability, facilitating the upload
process and possible future extensions.
References
Mismatches: Heterogeneity versus Interoperability. In: AAAI 1997. Spring Symposium on Ontological
Engineering, Stanford, USA (1997)
Alistair, M., Matthews, B., Wilson, M.: SKOS Core: Simple Knowledge Organization for the Web. In:
Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, Madrid, Spain
(2005)
Berman, M.L.: Semantic Interoperability and Cultural Specificity: Examples from Chinese, Japanese,
Mongolian and Uighur. In: Proc. of Social Science History Association meeting (SSHA'2003),
Baltimore (2003)
Gómez-Pérez, A., Fernández-López, M., Corcho, O.: Ontological Engineering. Springer-Verlag, London
(United Kingdom) (2003)
Keita, A., Laurini, R., Roussey, C., Zimmerman, M.: Towards an Ontology for Urban Planning: The
Towntology Project. In: CD-ROM Proceedings of the 24th UDMS Symposium, Chioggia (2004)
Levoleger, K., Corbin, C.: Survey of European National Addressing as of May 2005, v3. AWP 2005, EUROGI
(2005)
Noy, N.F., Fergerson, R.W., Musen, M.A.: The knowledge model of Protege-2000: Combining
interoperability and flexibility. In: 2th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and
Knowledge Management (EKAW'2000), Juan-les-Pins, France (2000)
Portoles-Rodríguez, D., Álvarez, P., Muro-Medrano, P.: IDEZar: an example of user needs, technological
aspects and the institutional framework of a local SDI. In: Proceedings of the 11th EC GI & GIS
Workshop, ESDI Setting the Framework.(2005)
Teller, J., Keita, A.K., Roussey, C., Laurini, R.: Urban Ontologies for an improved communication in urban
civil engineering projects. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Analysis and
GEOmatics, Research & Developments,SAGEO 2005, Avignon, France (2005)
63

SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
EuroRoadS’ contribution to the implementation of INSPRE
U.L Sandgren
Lantmäteriet, Gävle, Sweden
The EuroRoadS project stared in March 2004 and will be finalised by end of August 2006. The main objective
is to build a platform for a European-wide public road data infrastructure delivering access to harmonised and
quality assured road information for multipurpose use.
The project, which is supported by EC through the eContent programme, is of great interest for the
implementation of SDI for data on transportation network – and for INSPIRE in general. EuroRoadS is based
on the following main principles:
� To support collection and maintenance of data within the organisational level where it can be most
effectively carried out,
� To make use of existing data and create efficient tools to achieve seamless interoperability between
existing databases – not to set up a European database,
� To involve all relevant stakeholders in the entire process from describing user requirements to the
development of specifications and other solutions,
� To use existing standards to describe data model, referencing systems, exchange model and exchange
format, quality, metadata and terminology,
� To set up efficient quality models to support safe-guarded handling of road data,
� To focus on core European road network data and create efficient solutions making it easy to add
other kinds of road data and to combine the road data with other data themes, such as data on
administrative boundaries, geographical names, hydrology, etc.
EuroRoadS has based its framework of specifications – describing information model, core data content,
exchange model and exchange format, quality model, metadata catalogue and metadata server as well as
terminology catalogue – on existing standards from the ISO 19 000 series and OGC, but also implemented
specifications from GDF and existing national road data standards and specifications.
The project has focused on core road data, but made it easy to handle additional objects and attributes and also
to link the information to other data themes, such as administrative boundaries, geographical names and
hydrology.
The project has made in-dept studies on – and delivered efficient mechanisms – to find the right balance
between far-reaching harmonisation and to make use of existing road data in different public organisations.
This includes introduction of different conformance levels. Core European road data is defined into in three
groups (mandatory, optional and conditional) and different methods for relating attributes and features to the
road network are allowed.
An extended quality model based on ISO 19 115, which allows a full quality control of road data throughout
the complete chain from data acquisition to final applications, has been developed.
The project has been using – and gained experiences from the use of – commercial available schema
translation tools in order to “map” existing national data models to EuroRoadS data model.
The project has studied and evaluated options and actions for the implementation and exploitation of the
proposed solution, including carried out cost-benefit analysis.
The framework of specifications and the quality model have been tested in practical demonstrations showing,
for example, the handling of data acquisition, data integration, linking of data at administrative boarders, and
dissemination in real time of data to one application (a Speed advice service). Furthermore, a metadata system
has been developed based on the metadata catalogue. During the project period the metadata system includes
data from test areas in Austria, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
In view of the important remaining work to implement the proposed INSPIRE Directive by development and
adoption of efficient and acceptable implementing rules the experiences from the EuroRoadS project should be
of general interest and not only for the handling of information on transportation networks.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
A New Production Paradigm Based on a SDI
P Trevelyan, G Mallin, Jeremy Tandy
The Met Office, Exeter, UK
Background
The Met Office relies heavily on visualisation and production systems that are based on a number of
applications that together form the production chain. This chain essentially takes raw data and through a
number of intermediate processes creates a myriad of products that form part of a customer service. Many of
these systems are now ageing and are based on technologies that will become increasingly difficult to support
much beyond 2008.
A number of new technologies allow software to be divided up into “services” that can exchange information
and interoperate. These services can be configured to provide flexibility i.e. production paths that can share
data and functions, as well as having a common interfaces. The key to the future is in identifying these
services; decide what applications can be re-used and “wrapped” as a service and what new applications are
needed to fill the gaps. The key objective in considering the replacement of major systems is to create a set of
modules that are loosely coupled and can be orchestrated in a flexible manner.
The new production strategy needs a new lingua franca and such a language has been developed for the
geospatial community i.e. GML (Geography Markup Language. The OGC have developed a number of
services that enable the transfer of features, maps, grids etc in a standard way across a network using Internet
protocols. Thus a lot of the hard work in setting catalogues, interface definitions and the metadata description
has already been done. The Geography Markup Language (GML) utilises XML to express geographical
features and serves as modelling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for
geographic data. The key OGC web services are:
� The Web Coverage Service (WCS) supports electronic interchange of geospatial data as "coverage’s"
– that is, digital geospatial information representing space-varying phenomena. A WCS provides
access to potentially detailed and rich sets of geospatial information, in forms that are useful for
client-side rendering, multi-valued coverage’s, and input into scientific models and other clients.
� The OGC Web Map Service (WMS) allows a client to overlay map images for display served from
multiple Web Map Services on the Internet.
� The OGC Web Feature Service allows a client to retrieve and update geospatial data encoded in
Geography Markup Language (GML) from multiple Web Feature Services.
The Met Office has initiated a project with clear objectives to initially demonstrate internal interoperability
using OGC interfaces and GML. The architecture is based on the principle that many existing products are
layered e.g. overlay of radar data on a map background and each of these layers can be created by a separate
service. The interfaces to these services will be an OGC specified Web Map Service that will use an OGC
“Feature Portrayal Service” to render the features as images and then images will be overlaid to form a
complete product.
Some initial work has been carried out and the results are encouraging and it is hoped that that full working
demonstrator will have been built by the end of the Summer 06. One of the key issues beyond interoperability
will be performance as this key to the production schedule of the Met Office.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
‘Feature/Object Data Models’ – a Report on the
EuroSDR/EuroGeographics Workshop, 24-25 April 2006
P. Woodsford, A. Illert, K. Murray, C. Portele, M. Seifert
1 EuroSDR, Cambridge, UK
2 Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie, Frankfurt, Germany
3 Ordnance Survey, Southampton, UK
4 Interactive Instruments, Bonn, Germany
5 Landesamt für Vermessung und Geoinformation Bayern, Munich, Germany
Abstract
The paper presents the outcomes of the joint EuroSDR/EuroGeographics Workshop on ‘Feature/Object Data
Models’ held at Munich, Germany on 24-25 April 2006. The objectives of the Workshop were:
� To understand the rationale and business benefits of feature/object data models
� To evaluate current experience and establish current best practice/state of the art in design and
implementation
� To understand the current status and future plans for moving to feature/object data models
� To identify outstanding research and development issues
� To facilitate interoperability at the data model level
The Workshop was a sequel to the ‘NMCAs and the Internet II – eDelivery and Feature Serving’ Workshop
held in 2005, [Woodsford et al (2005)].
National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCA’s) and other data providers are adopting a new generation
of data model, sometimes called a Feature model, sometimes an Object model. Such models manage and
deliver geospatial framework (and other) data in meaningful packets of information, with unique and persistent
identifiers that support association and aggregation. More importantly they help shift the paradigm in terms of
data linking, sharing and reuse and assist in the move towards mainstream GI take up.
Opening. The Workshop was attended by 44 delegates from 15 countries and from the marine community (see
Figure 1). It was followed a meeting (members only) of the ‘Data Specifications’ Drafting Team for the
INSPIRE Implementation Rules. The Workshop outcomes were designed to assist the work of the Drafting
Team, most of whom were participants.
Delegates were welcomed on behalf of the hosts, the Bavarian Office for Surveying and Geographic
Information (LVG), by Robert Eberle. LVG has more than 200 years of history and has recently evolved from
being a survey office to a wider role including responsibilities in Bavaria for cadastre, the Satellite Positioning
System (SAPOS®), aerial photos, Digital Terrain Models (DGM), the Authoritative Topographic Cartographic
Information System (ATKIS®) and topographic mapping.
LVG hosted the fiftieth anniversary meeting of EuroSDR (OEEPE) in 2003. Keith Murray, President of
EuroSDR, welcomed delegates and gave a brief update on EuroSDR and its activities.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
Figure 1 – Workshop Delegates.
‘The Benefits of Feature/Object Data Models’ Session. This opening session addressed topics including
market drivers, the paradigm shift from mapping to information, an outline of design principles and examples
of benefits delivered.
Clemens Portele, chair of the ‘Data Specifications’ Drafting Team (DT) for the INSPIRE Implementation
Rules, began his presentation on ‘Data Models and INSPIRE, the Why and the How’ by outlining the current
status of requirements for data specifications in the INSPIRE draft legislation. Article 12 covers the definition
and classification of spatial objects and the topics of Article 13 align closely with the Workshop agenda.
Implementation is to be progressive and based on a service level architecture. Harmonisation has to be
achieved at the levels of schema, data and data product. The DT is currently reviewing reference material.
Its second deliverable is the first draft of the generic aspects of the Conceptual Model.
Robert Balanche of SwissTopo presented experiences over the last 15 years with the ‘Swiss Cadastral Core
Data Model’. Clear separation of the data model (in UML) and the description language (INTERLIS) and a
model-driven approach has made responsiveness to evolving needs possible. The model contains eight
information layers and supports unique identifiers and incremental update. Standardisation and gains of x4 in
productivity have improved the survey coverage and delivery. A GeoPortal acts as the hub for cantonal and
regional infrastructures. Switzerland is moving towards using both INTERLIS and GML3. Two cases studies
were outlined. Lessons learned include the need for strong political will and economic incentives to move
forward, the crucial role of a competence centre and the importance of transparent communication.
Keith Murray, Ordnance Survey Great Britain, presented 'THE DIGITAL NATIONAL FRAMEWORK IN
GREAT BRITAIN, The Rationale, Role, Evolution and Direction'. DNF provides a common framework for all
stakeholders and is being driven by new legislative requirements (eg Road Traffic Management), the impact of
new information networks and the need for data integrity. It covers the land area and is being extended to
coastal waters. Fundamental to its data model is the role of unique public identifiers for data sharing and
referencing. Case studies were described at Land Registry and for Land Access. Key lessons learned include
the value of an evolutionary approach, the key role of standards and technical guides and of best practice from
mainstream ICT.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
Åsa Åstrand of Lantmateriet, Sweden presented their current plans for a new data model in 'A Swedish Vision
- A paradigm shift towards national integration of information'. As well as the fundamental goal of information
sharing, some objects have to be maintained by more than one organisation. A big investment is being made to
establish common terminology and application schema with stakeholders, to develop a common Business
Process Model and to exchange coherent business objects. ‘What we do must be humanly understandable
before it can be computational understandable’.
‘Design and Delivery of a Feature/Object Data Model’ Sessions. Initially three presentations were given by
organisations planning to move forward to a new data model and then two countries who have recently
launched their new data models gave in depth presentations. Finally Great Britain and Switzerland were revisited
at a more technical level.
Trevor Steenson of Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland, in ‘Beyond the Cartographic Data Model’, described
their 1980’s data model, which represents a paper map in digital form. A business process review led to a
project in 2002 to deliver efficiency savings internally and to reduce the time between survey and availability
to the customer. Recently OSNI began to investigate the requirement for a new ‘Real World’ data model to be
machine readable, to provide support for integration of OSNI data with data from other organizations, to be
capable of generalisation and transformation into other models and to be as simple as possible.
Lea Pauts of the Estonian Land Board, described the goals and principles of 'The Estonian National
Topographic Database Data Model' This object data model underpins the Cadastral Information System. Its
key characteristics are support for polygon topologies, multiple representation, change only update and web
publishing. The ISO19110 Feature cataloguing methodology has been followed – one lesson is that schema
translation is necessary. An external register is used to manage public identifiers. Other key elements are
business rules and metadata.
Maria Pla of the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, Spain described both the current situation and future plans
in 'Data Models at the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya'. ICC currently maintains 4 vector databases at
different scales; although generalisation is used the separate maintenance cycles are expensive. The first data
model was 2.5D spaghetti. In 1995 a move was made to a GIS oriented database. Each region in Spain (17
regions) uses its own data model. The Comisión de Normas Cartográficas del Consejo Superior Geográfico is
working to develop a common data model to be used to transfer data between the different regions. ICC is
moving to an enhanced data model with support for routing and hydrological applications. An ISO19109
schema is used with definition in natural language and UML. Focus is currently on the shift to an object model
and the formalisation of rules.
Ulrich Düren, NRW, Germany, gave a comprehensive presentation of 'The German AAA-Datamodel'. The
AAA model has a single application schema to cover geodetic control, cadastral and topographic/cartographic
information. It is being brought into use, including existing data migration, in 2006-2010.
The AAA-datamodel is based on ISO, W3C and OGC standards. Its conceptual schema is modelled in UML
using Rational Rose. The AAA-Basisschema provides basic classes and concepts and is ‘application-neutral’.
Coverage features, features with and without geometry and complex features are derived. Relationships
include an underpass relation and ‘derived-by-generalisation’. Constraints are modelled in OCL, supplemented
by natural language. ISO19107 simple topology is supported as are features with and without shared geometry.
There will be a registry of coordinate reference systems (CRS). The schema for the NAS exchange format (a
GML3 profile) is derived automatically. Unique identifiers and versioning (history) are supported and update
rules and processes are defined. The feature catalogue is derived from the application schema.
AAA-data will be the basis of the German SDI (core data). It will be accessible through services (WFS/WCS).
The methodology for developing models for other application domains (using the basic AAA-model) is
described in a ‘cook-book’. Many of the defined feature types will also be required by INSPIRE (e.g. parcels,
administrative boundaries, topography, DTM, CRS).
Nico Bakker of the Topografische Dienst Kadaster, Netherlands, gave a similarly detailed presentation of 'The
Top10NL Data Model'. The launch of Top10NL, after an extensive period of development, prototyping and
user consultation, is due in the second half of 2006. The historic situation involves many proprietary data
formats and independently maintained data products. Design of Top10NL began in 2002 and is based on ISO
and OGC standards. Furthermore, it is an extension of the Dutch national data model - NEN 3610:1995 nl,
which provides sector models with shared definitions and a shared temporal model for all data in the
Netherlands. Top10NL is the first sector model: others such as planning, water, historical information will
follow.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
The GML application schema is derived from the UML model automatically. The Basic Scheme for Geoinformation
has a GeoFeature superclass and fourteen geographic feature basic classes and their relationships.
Objects are stored in a continuous data base as 2D points, lines and areas (although the model can support 3D).
Objects are defined by identification, geometry, description, temporal data and metadata. Temporal attributes
are defined for version management and incremental updates - objectBeginTime and objectEndTime indicate
the lifetime of an object. ‘Large’ changes result in new objects with new ID’s. A ‘punch’ operation has been
defined to resolve the creation of new objects and the splitting and merging of existing objects when an update
activity takes place.
Complex objects are only defined indirectly in the data model. Object relationships include ‘above’. There are
no standards applied for presentation, but TDK delivers its own style sheet. GML3.1 is the delivery format.
Some sample Top10NL data is on the Workshop website.
Les Rackham, an independent consultant, UK, described 'THE DIGITAL NATIONAL FRAMEWORK IN
GREAT BRITAIN, Working Together to Develop and Document the Technical Architecture'. DNF defines
consistent methods for publication and for derived outputs across base and associated reference information
and applications. The base, which is seamless, contains 400 million versioned objects with unique identifiers
(TOID’s), abstracted from the real world as ‘feature types:- TopographicArea, TopographicLine,
BoundaryLine, TopographicPoint, CartographicSymbol, CartographicText. These are represented
geometrically in 2D by points, polylines and ring/polygons, with full attribution of feature types. Attribution
includes TOID’s, version number and date, change history and physical level (eg underground, normal,
overhead). TOID’s persist for the lifetime of an object and are supported by object lifecycle rules. They are
used for data association with continuity over time and for expressing complex object relationships. Associated
objects across the topographic layer include the address layer and the integrated transportation network.
An industry wide Expert Group is responsible for a comprehensive documentation hierarchy. This includes
standards (international and industry), high level documentation, models, technical guides, examples and best
practice guidelines. DNF data has been delivered in GML2 since 2001.
Finally, Robert Balanche returned to 'The Core Data Model of Swiss Cadastral Surveying'. This had its first
version in 1993 and a second revision in June 2002. A new version is planned for 2008-2010. Domains include
control points, land cover, single objects, heights, local names, ownership, pipelines and administrative
subdivisions. Points have 3D coordinates, line strings can be arcs or linear, and surfaces and area divisions are
supported. INTERLIS is the data description language as described above. Relationships include association,
aggregation and composition. Several object identifier schemes are supported as are feature catalogues in four
languages. There is a good correlation with the INSPIRE data themes.
Breakout Session 1 - ‘Do we have a common understanding of ‘Feature/Object Data Models?’. One group
considered organisational aspects (user requirements, paradigm shift, benefits, …). Their summary conclusions
were:
� Users’ expectations are often limited by current providers’ products. There is a need to balance
complexity, future flexibility and apparent simplicity to gain adoption (MUST be simple for end
users)
� Some form of national coordination is necessary to gain traction.
� Pragmatism is paramount – small steps in a converging direction
� Systems suppliers will exploit any lack of vision with their own models – but will also support
national initiatives if users are seen to support them
� It is still too early to fully assess benefits but reuse, better information and interoperable information
MUST benefit several stakeholders. Often the benefits are to the national purse (e.g. elimination of
duplication across several public bodies).
The second group looked at technical aspects (identity, life-cycle, service-orientation, ISO/OGC profiles,…),
with the following summary conclusions:
� Agreement on terminology is key
� Readable feature catalogues are still very important and should be automatically generated from
models. Proposed improvements to ISO19110 will be useful
� The general principles of identifiers are quite well understood and followed, with minor variations in
syntax
� Temporal and change updates should match users expectations and only reflect real change. Several
approaches are possible. Sequences of incremental changes need regular integrity checks
� UML is very widely used but needs in addition natural language descriptions and guidelines
� OCL for rules is only partly sufficient and not yet well supported
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The Dutch example using generic classes extensible to different domains is very interesting. Approaches with
many different domain-specific XML standards are less successful.
‘Data Model Interoperability’ Sessions. These sessions covered experience from relevant projects such as
INTERLIS, RISE, MOTIIVE and EuroRoads, the role a Common Conceptual Model and guidelines for
machine translatable data models.
André Bernath, from SITgisconsul, Switzerland presented a ‘Model driven approach in action – from local
data to national SDI ’. The objective is to make distributed geodata from different organisations, places,
themes, systems, GIS software available for use by different organisations, places, themes, systems and GIS
software. The service is a fully automatic Internet application providing up-to-date data, 24 hours a day, on a
payable basis. INTERLIS supports two approaches for the necessary information exchange – a standard
model with extensions and semantic mapping. Workflow is automated across data acquisition, update and
publication using a central hub which performs interface checking as well as data distribution. The modeldriven
approach provides for lossless transfer, computer based validation and schema extensibility. Currently
the integration of regional hubs into an interregional portal is under pilot operation.
Eddie Curtis of Snowflake Software, UK addressed the topic of 'Schema Translation in Practice'.
Concentrating on database to XML translation, he covered cases such as simple translation, grouping of
columns, table joins, fan-in and fan-out, insertion of missing constant or deducible attribute values,
concatenation and value translation. Examples shown included OS MasterMap (part of DNF) to the GML
profile for Simple Features, to Dutch Top10 NL (TopographicArea to Gebouw, GeografischGebied, etc.), and
to German NAS (TopographicArea to AX_Gebaeude, AX_Strassenverkehr, etc.) and translation from 2D to
3D (eg generating CityGML from heighted topographic base data). He concluded by identifying the need for
progress in configuring translations at the implementation level, where domain and implementation knowledge
is mixed, and for a language with which to relate conceptual models. OWL (Ontology Web Language) is well
suited to expressing conceptual relationships. OCL (Object Constraint Language) is already part of UML and
could be extended.
Fig. 2: Some Current Data Harmonisation Projects for Land and Sea.
Kieran Millard, HR Wallingford, UK and the MOTIIVE project (see Figure 2 above) addressed some different
application domains with his presentation on 'Data Models - A Met and Marine Perspective'. Developments in
Marine standards are being driven by increased demand for information to underpin improved risk and
environmental management and are strongly based on ISO and OGC standards. The marine community is
broad and there is no ‘one-size fits all feature definition’. The concept of ‘separation of concerns’ is needed to
create a set of consistent feature types. Another new concept is that of ‘processing affordance’ for operational
service chains, defining operational interfaces for feature types and the operations that can be invoked. This is
supported by the General Feature Model, but not by XML Schema. Climate Science Markup Language
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(CSML) is an example of an application schema that realises a coverage view. Data is being translated from
native data models to CSML for wave data forecasting, current/depth data and biodiversity modelling.
Interoperability cannot be achieved by an application schema alone. A set of well defined service interfaces is
vital to ensure that data can be accessed in an implementation agnostic fashion. A key enabler of
interoperability is the registry, which enables associations between objects to be expressed and objects of
interest to be discovered.
The EU MOTIIVE and the Australian Oceans Portal projects are collaborating to deliver an ebRIM
registry/repository implementation, focusing on delivering a feature type catalogue. The Met Office is
proposing a second reference implementation. Interoperability tests across the MOTIIVE/Oceans Portal,
MarineXML and Met Office registries could be scheduled for late 2006.
Mike Osborne, SeaZone Ltd., UK took up the theme of 'Extending Spatial Data Infrastructure Offshore'. First
he described the S-57 data model, defined by the International Hydrographic Organisation from 1989 onwards.
The S-57 Object Catalogue defines features and properties (including complex objects) in support of
Electronic Navigational Charts. The Object Catalogue is extensible and change only update is well supported,
although ID’s are only unique to a chart and are revised on re-issue.
Coastal Zone data is dynamic and is environmentally and economically highly important. Land and sea
mapping is not joined up in most countries and is historically poorly surveyed and mapped. IHO announced a
new S-100 data model in November 2005. This is to support a greater variety of hydrographic information and
products but the data schema and scope are as yet not fully defined. In the UK the Digital National Framework
includes offshore reference information. Marine feature types complement those on land via an extended
catalogue. Land and seabed elevations are joined at the shoreline in support of a wide range of environmental
and engineering activities. Hydrospatial layers are bathymetry and elevation, natural and physical features,
structures and obstructions, socio-economic and marine use, conservation and environment and climate and
oceanography.
The methodology is transferable and repeatable. Combined land and sea topographic mapping just needs
‘adding water’.
Finally, the opening speaker, Clemens Portele, OGC (Europe) Ltd, returned to the platform to describe 'THE
RISE Schema Development Methodology - a work in progress'. RISE is an EU project addressing data
harmonisation issues, including avoidance of data duplication, common semantics and technical support for
the INSPIRE principles. RISE intends to create a repeatable methodology, to be tested with water and
elevation data in the context of river basin management and land cover data. It adopts a spiral engineering
approach, addressing a manageable part of the whole problem area at a time. Data specifications are assumed
to be based on data product specifications (DPS) according to ISO 19131.
Data harmonisation and interoperability within the ESDI requires that a balance be struck between simplicity
and complexity. The RISE process involves use case development, requirements and feature type
identification, data dictionary update, DPS and application schema development and implementation, testing
and validation. The RISE use case is the application of the Water Framework Directive – the common
framework for Community action in the field of water policy. The project is still at an early stage, the next
steps being the testing of the methodology against real world use case(s).
Breakout Session 2 - ‘How Good are our Standards, Techniques and Tools?’ leading to ‘What are the Research
Needs?’. One group, focussing on standards, produced the following recommendations:
� Improve accessibility to standards
� Don’t intimidate potential users
� Avoid standards as a specialist discussion
� Guidelines, guidelines, guidelines
� Role for EuroGeographics
� GI Standardisation for Dummies!!
� Information about INSPIRE Drafting Teams
� Get involved in INSPIRE
� Parallel push to system vendors – having tools based on standards available will drive the process
forward (whether free, open source or COTS)
� Feedback process, iterate changes back to the standards
� We have (mostly) what we need for technical (syntax) interoperability, but not for semantic
interoperability
� Workshop recommendations – an annual update is highly desirable – the dissemination role is very
important and change is very rapid
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
The second group, focusing or research needs, produced recommendations as follows:
� Suitability of standards. Key factors are:
� Stability in the future (UML 2.0, XML will change). With standards where we do not have any
control, should we freeze the versions?
� Confidence in standards, many other follow the same way, we need tested tools, tutorials for practical
usage: some of these are lacking
� We must use common IT standards before implementing own GI standards, no ‘GI island’
� CASE tools for UML->GML conversion are useful, but different UML tools are not compatible
� Research needs (not all academic) that were highlighted included:
� Mapping between different classifications of the real world (semantic and syntactic interoperability),
ontologies
� Semantic web technologies
� Dynamic models and mapping between them pose difficult issues
� Testing deployments and implementations of the standards (testing and refining existing standards)
� Need for a European persistent testbed (e.g. AGILE, Eurogeographics, EuroSDR)
� New generation of data model – issues of data updating, maintenance of the data model (where much
of the costs will be incurred)
� INSPIRE context: demanding time frame, how to implement and keep an operational infrastructure
not in a project environment but in practice; useful infrastructure
� Ocean – land issues (hydrographic communities): new requirements for standardisation and
harmonization.
In summary, a considerable agreement existed between the two groups with mainly a conservative approach
(consolidation and stability, reflecting the backgrounds of the delegates) but do not stop innovating and have
some longer term objectives.
Concluding Remarks. Peter Woodsford, the Programme Committee Chair, thanked the hosts for the excellence
of the arrangements and the presenters and delegates for their contributions. He noted that many of the
developments and plans forseen in the Workshop in 2000 on ‘Uses of XML/GML’ had become realities.
EuroSDR had traditionally played a bridging role between the research community and the NMCA’s. This
Workshop had brought forward other bridging possibilities, between the land and the sea.
These are exciting times and there is much solid achievement in Europe. Perhaps the shift to new paradigms
and new data models creates an opportunity for European based technology to play a more significant role than
it has in the past.
References
Woodsford, P., Luzet,C., Endrullis, M. and Vowles, G. (2005). ‘NMCAs and the INTERNET II – eDelivery
and Feature Serving’ – Report on Joint EuroSDR/EuroGeographics Workshop’, Proceedings, 11th EC-
GI & GIS Workshop ESDI Setting the Framework, June 29 – July 1, 2005, Alghero, Sardinia,
European Communities.
Workshop Homepage http://83.138.131.106/eurosdr/workshops/models%5F2006/ and via www.eurosdr.net
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
Data certification and spatial data quality management
M. Sanderson
Abstract
The Internet has enabled a revolution in mapping with the introduction of online map publication. Behind the
map is spatial data content. This is now easier to access than ever, and is starting to be used more widely in
decision-making. We are moving beyond map visualisation of spatial data. Data used on the web must be
constantly monitored and rigorously tested to ensure fitness for purpose. The decision taker must be
guaranteed accurate results from online queries. This article looks beyond the map and focuses on how web
users might access spatial data from multiple sources. How can data best be used for web-based query and data
aggregation? The article will highlight the importance of data certification and spatial data quality
management and consider the institutional aspects of federated spatial data. At the conclusion it highlights
areas where further work is required for regional and pan-European decision making.
Background
There has been significant interest in interoperability and data sharing in the GIS industry since the foundation
of OGC in the early 1990s. Most recently, Martin Klopfer and Guenther Pichler GeoInformatics (March 2006,
Volume 9) catalogued a variety of European initiatives that are driving the uptake and use of geospatial web
technologies and increased data access and data sharing. The entry of the search engine giants into the GIS
space will effectively increase the demand for spatial data sharing. With the demand on the increase for
integrated spatial information services across the web, how (and who) will manage the data aggregation and
data consolidation? And how will they manage spatial data quality?
Is this important? In 1999 The Paper Industry Research Association (PIRA) valued geographic datasets (see
Figure 1) assembled over the previous 10-15 years in the then European Community at €36bn. It estimated that
it was double this value in the United States of America. Recent estimates indicate the value has risen to
€100bn in the E25 community. Most of this geographic data was collected before GPS became ubiquitous.
Not only that but this asset needs to be used in support of sustainable policies, development and emergency
response across large geographies. The ability to process these data automatically in situations not envisaged
by the original collection programmes (we will term it re-use) becomes an essential goal in delivering
knowledge economies.
Fig 1 PIRA (1999)
The demand for increasingly accurate data will be driven by the need to automate spatial data processing. In
order to deliver on European e-Government initiatives or joined-up decision-making if you prefer that term,
data from different sources need to be made available across the web and aggregated without human
intervention. The data will need to be conflated in different data models (or indeed the original business rules
may need to discovered, as they may have been lost or corrupted over time). This is necessary because the
decision-making is in a different context to that which the data were assembled for originally. Much of this
data has a spatial dimension. This is graphically illustrated by the UK Audit Commission in devising an
assessment framework for measuring the efficiency of Local Government services (see Figure 2).
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
Figure 2 Continuous Assessment Framework for Public Sector Bodies
Certifying spatial data quality to enable spatial data re-use
If continuous performance assessment paradigms such as that highlighted above or balanced scorecard
approaches based on the European Foundation for Quality Management (see: http://www.efqm.org and for a
use case see:
http://www.grc.cf.ac.uk/lrn/resources/briefings/PDFs/EFQMmodel.pdf) are to be deployed then spatial data
quality certification is required. By checking the conformance of data against business rules that are integral
to internal operations, such as map production or assigning unique references to topographic features,
organisations can now set measurable data quality standards, avoid arbitrary standards setting and measure
business benefit. Where data from multiple sources are used they must be constantly monitored and rigorously
tested to ensure fitness for purpose. This is one example of re-use. Spatial data collected locally and re-used
within a federated regional, national or European infrastructure (SDI) must be capable of being assessed
according to its fitness for purpose. Without any rigorous spatial data quality certification there is no value in
providing increased access or sharing spatial data that is inaccurate. The various stages for attaining spatial
data quality certification are illustrated in Figure 3.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
Figure 3 The Data Quality Cycle
Standards
The bandwidth available on the web has opened the possibility to deliver SDIs. In addition to the data
certification models discussed above, an SDI cannot be delivered without standards. For the purpose of this
paper the adoption of standards is assumed to be an informed bet1. For an SDI to have an effective chance of
delivering, it is assumed that the standards adopted have to be a mixture of those developed in the spatial data
industry and those that underpin the web or mainstream ICT architectures. This means that to successfully
federate spatial data it has to live in a component world. The component world is complex. In a standards
sense which are important? A list is inevitable. It is not claimed that this list is comprehensive, but is offered as
a starting point.
� Transmission -GML
� Service model – ISO 19119
� Geometry model – ISO 19107
� Domain modelling – W3C OWL
� Rules language – W3C SWRL
It is not the intention to discuss these standards comprehensively here, rather to highlight the service model
concepts, which are of value in building SDIs.
Service Model
The ISO19119 standard is the TC211 model for geo-services. It supports cataloguing of services in metadata
repositories to ISO19115, the metadata standard and the publication of that metadata via service registries.
Importantly this supports the discovery of published services by service aggregators, agents, which can
composite services together to achieve a larger task. The standard describes three levels of service aggregation:
user guided in which the user assembles geo-services. The service level of most interest2 is the fully automatic
service in which a dedicated service-chaining engine can interpret a geo-service request and automatically
assemble the service pipeline itself without any input from the requester. The Service meta-model shows a
service described by a service specification, which details a number of interfaces each with a set of supported
operators. The service is available at a known URI and port number that identifies its location.
1 Take as an example ISO 13249 for SQL/MM. It has 5 parts. Oracle’s spatial type implementation is the de
facto standard for geometry handling within an RDBMS. It is not ISO 13249 compliant.
2 The volume of spatial data requires an automated approach.
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
Building the SDI
So far we have discussed the assessment of data quality, the standards that might be utilised and the problems
facing the SDI builder in a component world. How can we make progress given that the solutions are not
available from one vendor? The recent EuroSDR/Eurogeographics Workshop report3 states:
“User’s expectations are often limited by current providers’ products. There is a need to balance complexity,
future flexibility and apparent simplicity to gain adoption (MUST be simple for end users)”
Implementation has to be about providing a recipe or workflow based on practical implementations. Practical
attempts to build an SDI (known as the Digital National Framework4) in Great Britain are underway. At the
front-end of the SDI it is possible to construct workflow that admits data from individual repositories to the
SDI based on rules conformance (Figure 4).
Figure 4 Data Quality Assessment Workflow
The next stage is to consider what happens where the data are imported from several repositories and because
the real world change occurs rapidly, how these changes can be handled. Consider the following scenario:
A local municipality subject to the continuous performance assessment regime described above, automates the
process of creating unique identifiers within the planning department to allow national property search portals
to identify properties from the postal address. The unique identifier is communicated as part of a case folio to
the local municipality. All departmental data are co-ordinated to the unique identifier and this is crossreferenced
to the unique identifier supplied by the topographic survey and across the enterprise to include the
unique identifier of the municipality’s local taxation file. This is a typical Master Data supply chain problem.
3 Feature/Object Data Models – a Report on the EuroSDR/Eurogeographics Workshop (24-25 th April 2006);
Woodsford et al. [the italics are mine for emphasis]
4 http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/aboutus/reports/dnf/docs/ dnf_white_paper.pdf
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SESSION: DATA HARMONISATION
Step by step the following might occur in the spatial data supply chain:
� Load topographic data.
� Create own data by red-lining over the top or something similar
� Receive updates to the base data
� Work out what the impact of the change is
� Rectify the data if needed as a result of the updates
� Certify the data against the new updated topographic base map before publishing the data.
Setup is not the primary issue. The issue is the receipt of changes. What are some of the possible change
scenarios t�t+1?
� Topographic features are present at t but not at t+1
� Topographic features are the same but are subject to attribution change
� Topographic features have different geometries t�t+1.
The important advance is to recognise that all of these events may be occurring independently or in
combination at Master Data update. When all occurrences are documented, alleviation strategies can be put in
place. Is this important? The reader will have to judge. The example scenario is a real world example. After
the initial setup the municipality was able to handle national property searches electronically requests within a
working day. Subsequent changes to the topographic Master Data since the original setup and in the absence of
documenting or understanding the change impacts have resulted in negative mutation of the application. The
electronic requests now take 3 days because the responses have to be manually validated.
Future Requirements for Spatial Data Certification
The above example is real world problem. In addition if data are to be exchanged successfully across the E25,
there are two areas for further research. They are Digital Rights management and Web Processing Services.
Digital Rights Management
Digital Rights Management and data jurisdiction5 need to be addressed. Economic models are urgently
required to allow revenue to flow back to the data originators that allow the original data to be maintained.
This is entirely equitable where the data are being used in making planning decisions at the regional and above
levels. In addition there is a need to recognise the costs that are incurred by the data aggregator in order to
render the fit for purpose within an aggregated data model. There is an assumption here that the data in the
origin repository are not altered in situ by the aggregator. Errors may be reported back to the originator.
Web Processing Services
These services will enable organisations to present spatial data to web services to discover the underlying
business rules, or measure the content fitness for purpose. These services and associated standards are just
starting to emerge.
5 For a recent practical description of data jurisdiction see R. Lake’s note at:
http://www.geoplace.com/uploads/FeatureArticle/0605_GMLDevelopment.asp
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SESSION: NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI II
Lounaispaikka regional GI service and collaboration initiative
Building a LSDI in South Western Finland
L. Nurmi 1 , A. Vasanen 1
1 Regional Council of Southwest Finland, Turku, Finland
Lounaispaikka, a regional GI centre, is a central actor in establishing Local Spatial Data Infrastructure (LSDI)
in Southwest Finland. The basic aim of Lounaispaikka is to develop and offer services for regional GI users, to
find cooperation models for the regional GI using organizations and to seek synergistic opportunities for these
organizations by coordinating their GI activities. Recently Lounaispaikka has also arranged education for
regional GI users.
The basic idea of Lounaispaikka is that the actual developing work is mainly conducted in cooperation projects
attached to Lounaispaikka, while only the coordination of the development is handled by the Lounaispaikka
office. Lounaispaikka provides a home for GI services and datasets generated in fixed-period projects, which
leads to more efficient use of resources created, by large, with public project funding and therefore are part of
national property.
The recent SDI development in the national and European levels have aroused concern that the needs and
resources of actors using and producing GI data in the regional level are not adequately taken into account.
Lounaispaikka is making fundamental efforts in highlighting the needs and requirements of local and regional
scale GI actors.
The background of the cooperation
Lounaispaikka has been a forum of development in the field of regional GI cooperation since 1999. The
regional GI cooperation was originally launched by Regional Council of SW Finland, University of Turku and
the SW Finland Regional Environment Centre, and the pioneering work of these organizations lead to the
establishment of Lounaispaikka itself in August 2002.
The number of background organizations enlarged notably in early 2006 when four new regional GI actors
joined Lounaispaikka. These seven organizations provide the financial foundation of maintaining the regional
GI centre. Additionally tens of regional and national organizations accompany the Lounaispaikka activities in
diverse cooperation projects within the area of Southwest Finland.
Many Lounaispaikka activities, such as maintaining map services, originate from the early years of
cooperation. Lately the development work has focused on implementing planned GI services, raising
awareness of Lounaispaikka’s potential in offering regional GI services, and building contacts with the
national scale infrastructure initiatives (Finnish National…2004, Tietoyhteiskuntaohjelma 2006).
Activities in the Internet
Most of the activities of Lounaispaikka take place in the Internet and are accessed through Lounaispaikka
portal (www.lounaispaikka.fi). The portal contains news, contacts, links and discussion forum on regional GI,
but most importantly the portal offers an access to GI services that Lounaispaikka provides. The foundation of
Lounaispaikka GI services is the three-party data service model. The idea of the model is that a suitable service
should be provided for different kind of user groups i.e. the data providers, the persons viewing the data and
persons searching data.
Lounaispaikka metadata index is a database and web-based query service for seeking suitable existing datasets.
The metadata description is simple compared to most international standards, but contains the core technical
information that is needed for the evaluation of the data usability in most of the cases.
In the GI Data Archive the data facilitation is taken one step further. The archive is created for the archival and
further distribution with a principle of a Clearing House Mechanism. Mainly the service is used by fixedperiod
projects that want to be sure that their work can be later utilized by other projects or users. The usage
and donation of data is regulated by contracts and therefore the archive is officially attached to the University
of Turku, which operates as a juridical body.
Internet map services form a third part of Lounaispaikka data service model. At this stage there are a number
of different map services for various purposes including e.g. land use planning and cultural environment. The
next step is to unite these services under one service window. The functionalities for this main service will be
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SESSION: NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI II
provided by the Lounaispaikka Thematic Atlas, which is technically the most advanced of all Lounaispaikka’s
map services.
Activities outside the web
Lounaispaikka has made several efforts to promote local and regional networking between GI users, to inform
actors of latest developments in different level SDI implementation, and to improve the users’ abilities to
utilize GI services and GIS in general.
There are three different level forums, within which Lounaispaikka promotes networking. At first, a GI Day
Seminar has been arranged since year 2000. This open access seminar collects yearly participants from the
local, regional and national level. Secondly, an informal GI Club acquaints regional GI users more profoundly
to various GI related activities and organizations within the region. At third, the GI Network email list is used
to provide a channel for rapid information exchange between the actors.
In addition Lounaispaikka has arranged training sessions for different user groups, such as school teachers,
librarians and decision makers, in order to enhance the usage of Lounaispaikka services within the region. An
indenture has been established between Lounaispaikka and Tavastia Further Education College in order to
offer further GIS education for concerned GI professionals within Southwest Finland.
Lounaispaikka in national and international SDI processes
Lounaispaikka has been actively participating in the preparation work of Finnish National SDI. The
implementation of the National Geographic Information Strategy conducted by the Finnish National Council
of Geographic Information is in preparatory phase and underway in sub-committees, in which Lounaispaikka
has representatives in all four of them (Finnish National…2004). The aim is to have a functioning NSDI in
Finland by the end of the decade.
The main reasons for the participation to NSDI implementation is to ensure that the future NSDI is developed
in harmony with the goals of regional GI cooperation. Thus the NSDI should include services that are:
� easy for local and regional actors to use,
� supplied with features that enable combining of regional services, and
� reasonably prized or free to use in order to ensure that users with limited resources also get advantage
of these services.
Lounaispaikka is also participating SDI development in international scale by participating to the Life
Environment project ENVIFACILITATE, which is operating in Finland, Estonia and Latvia. The
ENVIFACILITATE project aims at creating facilitating mechanisms for spatial environmental information to
ensure open and effective working culture, better data availability and innovative use of environmental data.
Lessons learnt
The GI services should be easy to use and access by various user groups. During the past few years we have
witnessed tremendous increase both in number and diversity of the GI users. New user groups require different
kind of functionalities from the services, and it is for the benefit of the GI users, producing organizations and
also for the society that there are flexible services for all user groups regardless of their size. This is also in line
with the basic idea that Lounaispaikka adheres to the non-profit principle.
The maintenance of the services should be clear, automated and distributed. This requires utilizing technically
advanced interfaces, but also adjustments in working methods of GI users and producers. In a survey made in
Southwest Finland, it became clear that the most important form of cooperation is the creation and
maintenance of joint GI services (Hilke & Nurmi 2005).
The pricing, copyrights and contract issues in data usage should be clarified and unambiguous guidelines
should be drafted on the national level. The effective use of GI data in the future is very much dependent on
these regulations.
Southwest Finland differs from the most other regions in Finland because of long tradition of continuous GI
cooperation and some nationwide unique services such as National GI Data Lending Service
(www.paikkatietolainaamo.fi). Still, attitudes towards sharing, joint use and production of GI data need
significantly be changed. The deep rooted practices of strict copyrights, case-by-case data-usage agreements
and non-disclosure of data still die hard, even in the regional level.
References
Finnish National Council of Geographic Information (2004). National Geographic Information Strategy 2005-
2010. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Publications 10a/2004.
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SESSION: NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI II
Standards for data and metadata sharing in Italy: the SIGMA TER
infrastructure
G. Ciardi 1 , P. Cipriano 2
1 Regione Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, Italy
2 Core Soluzioni Informatiche, Bologna, Italy
Introduction
CEN/TC287 Technical Report on “standards, specifications, technical reports and guidelines, required to
implement SDI” states that SDIs rely on “standards and specifications in the field of geographic information
and information technology. […] A condition sine qua non for the successful establishment of a SDI is that the
software industry supports relevant standards in commercial products. At the same time, public authorities are
to request the support of standards in public procurement processes”.
SIGMA TER is a Community involving 25 local authorities (Region Emilia-Romagna as coordinator) to create
an infrastructure for exchanging and integrating regional cadastral information.
The enables the development of new services for private citizens and businesses and to provide support in the
use of local property registers and the management of local property taxation.
SIGMA TER1 (www.sigmater.it) represents the first Italian implemented infrastructure based on open
standards and “de jure” standards. The 21.5 million € co-funded e-Government project has recently been
recognised as one of the most important national e-Gov initiatives to be extended and re-used by Italian Public
Authorities.
The project has been focused on cadastral and topographic data/metadata sharing between administrations,
practitioners (private sector) and citizens. One of the main aspects is the use of cadastral and geographic
identifiers (eg. addresses, identifiers of properties) and their relationships. Actually, cadastral parcel numbers
represent an important way to identify features/objects to be found and used via WFS services. Furthermore,
cadastral data (mainly managed and central government level) are dramatically important to Municipalities,
due to the importance of fiscal drag at local level.
The infrastructure is designed to enable the development of new services for private citizens and businesses
and to provide support in the use of local property registers and the management of local property taxation.
The purpose of the project is improve the planning, administrative and management capabilities in matters
concerning property and property taxation. The project improves the quality of services to private citizens and
businesses who need to match cadastral information (managed by regional agencies) with topographic and
planning information (handled by regional and local authorities).
SIGMA TER is a national leader on the use of international and national standards related to GI (ISO19100
series) and services (W3C, OGC) that allow the cooperation and interoperability between different systems
and data (the community is also involved into CEN-TC287 Working Group 5 activity - European SDI):
� ISO19107 Spatial Schema and ISO14825 (GDF) as base of National Topographic db design
implementation specifications (IntesaGIS - GIS National Agreement);
� ISO19115, ISO/DTS19139 and ISO15836 (Dublin Core) metadata, in accordance to candidate
European profile and to Italian Guidelines by National Centre for IT in Government (CNIPA);
� OGC WMS, WFS, SLD implementation;
� GML, CML (special Xml for geographical cadastral data from the Cadastral Agency);
� W3C specs for the web-based interface;
� XML for the interchanges among different system layers; XSD (Xml schema) for the documentation
of the interchanges;
� Web services on SOAP protocol (Xml technology);
� J2EE to build up all applications;
� CNIPA technical specs on cooperation and interoperability for Italian Public Authorities
Lessons learnt
Identifiers of properties and cadastral data are listed in Annex II of the proposed INSPIRE Directive.
1 http://inspire.jrc.it/ir/sdic_view_step1_only.cfm?id=2415
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Articles 6 and 10 (a, b, e) of draft adopted by EP2 states that European countries “shall create the metadata
[…] no later than 3 years after the date of entry into force of the Directive in the case of spatial data sets
relating to the themes listed in Annexes I and II” and that implementing rules for such data sets shall define a
“a common system of unique identifiers for spatial objects”, “the relationship between spatial objects” and
“the way in which updates of the data are to be exchanged”.
Within the cadastral scenario SIGMA TER can be considered an important and useful pilot initiative.
Some lessons learnt on metadata:
� Metadata (1): ISO19139 (DTS) XML Schemas seem to be far away to a real usage; many countries
and communities are developing their “own” ISO19115 profiles, and many problems occur in
effective metadata interchange between COTS metadata software not supporting these profiles (i.e.
national, regional extensions)
� Metadata (2): INSPIRE and CEN/TC287 activities are not very well known and differences are not
clear
� Metadata (3): there is a lack of practical guidelines on “how to” implement metadata catalogues; there
is a lack of examples on RDF use
Some lessons learnt on cadastral data exchange:
� Cadastral data (1): more emphasis on cadastral identifiers is needed; parcels IDs represent a
commonly used way to search&retrieve spatial features by municipal officer, private professional
users and citizens;
� Cadastral data (2): the relationship between cadastral and topographic objects needs to be studied in
details; the SIGMA TER DBTI (integrated geo-database) implementation can be seen as a best
practice;
� Cadastral data (3): “the way in which updates of the data are to be exchanged” depends on legal
bases, and national bureaucratic and administrative workflow shall be deeply analysed
� Cadastral data (4): at the moment SIGMA TER is completed, but PSI law still needs to be well
defined, and public access to public data shall to be cleared
� Cost/Benefit analysis (1): 2% of Public Authorities timework is saved. The total saving of PA
involved in the infrastructure is more than 3 million €/year
� Cost/Benefit analysis (2): external saving has been estimated in more than 6 million €/year (10
hours/year * 15 ‰ * 10 million people involved
2 http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?SAME_LEVEL=1&LEVEL=3&NAV=S&LSTDOC=Y&DETAIL=&PUBREF=-
//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2005-0213+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN#def_3_14
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SESSION: NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI II
Assessing the implementation of a X-border Spatial Data Infrastructure in
the Euregio Maas Rhine
J.D. Bulens, J. Crompvoets, F.R. Kooij, L.A.E. Vullings, A. Ligtenberg
Wageningen UR, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Introduction
The partners of the Euregio Maas Rhine, i.e. the Provincie Limburg, the municipality of Heerlen, Maastricht,
Sittard-Geleen, Aachen and the Kreise Aachen, Heinsberg and Euskirchen, and the Bezirksregierung Köln are
performing a Interreg 3a project called “Spatial and Urbanization Planning in the Euregio” (working title
“Plannen en Bouwen”. The aim of this project is to get cross(X)-border access to spatial data and spatial plans
via standardized web services according to principles of INSPIRE. The project will result in an operational
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the Euregio with capabilities for an X-border use, sharing and exchange
of data and information. The project is part of the higher level program X-border SDI between NRW and the
Netherlands (X-GDI NRW NL). The infrastructure is monitored and evaluated for different use cases within
spatial and urbanization planning. The use cases provide a practical insight in the need for establishing a Xborder
SDI for spatial and urbanization planning information. Moreover, they should show the justification for
the existence of and the possibilities for more efficient work processes using such a SDI.
Five use cases are defined which differ in types of users, being either of local and regional administration,
business as well as citizens, and therefore differ in working level and demands in functionality (Table 1).
Table 1. Use case descriptions
Use case Short description User Type
Use case 1 „Discovery“: A civilian wants to build of buy a house in the border civilian
(UC1) area and is looking for information on locations, infrastructure, spatial
policy etc..
Use case 2 „Decision Support“: A company is looking for a new location the Private company
(UC2) border area and wants information on possible locations, infrastructure
and possible limitations for exploitation and regulations.
Use case 3 “Planning crossborder regional”: Limburg province is interested in the
(UC3) new plan 1 Regional
of Kreis Koln to see what possible influence this plan has on
Limburg area.
government
Use case 4 “Planning crossborder local”: A local government is interested in the
(UC4) plans of bordering municipalities, also across border, for making a new
zonal plan 2 Local government
.
Use case 5 „Industrial Park“: Regional development: Development of an industrial Market parties
(UC5) park Avantis (Heerlen-Aachen).
*1: Gebietsentwicklungsplan/Regionalplan bzw. Provinciale Omgevingsplan (POL)/Streekplan
*2: Bebauungs- und Flächennutzungsplan bzw. Struktuurplan/Bestemmingsplan
Assessment framework
The focus of this paper is on assessing the X-border SDI. In order to monitor and evaluate the use cases a
framework has been set up using measurable indicators. Steudler (2003) as well as Remke et al. (2004) suggest
a set of evaluation criteria for SDIs which considers three organizational levels: a) the policy level, dealing
with SDI related policies, b) the management level, dealing with organizational aspects, concepts and
standards, c) the operational level, c) the operational level, dealing with data and data access services.
Furthermore, a very important factor influencing all organizational levels is the capacity supplied by the
people who develop and operate the respective SDI.
Table 2 shows a number of measurable indicators which are selected to evaluate the achievements of X-border
SDI. These indicators are linked to organizational level and SDI-components) as defined by Steudler (2003);
policy, standards, access network, data, people. These indicators do not represent a comprehensive evaluation
schema, but they are sufficient for assessing the X-border SDI objectives and significant progress.
Within the first project phase, in which the majority of implementations are not yet available, it is mainly the
baseline situation that is assessed. In order to collect information about the perceptions of key stakeholders
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relating the baseline situation of the use cases, a survey was undertaken (February 2006). On the basis of a
questionnaire based on selected indicators, interviews with all partners were conducted.
Table 2. Organizational levels, SDI-components and related indicators.
Organizational levels Components Measurable Indicators
Executive Policy Grant Data Access
Management
Standards
Type of standards applied
Type of metadata standard applied
Access network
Ability to download organisation’s owned
spatial datasets as an external user
Sector accessibility
Willingness to download organisation’s owned
data set by external users
Bottlenecks for external users to download
organisation’s owned datasets
Operational
Access network
Type of web services applied
Search Mechanism applied
Access Network architecture
Type of access network users
Frequency of access network update
Data
Language of organisation’s owned datasets
Language of organisation’s owned metadata
sets
Core datasets of a X-border datasets
Main data limitations for spatial planning
purposes
Scale level of majority of organisation’s
datasets used
Other influencing factors People
Driving forces to participate X-border SDI
Expected drawbacks of X-border SDI
Type of spatial data and service users
Type of Advice for X-border SDI
Baseline results
The presentation of the baseline results is mainly organized according to the SDI-components linking each
organizational level. Above all, it is very important to mention that all partners support the development of an
X-border Spatial Data Infrastructure. This high degree of support with respect to the X-border SDI is
significant in so far it gives a clear indication of the positive attitude towards X-border SDI.
Not all use cases are as relevant for all the partners. Use cases UC1 Discovery, UC2 Decision support, and
UC4 Planning X-border local are considered to be relevant for most organizations. On the other hand UC5
Industry Park is focused on an existing case Avantis which is very specific one. This Use case is not
considered as a generic use case.
Executive level - Policy
It is appears that the current policies do not enhance the accessibility of spatial data, e.g. majority of partners
do not allow unrestricted public access to data. The most common policy to grant access to spatial planning
information is dependent on legal aspects (‘Limited by policy’).
Management level - standards
Most standards are not frequently applied. In particular, metadata standards are not frequently used. The most
frequently applied metadata standard is ISO19115.
Management level – Access network
The current access networks do not enhance the spatial data accessibility. In only a few occasions, the external
user has the ability to download organization’s owned spatial data sets. The main reason that organizations do
not facilitate the external user to download their spatial data sets is institutional, and not economic. On the
other hand, the high willingness to access an external user to download organization’s owned datasets is
promising
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SESSION: NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI II
Operational level – Access network
The current web services available can be mainly applied in an Intranet environment which limits the
accessibility of spatial data as well as the use of services. The most popular web services are: context-related
viewing and finding (searching) spatial data. It is significant to mention that web services that support
multilingual queries as well as e-business are still not frequently used.
Operational level - Data
The current data as well as metadata are only written in one language, that of country’s official languages.
None of the datasets as well as metadata is multilingual described.
As the core datasets of the X-border SDI are considered: Topography, Ortho-images (including satellite),
Aerial photographs, Land use, Regional spatial plans, Local spatial plans, Cadastral, and Roads which are in
general line with the ones proposed by INSPIRE.
Other influencing factors
Improved access to spatial data, Increased spatial data awareness, More international data exchange, Better
informed decision-making, Improved X-border policies, Improved data sharing are considered to be the main
driving forces to participate X-border SDI.
It is expected that the main drawbacks for making X-Border SDI a success for spatial and urbanization
planning purposes are: Different data definitions and jurisdictions. Other important drawbacks could be
Language problems and Institutional problems.
The current type of data and service users are mainly employees of participants’ own organizations, Local
authorities, Province, Kreis and Citizens.
The main advises for developing X-border SDI are Bottom-Up (users involved from the beginning) and
Prototyping X-border Geoportal. Other frequently mentioned advises are: Top-Down (users are involved at
later stages) and Increase awareness of Geoportal.
Conclusions
The main baseline results are that the current status for establishing a X-border SDI at executive as well as
organizational levels is not very advanced, the high diversity in status and demands between the different UCorganizations
is significant, and the high degree of support with respect to the X-border SDI is significant as
well. These results form a perfect basis to justify the implementation of X-border SDI in the Euregio Maas
Rhine.
In addition to the base line results, several workshops are organized in order to achieve additional information
about the use cases and their demands (Bulens et al., 2006). On the basis of all results derived from these
activities, it appears that these results are an appropriate starting-point to formulate the use specifications of
each use case and to improve the implementation strategy of the X-border SDI.
References
Bulens, J.D. Kooij, F.R. and Crompvoets, J., 2006. Rapport Use-cases X-border SDI Euregio Maas-Rijn,
project: X-Border Plannen en Bouwen. Alterra, Ravi, CeGi.
Remke, A., Altmaier, A. and Riecken, J., 2004. Operational core of GDI NRW set up – Joint Project 2004.
10th EC GI & GIS Workshop, ESDI State of the Art, Warsaw, Poland, 23-25 June 2004.
Steudler, D., 2003. Developing Evaluation and Performance Indicators for SDI. In: Williamson, I., Rajabifard,
A. and Feeney, M.F. (Eds), Developing Spatial Data Infrastructures. From concept to reality. Taylor &
Francis, London. Pp. 235-246.
84

SESSION: NATIONAL / REGIONAL SDI II
SITAD: from a regional SDI to a model for delivering cross-border
information on geographical data
L. Garretti, S.Griffa, R. Lucà
1 Regione Piemonte, Turin, Italy
2 CSI Piemonte, Turin, Italy
3 CSI Piemonte, Turin, Italy
Today it is a matter of fact that there is a great availability of geographic information, especially thanks to the
work of public sector organisations, but often it cannot be fully used because quality spatial information is
available only at local or regional level, and is difficult to transform it into “seamless” information. It is
necessary to harmonize local level initiatives thus leading to a cross-border and interoperable geographic data.
SITAD, the Spatial Data Infrastructure set up by Piedmont Region, makes it possible to share and collect
information on geographic and environmental data, as well as products and services existing in different
formats, creating a regional framework. In this context, SITAD is a regional SDI but it also implements
technological solutions and carries out many initiatives which make it possible for the Infrastructure to
overcome the local dimension in order to exchange data with other similar SDIs, at national and international
level.
In order to pursue this aim, SITAD evolved over the past years thanks to several innovative technological
components related to the management of geographic information, but most of all studying and applying new
forms of data interoperability and exchange, lining up with EU initiatives and adopted standards.
Considering the adoption of ISO19115 standard for geographic metadata as a compulsory way to ensure
interoperability of spatial data-sets, SITAD adopts the mentioned standard and actively takes part to several
related initiatives led in different institutional forums: i.e. CNIPA and UNINFO initiatives at national level,
INSPIRE program at European level.
From a strictly technological point of view, SITAD developed peculiar solutions such as the use of WMS
Standard in territorial data sharing, in line with the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) specifications and
now, the Regional Administration intends to improve SITAD technological solutions by Web Services
experimentation and evaluation of new interoperability Standards, and through the realization of solutions for
applicative cooperation.
When the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) talks about Web Services, it means self-contained, selfdescribing,
modular applications that can be published, located and invoked across the web. Web Services
perform functions that can be anything from simple requests to complicated business processes, and they are
very important because they provide a simplified mechanism to connect applications regardless of technology
or location and they are based on Standard protocols with universal support. In fact, OCG and ISO211CT are
studying a lot of international Standards in order to make interoperability easier both for software companies
and public users.
The adoption of OCG Web Services by SITAD started in 2005 with the Web Map Service (WMS), for
interactive mapping based on requesting map images from a server over the Internet. In this moment, in fact,
SITAD provides standard parameters for accessing different geospatial data, coming from different servers,
through web interfaces. Data can be organized in Map Services available on the Internet, and users could put
one geographical layer on another, as a normal viewer.
In his evolution process SITAD, after collecting geographical information metadata in their different typology
(data, cartographies, services and so on) and making available the access to geographical data by Web Map
Services, can now take a step forward. The new goal concerns not only in data providing through a viewer, but
also in GIS functionality and software components, which will be re-usable by GI users. In order to achieve
this aim, it is necessary to analyse in depth both new GIS interoperability standards as Web Feature Service
(WFS) and application-oriented interoperability standards, as Web Services, SOAP and so on.
In this context SITAD is also working to offer services which could be used in cooperation with other entity,
to share services in a sort of distributed informative system: for example it will be possible to look for SITAD
metadata even without accessing SITAD directly, by using applicative cooperation (which can so represent
another useful vehicle for the development of interoperability).
Taking for granted that the use of standards is the only way to reach interoperability of spatial data-sets and
services, SITAD has not only adopted ISO and OGC specifications to build the core part of the SDI, but has
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chosen to play an active role in the national and international debate (in the institutional forums) on
harmonised spatial data specifications and in general on arrangements for the exchange of spatial data.
Moreover, today many efforts have been made by some regional and national public authorities in the
development of activities related to spatial data use and re-use, providing several outstanding best practices
across Europe. For SITAD it is particularly important to implement the available local and regional best
practices experiences in GI interoperable solutions and transfer them into coordinated disseminations actions
to be transferred and spread across Europe. For this reason SITAD project has been playing an active role in
building a European network of SDIs aimed at building a long-lasting collaborative network around the
common theme of geographic data, participating to the Call for Proposals of eContentplus
(http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/econtentplus/calls/index_en.htm), a multi-annual EU
programme that aims at making digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable, with the
proposal to build a thematic network consisting of a critical mass of geographic information experienced
Organisations (mainly SDIs - Spatial Data Infrastructures - and SDICs - Special Data Interest Communities).
Through these experimentations and initiatives it will be possible to implement SITAD Spatial Data
Infrastructure with re-usable software and services, in line with principal interoperability standards, and it will
be possible to consider SITAD as a model of regional SDI which can dialogue with other SDIs at different
levels in order to deliver cross-border information on geographic data.
86

SESSION SDI IMPACTS
A Roaming-enabled SDI (rSDI)
Or the Relationship between Technology and Market Presence
R.M. Wagner, A. Remke
wagner | remke @conterra.de
con terra GmbH, Münster, Germany
Prologue
This article discusses the proposed adoption of roaming, as conceived in mobile telecoms sector, in the SDI
design. The characteristics of roaming are able to achieve a balance between user requirements and providers'
interests, which eases the development of the geoinformation market.
Introduction
After the introduction of the OGC WMS specification in 2000, the number of up and running WMS increased
on a daily basis. By the end of 2005, 1053 WMS with a total number of 67,329 layers were available
worldwide (Ramsey 2006). At the same time, the European INSPIRE programme entered its second phase
with the appointment of 73 experts to formulate the draft EU directive implementation rules.
However, it is still unsure what shape the final SDI will take. Will it have a central entry point? Will the SDI
have a hierarchical or a peer-to-peer structure? If charges and access control will apply, will a user need a
single account within the network or will he need a separate account for each instance? Most data providers
only have limited spatial and thematic coverage. What happens at the edges of the coverage area? How can the
supply of applications be assured without breaches? If charges apply, will there be a single market or multiple
markets? Are the markets open or closed and registration-based? What new roles will appear?
Beyond these organizational questions, there are soft indicators. Some institutions seem afraid of losing their
market presence. There might be resistance to feared monopolies. On the other hand, the development of SDI
will require major investments including critical risks. Most institutions are aware that their products are
limited in quality and coverage and that their users demand more.
The disparity between user’s (especially customer’s) expectations and providers’ products has to be taken into
account. There are many data providers who supply very detailed and up to date spatial information, but only
with a very limited coverage (e.g. municipalities). Many mapping agencies offer spatial information with good
coverage, but with poor currentness. Coverage is a key issue and a condition for attracting potential users and
customers. How can an infrastructure which takes these conditions into account be designed successfully?
Need
Users and customers expect their SDI applications to be supplied with top quality spatial information within a
large coverage. On the other hand, an SDI application developer will only invest in value-added SDI
applications, if both his market and the number of early adopters within it are large enough.
Therefore, a roaming mechanism, which shares coverage and automatically provides the best available spatial
information beyond that of a single provider, is needed to bridge user’s expectations and providers’ abilities.
Business Cases from other Domains
Another infrastructure facing a similar situation was that of mobile telecommunications. The investment
required to achieve the critical mass of coverage was immense, as were the risks of failure (Jenkins 2004).
Aware of the need for larger coverage, the small number of early adaptors in each market, and the large
investments involved, the CEOs agreed to apply the roaming concept. Competing providers started to set up
roaming agreements to enable visiting users from other providers to share coverage and therefore reduce the
level of investment in the critical starting phase.
Users were now able to use their (own) application (mobile phone) not only in their home network, but also in
foreign networks. The call charges for roaming turned out to be acceptable.
In spite of the technical connectivity and the transparency of the common infrastructure, the market presence
of independent providers remained untouched. The business model still contains sufficient leeway for
competition. The provider market structure is peer-to-peer, without a hierarchy. Private and former public
providers have the same start-up opportunities.
Many other infrastructures, such as the Visa card, liberalised gas, and or fixed line telecommunication display
similar approaches to sharing the risk and the investment in their infrastructure.
Approach
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SESSION SDI IMPACTS
The approach can be structured in four parts. In the first part, the relationships between the provider and end
user are modelled. Existing or upcoming business models for data and service providers are analysed to
identify the typical business model. The model describes business roles and business processes. If multiple
typical business models are identified, the common roles and process will be models within a framework.
Additional questions might appear, e.g. whether to use a prepaid system with real-time or hot billing. Are
bonus systems, such as 'miles & more' interesting?
The second part models the provider to provider relationship. Because this is a B2B relationship, certain
factors, such as trust, can vary. Moreover, the types of licensing and terms-of-use will vary within the value
chain.
The third part introduces the roaming concept. The technical workflow shifts to a foreign gateway, in which
the foreign network provider takes on a new role and transfers the incoming request to the home network
provider to check the accounts. If sufficient, the foreign provider will serve the customer. Some additional
questions need to be solved in this context. Does a home network provider need to know all theproducts
offered by the foreign provider in advance (e.g. dynamic or static products)? Is relative pricing, e.g. 1% or a
minimum of 1 EUR, acceptable? Additionally, bonus systems might be much more attractive within an
alliance?
The last part comprises deployment examples. In many cases, a single organisation supplies multiple
providers. These organisations may be not visible to customers, to avoid conflicts of interests. It seems that
joint trust and billing centres could reduce operative costs, if the market is initially small. A full peer-to-peer
deployment should always be possible, to avoid any non-dissolvable dependencies between competing
providers. Also, virtual providers may be part of an rSDI.
References
Ramsey 2006: OGC Service Census, direct request, Refractions Research, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada,
2006-03-29.
Jenkins 2004: GSM White Paper Brilliant past, bright future; Deutsche Bank Research,
http://www.gsmworld.com/documents/gsm_white_paper.pdf, 2004.
Mitchell Waldrop 1996: The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock: The corporate radical who organized Visa
wants to disorganize your company. From: Issue 05 October/November 1996 –Fast Company, Page 75,
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/deehock.html .
Council of the European Union 2005: Proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
AND OF THE COUNCIL establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community
(INSPIRE), Inter-institutional File: 2004/0175 (COD) Brussels, 29 June 2005.
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SESSION SDI IMPACTS
Transparency of accessibility to government-owned geo-information
F. Welle Donker, B. van Loenen
Delft University of Technology – OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban & Mobility Studies
Keywords: GII, SDI, access, licenses, creative commons
Abstract
In the Netherlands there is an imbalance between supply and use of geo-information. There is an abundance of
good quality geo-information collected and maintained by government, which potentially is of use for many.
However, there appears to be a mismatch between this abundant supply and, often still dormant, demand.
Especially, private companies that may need this geo-information, either for the execution of their own
business activities or to produce innovative value-added products, do not use it. One of the obstacles that has
to be overcome is the lack of transparency of public geo-information. Not only is the geo-information difficult
to find as it is scattered throughout the different government agencies, but each agency also applies different
licence conditions and pricing models. As a consequence, it is time-consuming to find and obtain the right
information, business processes are delayed, and the government misses out on a potential avenue to costrecovery,
among other things. The concept of the Creative Commons may be a way to promote the uniformity
and transparency of the licenses for geo-information of different government agencies. This paper assesses the
feasibility of the concept of the Creative Commons in the world of geo-information. Based on research carried
out in the Netherlands, it provides evidence that the Creative Commons concept is a valuable contribution to
the development of the geo-information infrastructure in the Netherlands. It should be considered as a serious
option within INSPIRE as one concept of transparent harmonised licenses for geo-information as a key for the
utilitisation of the geo-information infrastructure in Europe.
Introduction
Access to and use of public geo-information is a critical ingredient for the well-being of information societies.
Within the context of geographic information infrastructures, users are probably the most mentioned group,
but the least considered (McLauglin and Nichols, 1994). Concerning use requirements, users require both
transparency of the information policies (see Ravi Bedrijvenplatform, 2000, p. 13) and consistency in the
access policies throughout government (see STIA, 2001, pp. 8-10/13; KPMG, 2001, p. 16; Ravi
Bedrijvenplatform, 2000, p. 11; Pira et al., 2000, p. 76). Differences in pricing, use restrictions, liability
regimes may result in confusion and ultimately limited use of the dataset (Meixner and Frank, 1997, p. 2).
One of the barriers that has to be overcome in the Netherlands is the lack of transparency of public geoinformation.
In order to provide the required transparency of available geo-information, a national geoinformation
clearinghouse was set up in 1996. This initiative was, however, without much success. It appears
that the lack of success was not caused by technical problems, but rather by a lack of participation and
commitment (Heuvel 2004). It was acknowledged that for a GII to function properly, it requires not only a
framework that allows easy and transparent access from technological perspective, but also the informational,
financial and legal perspectives need to be addressed. Therefore, in 2004, a new project called GeoPortal
Network – Liberty United (Geoloketten – Vrijheid in Verbondenheid), partly funded by the national
government, was initiated to increase the transparency. This project focuses not only on the technical aspects
but also addresses the organisational and legal issues (Zevenbergen et al. 2006).
� Another relevant issue is the consistency of access policies within government. Government
organisations and agencies control most geo-information in the Netherlands. However, each agency
has its own license provisions and adheres to its own unique pricing principles. The question rises
whether it is possible to have one single access policy for all levels of government without putting the
different interest of the information producers at risk.
� Within the music industry, among others, the concept of the Creative Commons is regarded as a
means to suit the needs of the users without endangering the exploitation interest of the information
producers. The Creative Commons include licenses that provide a flexible range of protections and
freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. A Creative Commons-style licence agreement could be
developed to suit geo-information.
Based on research carried out in the Netherlands, this paper assesses the feasibility of the concept of the
Creative Commons in the world of geo-information. First, we provide briefly the theoretical framework of
access to information. Then, we provide the current situation in the Netherlands with respect to access to
public geo-information. Then we discuss the concept of the Creative Commons. Finally, we discuss how the
Creative Commons concept may help to improve the transparency and consistency of access policies of public
geo-information in the Netherlands.
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SESSION SDI IMPACTS
Access requirements
According to Backx, information has to conform to certain accessibility demands. Firstly, information has to
be known, i.e. one must know that the information can be obtained and where the information can be obtained.
Secondly, the information must be attainable, i.e. must be able to be obtained in a physical way (CD, ftp
server) and that the information is affordable. Thirdly, the information must be usable, i.e. one can actually use
the information for the purpose it was obtained (Backx 2003). For the GeoPortal Network – Liberty United
(GPN-LU) Project, it was decided to concentrate on the first two aspects. This paper focuses on the second
aspect of attainability. If information is available for others, under what (legal and financial) conditions is it
available? We use this information for the development of a transparent accessibility model for the end-user.
Fig. 4: Accessibility model (Backx, 2003)
Overview of the situation in the Netherlands
Currently, there is an imbalance between supply and use of geo-information. There is an abundance of often
good quality geo-information collected and maintained by government departments and agencies. Some of the
data is collected as part of compulsory registrations; other data is collected as part of their governmental
mandate and used to carry out public duties. This wealth of geo-information is potentially of use for the
development of value-added applications. However, legal constraints limit the Dutch government
organisations to develop their own value-added geo-information applications. They can collect and maintain
geo-data only as part of their core governmental mandate and are not (always) allowed to combine the data
with data from other sources and make the value-added product available for re-use (Van Loenen 2005). On
the other hand, there are private companies that need this geo-information, either for the execution of their own
business activities or to produce innovative value-added products. Somehow, there appears to be a mismatch
between this abundant supply and, often still dormant, demand. Provided that the demand and a market for
geographic information does potentially exist, this mismatch may be due to a number of obstacles.
Access to government information
In January 2006 the implementation of the European Directive 2003/98/EC on the Re-use of Public Sector
Information (PSI), was enacted as an additional chapter to the existing Dutch Freedom of Information Act
(DFoIA) (chapter V-a of the Wet openbaarheid van bestuur). The DFoIA provides guidelines for re-use of
public sector information.
Government anticipates on three categories of government information (cf. Van Loenen and Kok, 2004). The
first category involves laws, jurisprudence, and policy decisions. These are excluded from copyright and the
database legislation (art. 11 Dutch Copyright Act, art. 8 Dutch Database Act) and may be freely accessed
through, for example, www.overheid.nl. The second group includes information subject to the DFoIA. The
main objective of the Government information act is to promote the participation of citizens in the democratic
process. The law provides for access to public information. It concerns all information within government with
the usual exceptions of information concerning the national security, the security of the Crown, and reasons of
privacy, among others, which cannot be requested under the Government information act. The third category is
public sector information with its own access regime (e.g., cadastral information accessible through the
Cadastre Act). However, the special provision V-a of the DFoIA applies to re-use of the second and third
category of public sector information. This provision rules that for available public sector information the
answer to "May a private citizen or business acquire an entire geographic dataset produced by a Dutch
government agency?" is yes. Thus entire public datasets, including those at the Cadastre, municipalities, and
other public entities can be obtained through the re-use provision in the DFoIA.
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SESSION SDI IMPACTS
Pricing models
Although generally the price charged for public information available through the DFoIA is based on the
marginal cost of dissemination, this is not necessarily true for public geo-information. The new DFoIA does
not require marginal cost recovery for all levels of government. It only stipulates that the total income out of
supply of information should not exceed the costs of collection, production, reproduction and distribution,
increased by a reasonable return on investments. Therefore, the policy line of 2000 still holds. This policy
presented in the memorandum “Towards Optimal Availability of Government Information” (Van Boxtel 2000)
states that all government information should be disseminated at a maximum of the cost of dissemination.
Government information with its own pricing mechanisms, like cadastral information, is not subject to these
guidelines. The policy also does not apply to data sets for which the policy line would result in financial
problems for the supplier of the information. It was decided to allow the geographic information sector to
facilitate access to geographic information prior to a formal arrangement (law). This left the geo-information
community with pricing models varying from full cost recovery to datasets available for the marginal costs of
dissemination.
On the one hand, some government institutes that are not dependant on direct revenue tend to move towards
the latter approach. The fact that some national geo-datasets have significantly been reduced in price recently
may illustrate this trend. For example, the price for the Current Elevation Dataset of the Netherlands (Actueel
Hoogtebestand Nederland) has been reduced from over one million euros to 200,000 euros; other datasets are
now even freely available (DINO data pertaining to the subsurface). In addition, encouraged by the Ministry of
the Interior, the Provincial Councils and the Water Boards have announced to make their own geo-information
available free of charge in the near future. On the other hand, government entities, such as the Cadastre, but
also the municipalities and utilities adhere to cost recovery policies. As a result, there is no single and
consistent pricing model applicable to public geo-information; prices range from free or marginal cost
recovery to hundreds of thousands of euros. Sometimes there is a differentiation between types of users with
typically lower rates for libraries, education & universities, private users or other government institutes.
Terms and conditions for governmental geo-information: Current state of licence agreements
Government agencies can claim copyright, or database right in their information. Most of them, especially if it
concerns geo-information, choose to do so. Claiming intellectual property rights in the information, allows
government to restrict the use further through license agreement provisions.
For the GPN-LU Project, current licence agreements of suppliers of government geo-information were
reviewed (Welle Donker, 2006). Public geo-information is not always easy to access as it is scattered
throughout different government agencies with each agency applying different licence agreements and pricing
models. In this respect, there seems to be little cooperation between the different levels of government. Not
only is it a costly process to find and obtain the needed information, are business processes delayed, citizens
ill-informed, plans unbalanced and solving urgent problem a slow and cumbersome process, but the
government misses out on a potential avenue to realise a reasonable return on their investments (Geoloketten
Consortium 2005).
The first thing that attracts attention is the diversity in the way the licence terms and conditions are formulated.
Licence agreements range from a few paragraphs in plain language that anyone can understand to reams of
paper written in legal language that only lawyers can understand. Almost all government licence agreements
show great similarity as far as the main provisions are concerned. They all contain the following provisions:
� The user obtains a non-exclusive user right;
� Adaptation of the information is usually allowed as long as the derivatives are clearly credited with
the original source (name of supplier and year of acquisition);
� The intellectual property remains with the rightholder;
� The information may not be transferred to a third party without prior consent of the rightholder.
� The supplier of the information indemnifies themselves against any claims due to supply and / or use
of the information;
� General (non-specific) financial provisions.
The licence agreements sometimes contain restrictions regarding the processing of information for commercial
purposes. None of the licence agreements contain provisions for using information from more than one source,
even within the same agency or institute. If a company requires geo-information from different governmental
sources, separate licence agreements have to be negotiated for each separate dataset with each agency.
Typically, access to an entire dataset will be provided after permission has been granted and a licence
agreement has been signed. In some cases, where agencies are responsible for collecting their own
information, information subsets can be accessed. More often the information can only be purchased as a
91

SESSION SDI IMPACTS
complete dataset, which puts the information out of the purchasing power of smaller companies. Some private
companies elect to collect their own geo-information rather than to obtain the information from the
government. This situation poses economic and social problems.
Some agencies offer subscription type of agreements where the information can be accessed on-line. In a
number of licence agreements, one has to state for what purpose the information will be used. This is usually
for privacy issues as these datasets contain information that relate to personal information. Companies that
want to use these datasets for direct marketing are specifically excluded.
The EU Directive re-use of PSI has not changed this situation (yet) of inconsistent and not transparent use
conditions and pricing models.
Creative Commons Concept
One way of improving the transparency and consistency of use conditions may be a Creative Commons (CC)
approach. The Creative Commons concept was founded in 2001 in the United States. CC is a non-profit
organisation that offers flexible copyright licences for creative works. Anyone can make their work available
to the public without forfeiting their intellectual rights. Creative works can be accessible easily on the Internet
for dissemination or for re-use. More and more countries around the world are adapting the US version of CC
licences to reflect national legislation (Hendriks 2006). At the end of 2005, worldwide around 14 million
websites refer to a CC licence (Hendriks 2006).
The CC license is built upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary
"some rights reserved" approach (http://creativecommons.org/). The concept has varied options, for example,
through the commons copyright holders may allow others to copy, distribute, display, and perform copyrighted
work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give credit to the copyright holder. Alternatively,
they may allow using the information - and derivative works based upon it - only for non-commercial
purposes. In general, CC offers six standard licences a licensor can use to make a work available to third
parties (see figure 2). The six different licences are established by selecting three options:
� The licensee may or may not use a work for commercial purposes;
� The licensee may or may not make derivative products, and if yes;
� The licensee is or is not obliged to make the derivative product available to third parties under the
same licence agreement.
Available for
commercial
purposes?
no
yes
Available for
erivative products?
no
yes
4
no
Available for
yes
derivative products? obliged to make derivative
products available under
yes
same licence conditions?
no
Explanation of symbols:
Attribution. Others may copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work —
=
and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
1
yes
obliged to make derivative
products available under
same licence conditions?
Non-commercial. Others may copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and
=
derivative works based upon it — but for non-commercial purposes only
Share Alike. Others are allowed to distribute derivative works only under a license
=
identical to the license that governs your work.
No Derivative Works. Others may copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim
=
copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Fig. 5: structure Creative Commons style licences (figure by Welle Donker)
92
no
2
3
5
6

SESSION SDI IMPACTS
CC has developed an easy web-based procedure to licence open access works. After answering a few
questions, the CC logo will appear on the licensor’s website. By clicking on the logo, the licence applicable
will be displayed on screen. Each of the six potential licences generates three versions of the same agreement.
The first version, a Commons Deed, in simple plain language suitable for laymen is a summary of the licence,
complete with the relevant symbols as displayed in figure 2. The second version, a Legal Code, is the actual
legally binding version. The Legal Code is suitable for lawyers and consists of a number of pages in legal
terminology. The third version, a Digital Code, is a machine-readable translation of the license that helps
search engines and other applications identify the work by its terms of use. All CC-licences contain some basic
conditions such as compulsory attribution as indicated; the licence is non-revokable and the licence is issued
for the duration of standard copyright.
Open access works
CC aims to promote (Internet) access to copyright protected works and can as such be regarded as a so-called
open content organisation. Open access works, while copyrighted, allow use without obtaining prior
permission since a general licence is granted ahead of any specific use. A basic condition of a CC-licence is
that user rights are supplied without royalties. This non-commercial aspect of the licences makes them
unsuitable to people who want to sell information. The licences are most suited to creators, who want to
distribute their work independently to gain publicity or to build up a reputation, or creators or organisations
that act out of ideological or non-profit objectives. Therefore, CC-licences are most suitable for non-profit
organisations, academia, and government organisations. For instance, the BBC has recently made a digital
archive of audio and video material available, the so-called Creative Archive. The licence applicable is very
similar to CC-licences and was developed in corporation with Creative Commons
(http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/).
As CC-licences are legally binding, no separate sanctioning system is required. In the Netherlands, The
Institute of Information Law - University of Amsterdam developed the Dutch versions of the CC-licences for
Creative Commons Nederland (CC-NL) Foundation (Groeneveld et al. 2005). A recent court case in the
Netherlands illustrated that the Dutch courts uphold the legal validity of CC-licences (Curry v Audax
Publishing, District Court Amsterdam, 09-03-2006).
In the Netherlands, the so-called New Map of the Netherlands (NMN) is available on-line with a CC-licence
since January 2006 (see www.nieuwekaart.nl). The NMN offers a complete overview of planned spatial
developments and functional changes in the Netherlands. Although a user still has to complete an on-line
declaration stating for which purpose the file is to be used and to which category the user belongs, the file can
then be downloaded, copied, distributed, used for derivative works and used for commercial purposes, as long
as proper attribution is implemented. This is the most unrestricted version of a CC-licence and corresponds
with a “type 5” licence as generated in figure 2. With regard to liability, a very general clause indemnifying all
liability has been included in the licence agreement.
Assessing the CC-license
The CC-license is simple with only six options that are clearly described for all users. These six options cover
the found user restrictions that apply to public geo-information in the Netherlands (see table 1). In this respect,
use of the CC-concept would promote the consistency of public information policies in the Netherlands.
Although the use would not change the provisions as such, only the notification that the license fall within the
concept of the Creative Commons clarifies that no unexpected restrictions are imposed on the user.
Creative Commons GI in NL Match
The user obtains a non-exclusive user right The user obtains a non-exclusive user right Yes
Adaptation of the information is sometimes The intellectual property rights remain with Yes
allowed (depending on type of licence).
Derivatives must be clearly attributed to the
creator(s) of the original source
the rightholder
The user may transfer the information The information may not be transferred to a No
and/or derivatives to a third party without third party without prior consent of the
prior consent of the rightholder but only
under the same licence conditions
(depending on type of licence)
rightholder
The information is offered on an “as-is” The supplier of the information indemnifies Yes
and “as-available” basis and without any themselves against any claims due to
warranty of any kind, either express or
implied
supply and / or use of the information
93

Information is only available for re-use at
no upfront charges and free of royalties
Licence is valid for the duration of
copyright
“Click” licence is available and can be
accepted on-line (no paper application or
correspondence).
Information is accessible on-line after the
licence terms have been agreed to
SESSION SDI IMPACTS
Some information is available for re-use at
no upfront charges or royalties. Other
licence agreements contain general (nonspecific)
financial provisions
User licence may only be valid for a fixed
period only (subscription model)
Licence can often only be obtained after
signing a formal agreement
Information may be accessible on-line after
an agreement has been signed
Table 1: Terms in the CC compared to the license restrictions in the Netherlands
There are a number of issues that have to be taken into account. Firstly, there is the issue of liability. CClicences
do not contain standard clauses related to liability. However, liability due to incomplete or incorrect
(meta)data is an issue that has to be addressed. Research has been undertaken to address the challenges of
setting up a Public Commons of Geographic Data (Onsrud et al. 2004). The goal of such a Public Commons,
using open-source and open-access technology, is to remove technical and legal barriers of GIS users that wish
to contribute, access and use locally generated geo-information (Onsrud et al. 2004). However, their research
focuses more on the technical challenges and less on the legal challenges of liability. The question is if
government can indemnify themselves against liability claims ensuing from supply of information. If a
government agency collects and maintains information then resell this same information, they are in the best
position themselves to verify the accuracy of their own information. Government liability can only be based on
not taking enough care, such as omission of precautionary measures. It has been suggested that extent of these
precautionary measures should depend on the price charged for supply of the information (Pels Rijken et al
2001).
Further, the CC concept adheres to the so-called “open source” licenses, where works are made widely and
freely available for re-use at no charge. Given the mixed pricing models in the Netherlands, typically not
allowing re-use at no charge, the CC concept needs to be extended in order to be fully of use for the geoinformation
sector. A suggested extension of the CC concept, indicating the underlying pricing principle
applying to a dataset, may be as follows:
€
FREE
€
MC
€
PCR
€
FCR
€
FCR+
No charge is being made
Price reflects marginal cost of dissemination
Price is based on partial cost recovery
Price is based on full cost recovery
Price includes full cost recovery plus a reasonable return on investment
However, the suitability of such an extension of the Creative Commons style licences for geo-information
needs to be worked out in detail.
Conclusion
There is a large quantity of relatively high-quality geo-information available in the Netherlands, the bulk of
which belongs to government institutes. It would be very helpful if the current licence agreements of different
government agencies and institutes were made uniform and simple to understand. The question raised was
whether it is possible to have one single access policy for all levels of government without putting the different
interest of the information producers at risk. The Creative Commons concept has been assessed to be useful to
94
No
No
No
Yes

SESSION SDI IMPACTS
improve the transparency and consistency of licenses accompanying public sector geographic information in
the Netherlands. Especially if the concept is extended with standard pricing categories, this model may be
successful. A type of licence agreement based on CC-style licences should be developed, especially for geodatasets
that are already available free of charge. The New Map of the Netherlands sets a good example in this
respect. Also datasets available under cost recovery conditions may benefit from the CC-concept since it
promotes transparency and consistency. Uniform and legible licence agreements would certainly help to make
the whole process more transparent.
However, even if all public sector information would use the CC model including the pricing extension, the
value-added use would probably still be limited. Dutch government may not engage in commercial activities
such as developing value-added services outside the scope of their public duty. The same government restricts
the use of its geographic information through license restrictions that make the development of derivative
products based on the public information difficult. Therefore, few if any value added products are being
developed, which blocks informed citizenry, which is critical in an information society. To avoid that use of
geo-information is concentrated around a selected few organisations, some structural changes have to be made
to the current overstrict licence agreements, to the cost of supply or to the mandate of government institutes.
One solution clearly is either allowing government to develop these products, or to allow the development of
derivative products by other parties. We think it would be logical to make the abundant amount of geoinformation
available to the private sector. This calls for changing the current overstrict licence agreements
into conditions promoting, not restricting, re-use.
However, even with more relaxed use conditions, the real obstacle is probably the prices charged for public
sector geo-information. The reduction in price of some large Dutch geo-datasets illustrates the fact that even
the public geo-information sector government is starting to realise this. Even then, the prices remain too high
for smaller private sector companies to even consider. These financial barriers may be resolved with
agreements that have provisions for royalties to be paid after value-added products and services have been
developed instead of the current policy of selling complete datasets (Van Loenen 2006).
Only if the overstrict use conditions and financial issues have been resolved value-added use is expected to
thrive. Until that very moment, the introduction of the Creative Commons concept in the world of geoinformation
may help to increase the transparency and consistency of license agreements.
In this way, the concept is a valuable, though little, contribution to the development of the geo-information
infrastructure in the Netherlands. Therefore, it should be considered as a serious option within INSPIRE as one
concept of transparent harmonised licenses for geo-information as a key for the utilitisation of the geoinformation
infrastructure in Europe.
Acknowledgements
This paper has been written as part of the activities of the project ‘Geoloketten – Vrijheid in Verbondenheid’
in the framework of the Bsik program ‘Space for Geo-information’.
Abbreviations:
CC Creative Commons
CC-NL Creative Commons Nederland
DCA Dutch Copyright Act (Auteurswet 1912)
DDA Dutch Database Act (Databankenwet 1999)
DFoIA Dutch Freedom of Information Act (Wet openbaarheid van bestuur 1991)
DINO Data and Information of the Subsurface of the Netherlands (Data en Informatie Nederlandse
Ondergrond)
GBKN Large Scale Basic Map of the Netherlands Grootschalige BasisKaart Nederland)
GPN-LU GeoPortal Network – Liberty United (Geoloketten – Vrijheid in Verbondenheid)
PSI Public Sector Information
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Backx, M., 2003, Gebouwen redden levens. Toegankelijkheidseisen van gebouwgegevens in het kader van de
openbare orde en veiligheid., MSc. thesis, Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences; Dept. of
Geodesy; Section Geo-Information & Land Development, Delft University of Technology.
Boxtel, R.H.L.M,. van, 2000, Naar optimale beschikbaarheid van overheidsinformatie, Minister voor Grote
Steden- en Integratiebeleid, Tweede Kamer, vergaderjaar 1999–2000, 26 387, nr. 7.
Burmanje, D., G. Barnasconi and A. Groothedde, 2005, Meerjarenbeleidsplan 2006-2010, Kadaster, (available
at www.kadaster.nl).
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evaluation of Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases, Services, D.I.M.a., Commission of
the European Communities.
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EU, 1996, Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal
protection of databases.
EU, 2003, Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 November 2003 on the
re-use of public sector information, 2003/98/EC.
Geoloketten Consortium, 2005, Projectvoorstel Geoloketten - Vrijheid in verbondenheid, RGI-006,
(https://portal.wur.nl/sites/geoloketten/default.aspx).
Groeneveld, S., P. Keller, B. Hugenholtz and L. Guibault, 2005, Creative Commons Nederland.
Werkprogramma 2005-2007, Amsterdam (Stichting Nederland Kennisland; Waag Society; Instituut
voor Informatierecht), 16, (www.creativecommons.nl).
Hendriks, N.A.H., 2006, Creative Commons in Nederland: flexibel auteursrecht. AMI - Tijdschrift voor
Auteurs-, Media- & Informatierecht, 1/2006, (available at
http://www.creativecommons.nl/meer/nl_auteursrecht.php).
Heuvel, G. van den, 2004, Marktplaats voor Geodata, Binnenlands Bestuur, 2004-15, p.34 (available at:
http://www.ncgi.nl/.
Hugenholtz, P.B., 2004, Abuse of database right. Sole-source information banks under the EU Database
Directive, Antitrust, Patent and Copyright, Paris, (available at: www.ivir.nl).
Kabel, J.J.C. and K. Jansen, 2005, Commercialisering van overheidsinformatie door de overheid: rechtspraak
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2005-3, p. 117-129 (available at http://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/kabel/artikel_CR_3.html).
KPMG Consulting (Garry Sears), 2001, Canadian Geospatial Data Policy Study (executive summary), #03-
34257, report prepared for GeoConnections
(http://www.geoconnections.org/programsCommittees/proCom_policy/keyDocs/KPMG/KPMG_E.pdf).
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MOTIIVE Experiences Using Simulation Software to Assess SDI Cost-
Benefit
R.A. Longhorn 1
1 Info-Dynamics Research Associates Ltd, Wootton, UK
The MOTIIVE (Marine Overlays on Topography) EU FP6 project is one of the INSPIRE “implementing
rules” projects, focusing on developing and testing data harmonisation and service interoperability tools and
methodologies satisfying the requirements of land-based and marine/coastal research and management
communities. A second goal is to develop a robust methodology that can be used to assess the cost-benefit of
adopting such interoperability technology in cross-border, cross-sector, multidisciplinary scenarios. The test
case is the community managing the coastal zone or near-shore marine environment, affected by land-based
phenomena, such as pollution run-off. Desk research has been carried out focusing on various types of costbenefit
analysis methodologies and typical metrics, e.g. return on investment (ROI), used for GIS projects and
spatial data infrastructure (SDI) justifications. This research has indicated that the traditional cost-benefit
analysis (CBA) methodology, applicable to definable projects, is not suitable for assessing cost-benefit for
complex information infrastructures, such as SDI, due to the large number of assumptions that need to be made
in such an analysis.
Much has been written about the cost-benefit of GIS, as an information technology. Many studies have been
published on the cost-benefit of introducing GIS technology to organisations, both private and public. Far less
research has been done in regard to cost-benefit for introducing interoperability per se or for examining an
entire SDI. Many such studies are burdened with far ranging assumptions which make their results (forecast
cost-benefit ratios, ROI, NPV, etc.) questionable in the eyes of funding organisations. Lack of trust in the
forecasts is proposed as one of the reasons delaying implementation of SDIs across Europe and globally.
This presentation reviews two of the most recent and appropriate CBA methodologies for investigating the
cost-benefit of adopting interoperability technology for major projects and underpinning SDI implementations,
respectively. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) funded a research study into
assessing return on investment (ROI) for geospatial projects adopting interoperability principles from the
outset (Booz Allen Hamilton, 2005). The study results and methodology are in the public domain. Discussion
of the applicability of this methodology to information infrastructures as opposed to geospatial data projects is
presented in the paper.
The second method reviewed is that used by the US Geological Survey (USGS) to assess the cost-benefit of
The National Map (TNM), a USGS initiative to provide public access to geospatial data from many sources.
The National Map is considered to be a “critical component of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure”.
(Halsing et al, 2004a). This methodology starts first by developing an economic model for estimating benefits,
then applies this model via a computational simulation programme (NB-Sim), using input data from 3000 US
counties. The 'most likely' Net Present Value (NPV) for implementing The National Map is then forecast,
based on a sensitivity analysis of 60 different scenarios, each run 50 times through NB-Sim for a period of 30
years (Halsin et al, 2004b).
The presentation examines potential applicability of this modelling approach for use in performing a similar
analysis for the cost-benefit of implementing SDI at European national and regional (pan-European) levels.
Recommendations are made on what is needed to make this approach feasible for Europe and whether or not
such a complex approach is suited to examining cost-benefit for projects, as opposed to infrastructures. A
comparison is offered between the methodology used in the INSPIRE Extended Impact Assessment (EA,
2003) and that demonstrated by NB-Sim.
References.
Booz Allen Hamilton. 2005. Geospatial Interoperability Return on Investment Study, National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, Geospatial Interoperability Office
Environment Agency for England and Wales. 2003. Contribution to the extended impact assessment of
INSPIRE. [http://inspire.jrc.it/]
Halsing, D., Theissen, K. and Bernknopf, R. 2004a. The National Map: Benefits at What Cost? Geospatial
Solutions. [http://www.geospatial-online.com/geospatialsolutions/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=83281]
Halsing, D., Theissen, K. and Bernknopf, R. 2004b. A Cost-Benefit Analysis of The National Map. Circular
1271, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, USA.
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SESSION SDI IMPACTS
Towards the Socio-economic Assessment of Spatial Data Infrastructures
M. Craglia, J. Nowak
EC Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
Spatial Data Infrastructure Unit, I-21020 Ispra, IT
{massimo.craglia | joanna.nowak}@jrc.it
Keywords: Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), Return on Investment (RoI),
Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE).
The development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) at global, national, and sub-national levels has been
increasingly documented by a number of studies, including Masser (1999, 2005), Williamson et al (2003),
Craglia et al (2003), Vandenbrouke (2005), Crompvorts and Bregt (2003). Given the geographical spread of
these initiatives across continents and levels of government, and experiences spanning 10 years or more in
some cases, one would expect to have by now some solid evidence of the economic and social impacts of SDIs
to inform decision-makers, investors, and society at large. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case, and
relatively few published studies have addressed this important issue.
Among the more recent studies in this field, the extended impact assessment for the INSPIRE initiative
showed benefits 9-10 times greater than the investments needed (Dufourmont, 2004). Similarly, a Dutch study
(RGI, 2003) indicated that every euro invested in SDI after a few years yields 10 euro of benefits, while the
cost-benefit analysis of “The National Map” in the US indicates that this initiative could provide a net $2.05
billion in present-day value of benefits, above and beyond the cost to develop and maintain the database
(Halsing, Theissen and Bernknopf, 2004).
Such benefits look very promising but one has to be aware that the studies above refer to ex-ante expected
benefits, and that few studies if any appear to have verified the benefits during and after implementation of an
SDI. The few studies that have been published appear to refer more to the analysis of Geographic Information
Systems projects (e.g. Gillespie, 1991 and 2000) rather than SDIs, the latter being more difficult to analyse as
their internet-base nature makes the identification of user groups, and hence potential beneficiaries, more
complex.
Against this background, the paper presents the results of a workshop jointly organised by the Joint Research
Centre of the European Commission, the US Federal Geographic Data Committee, GeoConnections Canada,
and the Geoide Network, on SDI cost-benefit and return on investment studies. The review of current best
practice undertaken at the workshop confirms that in general terms it is easier to identify and measure the costs
of SDI development and implementation than the benefits. Costs encompass hardware, software but also
personnel, staff time, and organizational costs resulting for internal reorganization, and training, and it is
particularly important to consider not only set up costs but also on –going maintenance and adaptation between
older and newer systems.
In respect to estimating benefits, it is recommended to include efficiency benefits (e.g. time saved in searching,
retrieving, and integrating data), effectiveness benefits (e.g. reduced uncertainty due to higher quality or more
up-to-date data), and wider socio-economic benefits (e.g. increased number of users, and applications, reduced
risks, increased innovation and new business opportunities, greater accountability). Not all benefits can be
expressed in monetary terms, and therefore it is necessary to combine both quantitative and qualitative
approaches with a particular care taken in stating clearly all the assumptions made, so that they can be assessed
and revised during follow-up studies.
In respect to methods, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) provides a useful framework for public goods such as SDIs,
but it is only one of a range of methods that can be deployed to asses the impact of such infrastructures. Full
cost benefit analyses are particularly useful at key milestone of SDI development, including the ex-ante
deployment, and the study of the National Map in the US is a particularly good example of such instance. In
addition, CBA is well suited in cases when the evaluation is between two or more alternatives, such as the
Geospatial Interoperability Return on Investment study undertaken for NASA (2005). In addition to these
methods at critical milestone it is crucial that impact assessment is undertaken regularly during the
implementation cycles of the SDI with a rigorous framework put in place, and a combination of techniques
including self-assessment, in-depth interviews, and focus groups to measure both economic and social costs
and benefits. In this respect, there is still some work to be done to develop an agreed methodology that can
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SESSION SDI IMPACTS
identify the full range of both positive and negative impacts not only at organisational, and inter-organisational
levels but also in the society at large.
To move the field forward, the workshop recommended to focus future studies on sub-national or regional
SDIs, not only because they include some of the examples of best practice, at least in Europe, but also because
in a sub-national context (but equally valid for small countries) it is easier to identify key stakeholders and user
groups, as well as assessing wider socio-economic impacts. Moreover, it recommended to narrow the focus on
specific applications of SDI, such as those related to land and property, and environmental management.
Within these application, assess the impacts of each component of the SDI (data, metadata, network services,
data policy, coordination), and then explore any additional network benefits deriving from the combination of
these components. Finally, to pay particular attention to the variety of user groups that exist within the
organizations directly involved in the establishment and maintenance of the SDI, but also across the wider
public and private sectors, and users in the civil society.
The full paper critically reviews the methodologies deployed and outcomes achieved by some of the more
significant studies undertaken in the field, discusses the workshop recommendations in more detail, and puts
forward a plan of action for future studies aimed at filling the identified current gaps in knowledge.
Bibliography
Craglia M. et al. (Eds.) 2003. GI in the Wider Europe. http://www.ec-gis.org/ginie/doc/ginie_book.pdf
Crompvoerts j. and A. Bregt. 2003. World status of national spatial data clearinghouses. Urisa Journal 15:43-
50.
Dufourmont, H. (Ed.) 2004. Extended Impact Assessment of INSPIRE. ESTAT.
http://inspire.jrc.it/reports/inspire_extended_impact_assessment.pdf
Gillespie, S. 1991. “Measuring the Benefits of GIS Use.” Technical Papers, 1991 ACSM-ASPRS Fall
Convention, pp. 84-94.
Gillespie S. 2000. An empirical approach to estimating GIS benefits. URISA 12(1), 7-14.
Halsing, D., Theissen, K., Bernknopf, R.,2004. A Cost-Benefit Analysis of The National Map. Circular 1271,
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey.
Masser I. 2005. GIS Worlds: creating spatial data infrastructures. Redlands: ESRI Press.
Masser I. 1999. All shapes and sizes: the first generation of national spatial data infrastructures. International
Journal of Geographical Information Science 13:67-84.
NASA Geospatial Interoperability Office, 2005. Geospatial Interoperability Return on Investment Study.
Available as http://gio.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ROI%20Study.pdf
RGI, 2003. Space for Geo-information- Bsik knowledge project proposal. Ravi, the Netherlands.
Vandenbroucke, D., 2005. Spatial Data Infrastructures in Europe: State of play Spring 2005. Summary report
of a study commissioned by the EC (EUROSTAT & DGENV).
Williamson I., A. Rajabifard A. and M.E F. Feeney (Eds.). 2003. Developing spatial data infrastructures: from
concept to reality. Boca Raton, FL.: CRC Press.
99

SESSION REGIONAL SDI
S. I. T. R.
Territorial Information System of Sardinia
G.Pittau, R.Vinelli, M.Salvemini, L.Corvetto
Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, Cagliari (Sardinia), Italy
The S.I.T.R. project.
The Territorial Information System of Sardinia (S.I.T.R.) is a federated architecture unitary system, based on
the sharing of geographical, environmental, urbanistic, cultural, geo-referenced data of the whole territory of
Sardinia Independent Region.
The S.I.T.R., according to the Information Society Development Strategy of Sardinia, represents a
homogenous and integrated functional part of it; it grounds itself on the European Union’s INSPIRE Initiative.
The partaking of geographic information develops through a tools & technology predisposition, which allows a
shared knowledge of the regional area, moving towards a prior evaluation of the prospecting choices. Hence it
is needed the generating of a continuous information flow which has to be transferred in the territory
government tools, available not only to the regional administration structure, but even to the local authorities,
and private & public sectors, who will utilize the S.I.T.R. services, and, in the meanwhile, will give a
contribution to the updating of the data.
The established solution, the very first in Italy, designed with affirmed information technology and
interoperability technics, offers the possibility to produce and distribute cartography, through which it is
possible to set up a territory government policy, universally participated, and referencing to every spatial areas.
Besides, a very important extension of the S.I.T.R. is the S.I.T. 2 COM. project, which is still on launching
stage ; that one has the target to bring the territorial services towards the Townships, so that it will be possible
to achieve an equally distributed and shared e-governance, and promote the environment & territory
development.
The S.I.T. 2 COM. offers exclusive possibilities for the extension of the S.I.T.R. existing services, through the
application of interoperability and applicative co-operation principles, utilizing hi-speed connections.
Sardinia Independent Region is aware that only through connected services, between the central Regional
Administration and the practically operating local Authorities, it is possible to accomplish a homogenous,
shared, effective territory governance.
The S.I.T.R. architecture.
The S.I.T.R. (and the S.I.T. 2 COM.) is structurized following an informative architecture based on “n” levels,
accomplished with the target to locate every single component and optimize the interaction interfaces between
the different application modules, so isolating, typical functionalities and problems of the single layers.
The adopted nomenclature for the single layer mirrors the specificity of the offered system, qualifying the
different features.
- User layer: it coincides with the ‘Point of Access Domain’; on that level there are gathered the services
access functionalities, that the various users have in power to use. The ‘Geographic Navigator’ and the ‘frontends’
of the applications belong to this layer.
- Integration layer: it coincides with the ‘Integration Domain’; inside this layer there are foreseen all the
interoperability functionalities needed from the system, in order to manage properly the interaction between its
own components that achieve the developed services.
� Service layer: it concurs with the ‘Application Domain’ , has been defined like this in order to
emphasize its task of service supplier inside the system; it gathers the various services, which operate
on shared servers, provided to the user applications.
� Data layer: it gathers all the various data typologies possessed at the moment, that constitute a part of
the S.I.T.R. repository.
100

The adopted Standards.
SESSION REGIONAL SDI
The S.I.T.R. is founded on a ‘service oriented’ architecture, that, following the OGS’s approach about the
architectural framework, has been realized according to the SOA’s guidelines; with this background, all the
services, supplied by the S.I.T.R., will be realized through the composition of different web services.
The applicative interfaces services will be achieved on the basis of the ‘Open Geospatial Consortium’, and,
nowadays, ‘Draft International Standard (DIS) ISO 19128 (Open GIS Reference Model), and then through the
use of WMS & WFS, that will be counselable by the ‘Geographic Mark-Up Language’ (GML).
The geographic informations will be documented by the ISO 19115 standard for the Metadata, and will be
published according the ISO 19139 profile.
The ‘Domain Port’ has been accomplished using ‘Open PDD’, that allows the interaction with any other
authority by means of the ‘E-government Envelope’, designated by the CNIPA (Translation from Italian:
Public Administration Informatics National Centre).
The exertive solutions and the technologic architecture are consistent with the major regional and national
projects, which admire the interoperability and the applicative co-operation, like SIGMATER, (Translation
from Italian: Cadastral & Geographic Integrated Services for Territory Administrative Monitoring ).
The S.I.T.R. has been designed according to the INSPIRE proposal (INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in
Europe), together with the target to make available harmonized and high quality geographic informations, in
order to give a help about formulating, achieving, monitoring, and evaluating the European Common policies.
The S.I.T.R. & S.I.T. 2 COM. services.
1 - The ‘Thematic Channel’
Inside the Project a general portal has been realized, designed as a ‘container’ and ‘spreader’ of territory
government services & informations, approachable as ‘thematic channel’ from the regional official web-site.
The institutional mission of the geographic information channel is indeed creating a system that enhances the
knowledge & expertise patrimonies of the involved offices, and offering proper services on the web that
simplify data circulation and know-how sharing.
2 - The ‘Geographic Navigator’
The ‘geographic navigator enables the visual surfing of the available cartography through the web; the access
is differential basing on the user profile, and allows different users the visualization of different data, and the
activation of different functionalities.
3 - The applications
The advanced users requirements, (urban technicians, environment operators, landscape planners, and generic
professional ones), are in the S.I.T.R. satisfied by territorial evolved applications, which have been developed
either in web/html background (‘lite client’) either trough the extension of GIS desktop application
functionalities (‘rich client’). The specificity of those applications concentrates mainly on the back-end layers,
where the business-logic is implemented through the development of basic web services typologies, (for
example: cartographic localization services, editing services, linear and areal measurement services), and the
integration with the pre-existent services. Those basic integrated web services are properly orchestrated trough
a process manager, that guarantee the operativeness of the web procedure.
3.1 – Township Urbanistic Plans manager
It concerns the control and the managing of the Township planning (PUC), basing on the Regional Law #
23/1985, and Regional Law # 45/1989.
3.2 – Hotel & Receptive Structures monitoring
It creates and manages a geo-referenced data base of regional hotels and receptive structures; the data base is
consistent with the guidelines of the Regional Law # 22/1984, and Regional Law # 27/1998
3.3 – Urbanistic and Building Observatory
It allows the Townships to provide the informations concerning their own building patrimony, through the
monitoring of ‘implementing plans’ and ‘building licenses’, together with the correlated urbanistic
transformations.
3.4 – Seaboard E-Corridor
It is designed as a seaboard patrimony control, protection, and improvement agent; this application is
connected with the ‘Marine Federal Property System’
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SESSION REGIONAL SDI
3.5 – Web Sardinia Viewer
This application provides a 3D viewer for Sardinia, with an integration, inside, of cadastral and multi-scale
data.
3.6 – Environmental and Cultural Patrimony Manager
It provides a variety of tools for the integrated managing geographic data, concerning Sardinia’s environmental
and cultural patrimony.
3.7 – Headquarter Service
Inside the existing S.I.T.R. Central Lab a ‘control headquarter’ will be created, in order to manage and
integrate the services for the local communities; besides, in every Township it will be installed a local, S.I.T.R.
integrated, and interoperable G.I.S.
102

SESSION REGIONAL SDI
How Municipalities are joining Regional SDI: First results and
conclusions
J. Guimet Perenya,
Regional SDI (IDEC) Director, Barcelona, Spain
At the begining of 2006, a process to involve local authorities in the Catalan SDI (IDEC,
http://www.geoportal-idec.net) has started in Catalonia under the name IDEC.LOCAL Project
(http://www.geoportal-idec.net/idelocal)
The project has political and financial support of the Consortium for e-Administration of the Regional
Government being managed and developed by the IDEC Support Centre of the Cartographic Institute of
Catalonia (ICC). Metadata generation of municipal datasets and their publication in WMS to make them
accessible to OGC Clients are initially the initiative main goals. Also the GIS projects funded by the
Consortium to update administrative processes have to be re-oriented to make easier local systems integration
in the IDEC network.
The first call for municipalities to join the Project gathered more than 50 and have been involved in, while one
hundred municipalities are only “adhered”, that’s to say, they are preparing their future for a full participation
which implies: metadata generation and their publication in IDEC Catalogue as well as in the specific Local
Catalog, to publish data in OGC WMS (it can require the installation of adequate WMS software or data
hosting, when needed), and prepare applications to facilitate land information (mainly parcel and urban
planning) to citizens.
All participants have access to several services and applications of IDEC CS, based on a technological
platform: customized viewers of referenced maps (ortophotomaps, topgraphic maps, thematic maps:
environment, land use, cadastre, and others) and street maps, which can be easily inserted in municipal Webs
as new information services, and other geoservices as modules to allow some kind of interaction within
citizens and the municipality government, or the interactive issuing of points, lines or poligons over a
cartographic base only with the browser help. These services and applications are really useful to learn more
about sharing data and services concepts concerning SDI architecture.
The Support Centre has an important role in the organizational aspects of the local project implementation, and
maintains frequent direct contacts and meetings with local authorities, organizes workshops, and performs the
services of its technological platform. It is expected that some other thematic SDI projects will be launched
thanks to the local participation and the availability of new datasets, such as Urban Plan, Tourism, Real State,
etc.
The paper presents the initiative first results and achievements, evaluating its progress and considering
difficulties and gaps that has been overcome, the type of information issued, the data policy proposed and
accepted for the new paradigm, the new projects that can be assumed with the new outlook and other key
aspects of the SDI implementation.
References
Open Gis Consortium, 2002, OpenGIS Reference Model.
General Accounting Office – USA, 2003, GIS: Challenges to Effective Data Sharing.
Geoportal IDEC - Projecte IDEC, 2002, Dossiers de presentació v.1 & 2003, Dossiers de presentació v.2.
Guimet, J., 2004, Thematic SDI’s: a way to spread out the benefits of interoperability and to enhance the
development of Regional SDI’s, proceedings, 10th EC-GIS workshop.
Guimet, J., 2005, Spatial Data Infrastructures, a new paradigm within the domain of Geospatial information.
The example of the catalan SDI Project (IDEC) http://www.geoportalidec.net/geoportal/eng/pdf/ide_nouparadigma.pdf
Guimet, J., 2005, SDI Catalonia: A Regional Approach, Global Magazine for Geomatics, June 2005, Volume
19, Issue 6 http://www.giminternational.com/v_gim/archives/chapter_content.asp?v0=detail&v1=486
103

SESSION REGIONAL SDI
NAVARRA IN INSPIRE. INTEGRATION OF SDI AT REGIONAL
(IDENA) AND LOCAL (IDEPAMPLONA) LEVEL
M. Cabello 1 , P. Echamendi 1 , M.A. Jiménez de Cisneros 2 , A. Valentín 3
1Trabajos Catastrales, S.A., Pamplona, Spain
2 Government of Navarra. Public Works Department, Pamplona, Spain
3 Government of Navarra. SITNA Coordination, Pamplona, Spain
Key Words: Spatial Data Infrastructures, Territorial Information System, INSPIRE, Navarra, SITNA
(Territorial Information System of Navarra), IDENA (Spatial Data Infrastructure of Navarra),
IDEPAMPLONA (Spatial Data Infrastructure of Pamplona), Public Services.
Navarra has made a great effort in the recent years to have a real Territorial Information System, (better known
by the acronym SITNA1) and it has configured itself as the component within the Corporate information
system of Navarra that makes available, data of a very diverse kind which refers spatially to the territory of the
community, to provide services to the citizen (web viewer, searching, downloading), and, also, to the
Administration itself.
The evolution of this matter in recent years in Europe, has seen a radical change after the publication of the
proposal of European Directive INSPIRE2 (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) that established
an infrastructure for spatial information for the area of the European Union, the election of the ISO-19115
standard and the following multiplication of SDI initiatives in all fields. Equally important and also related to
this proposal, The Directive on the re-use of public sector information3 in which, one of the principal aims is
the creation of conditions, that become the inclusion of all the Community in services development,
improving their efficiency.
In March 2005, the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Navarra (IDENA4), appeared for the first time on the Web,
arising to give SITNA a Catalogue of Meta information, the Interoperability, and provide a wider spatial
information distribution offer. IDENA was the answer Navarra and SITNA need to comply with requirements
from INSPIRE and Spanish SDI, and what is more, Navarra was included to the offer that Spatial Data
Infrastructures represent at world-wide level.
For the standard documentation, an IDENA Metadata Profile has been defined, that includes 44 elements from
ISO 19115 (22 of ISO Core, 4 of Dublin Core, 6 quality elements, 4 additional elements of the Spanish
Metadata Core, and 6 specifically selected elements to answer the need of IDENA).
IDENA is well defined as the whole data and services, publics and interoperable, referred to the territory of
Navarra, that lays in the organization, the technology, and the human resources of the Public Administrations
of Navarra. Therefore, it was essential, that Local Administrations gather efforts and data with the objective to
improve their own management and services to citizens.
With this aim, the Municipality of Pamplona and the Government of Navarra, established a common strategy
that has begun to yield results with the creation and publication of IDEPAMPLONA5, a local SDI, that widely
enlarges the present offer of Navarra on the Internet on data and geospatial services.
Actually, the Spatial Data Infrastructures in Navarra are, therefore, in an advanced level:
IDENA and IDEPamplona are part of the Spanish SDI (IDEE), of INSPIRE, as well as of the Global SDI.
1 http://sitna.navarra.es
2 Commission of the European Communities, 2004. “Proposal for a Directive of the European parliament and
of the council establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE)”, Brussels.
http://www.ec-gis.org/inspire/.
3 Directive 2003/98/CE of the European parliament and of the council on the re-use of public sector
information http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2003/l_345/l_34520031231en00900096.pdf
4 http://idena.navarra.es
5 http://ide.pamplona.es
104

SESSION REGIONAL SDI
Metadata about all the system layers are available.
Services available fulfil the standards.
The technological development has reached a high degree of maturity.
It has been developed new services both in the IDENA portal and in other portals.
With Pamplona, the Local Administrations in Navarra has taken the first step to the development of Spatial
Data Infrastructures.
In these experiences, we have defined:
� An organization model that becomes more definite with the Protocol of Collaboration between the
Government of Navarra and the Municipality of Pamplona, so that this last one, has been included in
SITNA
� An information management model, that brings off an only Information System, that respecting the
titular and, therefore, the responsibility to guarantee the quality and the update of data from everyone,
that it is configured to avoid duplication and place all the information available for everyone.
We have reinforced the commitment of vanguard technology provided by the public company Trabajos
Catastrales S.A.
This article intends to present, therefore, the integration of Spatial Data Infrastructures among the different
levels of Public Administrations of Navarra
105

SESSION REGIONAL SDI
REGIO-GEO.CH – INTER-REGIONAL SPATIAL DATA HUB WITH
AUTOMATED DATA SHARING AND QUALITY CONTROL
A. Bernath 1
1 SITgisconsult, Lenzburg, Switzerland
Introduction: Geoportals will play an important role in spatial information management for administration and
economy. In the context of the impulse program e-geo.ch in Switzerland the national geodata infrastructure
(NGDI) is developed. In the cantons of Berne, Aargau, Ticino and Grisons geoportals are already operational.
The integration of these regional geoportals into an interregional portal is under pilot operation. The viewing
and purchase of current geodata and plans is now very easy and time-saving for all prospective customers,
from the private property owners over architects, planners, notaries, real estate trustees up to personnel of
public administration. Thus the economical use of geodata increases, because it can be accessed by many
public and private users.
The challenge of federal structures, multilinguality and decentralised data management: The known federal
structure of Switzerland with its 26 cantons and four languages implies a decentralised structure of data
maintenance and data management. This is a main guideline for Swiss SDI. In this way geoportals rely on
existing fully operational structures. The collection and maintenance of data is guaranteed by local companies
and administrations familiar with the local circumstances working with their specialized GIS systems. The
regional data hubs are operated by regional companies more or less corresponding to administrative units with
their own characteristic federalistic and linguistic features. For the users this structure in detail remains hidden.
They access data on a regional or national level using the corresponding regional portals or in near future the
national metadata service geocat.
The role of standards for data modelling and data transfer: The structure of a regionally based infrastructure
requires an active co-operation of the data suppliers from public administration and private companies, the
regional data hub operators and the GIS system manufacturers. It also requires standards for data modelling,
data transfer and metadata. 1993 INTERLIS 1 was introduced in Swiss Survey and became a Swiss standard in
1998 (SN 612030). INTERLIS consists of a conceptual description language and a transfer format. INTERLIS
is concerned with the system-neutral, conceptional modelling of geodata structures and with the definition of a
system-neutral exchange format. INTERLIS 2 was developed since 1998 based in international standards (ISO
191-series, e.g. with full compatibility to UML and XML) in order to meet increased user-demands for
incremental update, object orientation, use of XML as transfer format and formal description of graphic
illustration of objects. INTERLIS2 became a Swiss standard in 2003 (SN 612031). The Swiss metadata
information system geocat is based on the Swiss profile of ISO19115 metadata standard. These standards are
the base of regio-geo.
Automation of data sharing and quality control: To allow daily actuality of data and an acceptable cost –
benefit ratio it is indispensable that the whole chain of processes works fully automatic. Starting with the
automatic data supply from GIS systems using standard interfaces, over the automatic quality control of data
structure and data content to the automatic upload of controlled data into the data hub INTERLIS-models,
transfer format and tools enable consistent and documented handling of every step. The basic metadata also is
generated automatically.
Functionality and benefits: Regio-geo is a scalable, multilingual regional geodata hub/data shop with following
functionalities: Data access in various data formats (INTERLIS, DXF, SHP, WMS). Automatic model driven
data transfer and quality control from decentralized data sources. Data viewer with catalogue search, database
queries, graphic selections, plots. Data shop with data order/delivery of daily actualized data 24 hours a day.
GIS- and data server interfaces. By the common use of software, interfaces and hardware an interesting costbenefit
ratio results for all the partners.
References
Regio-geo (d/i), www.regio-geo.ch, GeoSwiss, GEOAargau (2006); Swiss metadata catalogue (d/f),
www.geocat.ch, KOGIS (2006); INTERLIS (d/f/e), www.interlis.ch, swisstopo (2006)
106

SESSION: DATA SHARING
Eliminating Obstacles at the Point of Use: Sharing Ordnance Survey Data
among Public Authorities in Great Britain
C. Hadley, N. Sutherland
Ordnance Survey
One of the key aims of INSPIRE is to improve the accessibility of spatial data by establishing sharing
arrangements among public authorities. In Great Britain Ordnance Survey has established licensing
arrangements for public authorities that have already proved effective in removing obstacles at the point of
use. Primary among them have been the Pan-Government Agreement, which covers central government, and
the Mapping Services Agreement, which is now procured on a competitive basis on behalf of local authorities.
The Pan-Government Agreement gives central government organisations straightforward access to a portfolio
of Ordnance Survey digital mapping products. Around 200 organisations across government have joined the
agreement. Members may freely exchange data they have created, contributing to more joined-up government.
The Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) provides more than 500 local government bodies with access to
detailed geographical information from Ordnance Survey and other suppliers. The mapping and services
delivered under the MSA are used for planning, highways, emergency services, statistical analysis, and
command & control. These help to support joined-up government and services for citizens, provide backing
for multi-agency and partnership agreements, and offer improved data processing and information reporting
for organisations. The MSA is the result of an OJEU procurement that builds on the success of the former
Service Level Agreement (which was negotiated bilaterally between the local government community and
Ordnance Survey).
Recently the model has been extended to include a Pilot NHS Agreement for the National Health Service in
England. This will allow NHS managers to harness the power of geographic information to help identify
health inequalities, record changes to patient catchment areas, carry out epidemiological analysis and target
services to clinical hotspots.
This paper will chart the development of these agreements, look at the lessons to be learned from experience to
date and consider how similar arrangements may be applied more widely in pursuit of the aims of INSPIRE.
107

SESSION: DATA SHARING
INSPIRE and intellectual property rights – a thunderstorm or a tempest
in a teapot?
K. Janssen
1 ICRI – K.U.Leuven – IBBT, Leuven, Belgium
Introduction
By the time this conference is taking place, the results of the plenary vote in the European Parliament on the
second reading of the INSPIRE draft directive should be known. So by then we should have a more definite
view on the Parliament’s opinion. However, if the voting of the Committee for Environment, Public Health
and Food Safety is any indication, the debate is anything but finished (Committee 2006).
A central issue in the debate between the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission is
the inclusion of intellectual property rights as a reason to limit public access to the network services,
respectively in article 19 of the Commission Proposal or article 13 of the Council’s Common Position
(European Commission 2004, Council 2006). This paper will address the different approaches of the
institutions to this debate and will examine what the actual scope of intellectual property rights (IPR) on spatial
data is.
IPR and INSPIRE
In the original Commission proposal, IPR was not included in the list of possible exceptions to the public
access to the network services. Even though this led to inconsistency with Directive 2003/4 on public access to
environmental information, the Commission felt that including IPR would form too great a risk to the access of
the public to spatial data and spatial data services. Judged on the amendments, the Committee for
Environment, Public Health and Food Safety agrees with this assessment.
However, the Council felt that IPR should be included in the list of reasons for limiting public access, if only
for the coherence with the directive on public access to environmental information. In addition, it added that
public access could not only be limited for the view, download or transformation services, but also for the
discovery services. In combination with the provisions of article 14 of the Common Position (possible charges
for the network services, availability of data in a form preventing their re-use for commercial purposes), this
seemed to be a much further-going restriction on public access than the Commission originally had in mind.
This paper will argue that including IPR in the list of reasons for limiting public access is an excessive
restriction to the right of the citizen to obtain information on the activities of government. It will claim that
even the weighing of the public interest served by disclosure against the interest served by limiting or
conditioning the access (article 19 of the Commission Proposal, article 13.2 of the Council’s Common
Position) will not be enough to remedy this excessive character. This is partly due to the fact that the IPR
regulations themselves leave little room for a weighing of interests, and partly to the fact that the underlying
interests for the IPR exception are already safeguarded by other articles in the directive, such as the charging
arrangements for the network services, or the possibility of providing the spatial data in a form that will
prevent their re-use for commercial purposes afterwards.
IPR on spatial data
When discussing whether or not IPR should be included as a reason to limit public access to spatial data, we
should also take a look at the notion of IPR on spatial data itself. When talking about data, the types of
intellectual property rights that automatically come to mind are copyright and the sui generis database right.
The protection of spatial data by these rights is not without dispute. A number of the issues involved will be
presented in this paper.
To be protected by copyright, a work has to fulfil two conditions. It has to be an “original” work and it has to
be fixed in a tangible form. These conditions are not always clear-cut: the required level of originality can
differ between the different legal systems. For example, the creativity required from an author is generally
higher in civil law countries than in common law countries. Moreover, one can even wonder in how far spatial
data is protected, since they are a representation of facts, and facts are not protected by copyright (Onsrud and
Lopez 1998).
Even if they are not eligible for copyright, the spatial data included in a database will be protected by the sui
generis right on databases installed by Directive 96/9 on the legal protection of databases. This right protects
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SESSION: DATA SHARING
the maker of a database which shows that there has been a substantial investment in either the obtaining,
verification or presentation of the contents to prevent extraction or re-utilization of the whole or a substantial
part of that database. From the start, this database right has been the target of criticism, and it has been
curtailed by a number of judgments of the European Court of Justice in 2004. Recently, the European
Commission published an evaluation report that stated that the introduction of the database right did not have
the desired impact (European Commission 2005).
Underlying any discussion on the IPR on spatial data, is of course always the notion that the vast majority of it
is created by the public sector. This raises the fundamental question if public sector bodies should be able to
obtain intellectual property rights on data they created during the performance of their public task, and which
are essentially paid for by the citizen. This in its turn brings us back to the question whether a public authority
can use its IPR to limit the access of the citizen to government information…
References
Commission of the European Communities, Proposal for Directive of the European Parliament and of the
Council establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE), COM
(2004) 516 final
Council of the European Union, Common Position adopted by the Council 23 January 2006 with a view to the
adoption of a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a Infrastructure for
Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE),
http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/05/st12/st12064-re02.en05.pdf
European Parliament and Council of the European Union, Directive 96/9/EC of 11 March 1996 on the legal
protection of databases, OJ L 77, 27 March 1996, 20
European Parliament and Council of the European Union, Directive 2003/4/EC of 28 January 2003 on public
access to environmental information and repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC, OJ L 41, 14
February 2003, 26
Committee for Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, Draft Recommendation for second reading on on
the Council common position for adopting a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council
establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community,
http://www.europarl.eu.int/oeil/FindByProcnum.do?lang=2&procnum=COD/2004/0175
Commission of the European Communities, 2005, DG Internal Market and Services Working Paper. First
Evaluation of Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases,
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/copyright/docs/databases/evaluation_report_en.pdf
Onsrud, H.J. and X. Lopez, 1998, Intellectual Property Rights in Disseminating Digital Geographic Data,
Products, and Services: Conflicts and Commonalities among European Union and United States
Approaches. In Masser, Ian and Francois Salge, (Eds.), European Geographic Information
Infrastructures: Opportunities and Pitfalls (London: Taylor and Francis), 153-167.
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SESSION: DATA SHARING
Data Lending Facility – the Innovative Download Service of the Finnish
NSDI
T. Toivonen 1 , R. Kalliola 1 & E. Ennola 1
1 University of Turku, Finland, Department of Geography
Research, development and education throughout Europe has suffered from the limited availability and pricing
policy of spatial data sets. INSPIRE directive proposal takes this as a challenge and suggests a set of services
to support the data discovery and accessibility. National spatial data infrastructures (NSDIs) have started to be
developed accordingly in many European countries. In Finland, the general structure of the NSDI was defined
in National Geographic Information Strategy 2005 – 2010 published in October 2004 (National Council for
Geographic Information 2004).
In addition those services present also in INSPIRE, namely metadata and viewing service, the Finnish strategy
identifies also a novel service type: Spatial data lending service. The service can be considered as a library of
data sets where various producers can deposit their data and from where registered users can search and lend
data for testing, research and development for a limited period of time free of charge.
The main idea behind the service is to balance between the different needs of the data users and producers. It
aims to give a possibility for the data users to test even commercial data sets before purchase and to compare
them with each other in practice. This way, it works as an extended metadata of each data set, giving the user a
demo version of the data. Furthermore, it attempts to support research and education of geoinformatics by
providing a very easy access to data sets. Moreover, the service aims to catalyze the development of new,
innovative GI based services, as developers may select the best basis for their product development without yet
worrying of data costs.
Experience of the operation of the service has been gained since the year 2003 when the pilot version of the
service was launched (www.paikkatietolainaamo.fi). Since then, the service has been hosted by the University
of Turku, Department of geography, under the supervision of the Finnish Council of Geographic Information.
Newest, advanced version of the service was published in May 2005 with extensive interest from the media
(Paikkatietolainaamo 2006).
Operating principle of the service
The data sets cover a geographically pre-defined “test region” of 40 000km 2 , allowing overlays, combinations
and comparisons of the data sets. The secretariat of the service accept data from all data providers and an
agreement is made to deliver the data sets to registered users (Figure 1). The registration to the service is open
and free-of-charge, but requires signing of the terms of data use. These state that the data sets may be used for
a period of one year for the purposes defined by the user (research, education, testing, product development).
Data providers have access to name lists of the users of their data. After the one year has expired, the user is
asked to delete the files or extend the use for another year, which maintains him in the user list.
Agreement on
permanent use
permissions
Signing of
data delivery
agreement
Search, comparison
and download
Data provider
Data users
Delivery of data with
description documents
Basic operating
principles of
Spatial Data
Lending Facility
Registration and
acceptance of the
terms of lending
Sercretariat
Entering of
metadata
to database
Sharing of the
data packages
Visualisation
of datasets in
on-line map services
Fig.1: The operation of the lending service is based on agreements between the data providers, the secretariat
and the data users. Technical mechanisms have been developed to allow both users and data providers to see
the lending status of different data sets.
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SESSION: DATA SHARING
Tools of the service: from discovery to download
Within the service, the user may look for interesting data sets in two ways: based on metadata searches or
based on map services (Figure 2). Once an interesting data set is encountered, a registered user may download
it. A download is registered to the users account and becomes visible also for the provider of this data.
The metadata service allows the data discovery based on the core fields of ISO 19115 standard. The user may
search for suitable data sets based for on the data provider, data format, geometry, geographical area or theme,
for example. The data producers are also asked to provide their own, more detailed metadata descriptions to
the service. In the future, this part should be replaced by the national metadata service.
The map services allow viewing of the data sets and overlaying them visually already before download. The
data sets are organised by data providers and user may click visible for example road networks of different
data providers. At the moment, the map service has been developed as a centralised service using commercial
software. Later on, at least some data visualisations could be retrieved from Web Map Services (WMS) of the
data providers.
The download option is linked to both discovery services. A download delivers the data set in ZIP file in a
format as defined by the data provider.
Experiences and lessons learnt
This far (March 2006), the service is the only operational part of the Finnish NSDI. It contains data from 16
data providers, including all main data producers in Finland, both governmental and private. All INSPIRE core
data themes are represented.
This far, 620 signed user agreement have been sent to the secretariat and number of individuals accessing the
service daily is around 30. Some hundreds of downloads are made monthly.
Fig. 2: Main data discovery services available to select data sets for download: Classic metadata search
based on query fields (left) and a map service (right) allowing overlays and comparisons of data already
before download. Here, three different road data sets are presented together.
The use statistics of the service, the user feed back and the experiences of the secretariat allow us to draw the
following conclusions:
The service is useful. Users represent particularly the education and research sector, but considerable amount
of users come also from private companies.
Possibility to view and test the data gives life to metadata. Simple tabular metadata may be difficult to
comprehend and selection of data sets is easier with the test option (Ahonen-Rainio 2005).
Data sets are not squirreled away. Although valuable data sets are provided free-of-charge, users seem to
download only the data that they require.
The service is useful also for data providers. They may use it as a delivery channel for test data, marketing and
also get feedback on the interest towards the different data sets.
Updating of all parts of the service in centralised manner is labour intensive. Direction needs to be towards
decentralised model, once other parts of the NSDI are available.
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SESSION: DATA SHARING
Personalised agreements are needed with data providers. There is an increasing need for individualistic
permissions for downloads, as data providers have different data policies, and some would be willing already
for more open delivery of data in terms of geographic area and time limitation.
Permanent status is essential. Piloting periods showed that data providers are willing to devote their time to the
service participation only if the service will be permanently available.
Acknowledgements
The service is being developed with the support of EU Life Environment project ENVIFACILITATE
(http://envifacilitate.utu.fi) and the University of Turku. We thank all the data providers and users for good
collaboration.
References:
Ahonen-Rainio, P. (2005) Visualization o geospatial metadata for selecting geographic datasets. Helsinki
University of Technology Publications in Cartography and Geoinformatics, Espoo 2005. In PDF
http://lib.hut.fi/Diss/2005/isbn9512275252/isbn9512275252.pdf, accessed 15 th March 2005
Commission of the European Communities (2004) Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and
Council: Establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE). Sec(2004)
980.
Paikkatietolainaamo 2006. List of news paper articles concerning the new service version. https://paikkamaa.utu.fi/PTL_scripts/taustaa/taustaa_julkistus.php
National Council for Geographic Information (2004). National Geographic Information Strategy 2005 – 2010.
Publications of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry 10/2004. ISBN 9524531801, 28 pp.
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SESSION: DATA SHARING
Availability of governmental Geo-Information, Complications in practice
H. Nobbe
Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, The Netherlands
The Inspire initiative has shed is shadow over the developments in The Netherlands. Fierce discussion
between those who are for and those who are against. In the end, the most important argument in this
discussion is about financing the governmental geo-information structure.
In the eighties of last century, the Dutch government has decided to privatize certain operations. This was a
tendency in many western European countries. One of the activities that has been privatized is the Dutch
Cadastre. This privatization is seen as very successful. But the downside is that the cadastre has to organize its
own budget. This is done by asking fees for services. Over the last years the cadastre developed into a very
efficient and well appreciated agency. In 2004 the Topographic Survey merged with the cadastre. Also the
topographic survey resorts under the same cost recovery regime of the cadastre.
Nowadays there is a growing demand for maps as an positional layer in web applications. This is the case in
commercial application, such as route planning systems on the web. Also the government is more active on the
internet via a growing number of e-government initiatives. This also increases the demand for maps. The
government is now confronted with the restrictions of its own policy of the past. This asks for a new approach.
Existing agreements and financing structures are not always the best answer to the needs of the government.
Therefore the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, as a large user of geo-information,
has proposed a restructuring of the availability of government information. This is done in cooperation with
other ministries and key organizations in mapping. In this presentation this initiative is presented and progress
reported.
The chosen approach is in line with the expected Inspire developments.
In the final presentation:
Examples
� Restrictions on weather information
� Restrictions on traffic information
Cases
� Government agency’s (cadastre)
� Public-private cooperation (AHN, GBKN)
� Private ownership (aerial photography)
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CLOSING PLENARY AND WRAP-UP
How to keep rebuilding a SDI ? – The Portuguese Experience
R. P. Julião
Instituto Geográfico Português, Lisboa, Portugal
Portugal was one of the first countries in the world to start the development of a Spatial Data Infrastructure
(SDI) that is known as Sistema Nacional de Informação Geográfica (SNIG). This project that started with a
working group in 1986, was brought to day light in 1990 and opened to the Internet in 1995, is now going
through a major change on its philosophy, its contents and its technology.
If creating a SDI is not an easy job, rebuilding an infrastructure is even more dificult. Besides the traditional
issues that must be considered when you start a SDI, there are also very strong expectations from users created
by the existing services and contents. Not only the ones already provided by the SDI, but also those existing in
other countries and offered by international organizations.
Last year we had the opportunity to present the Portuguese strategy for the renewing of the SDI and our
expectations for the process.
This year we are able to present some results, a first assessment of the effort that was applied, and further
expectations and guidelines for the continuation of the SNIG renewing, addressing and justifying the options
that are being made.
With our contribution we hope to improve the awareness and further the understanding of the SDI’s
implementation challenges, costs, and benefits of all SDI developers, as Portugal can be proud of having
almost 20 years of experience in this field.
References
GINIE (2004): GINIE Final Report, GINIE Project.
GSDI (2001): Developing Spatial Data Infrastructures: The SDI Cookbook, GSDI.
JULIÃO, Rui Pedro (2005): "Rebuilding a SDI – The Portuguese Experience ", 11th EC-GI & GIS Workshop
– ESDI: Setting the Framework, Alghero (Sardinia), Italy.
JULIÃO, Rui Pedro (2003): "Restructuring the Geographical Information Production and Dissemination at
National Level – The Experience of Portugal", Cambridge Conference Proceedings, Ordenance Survey UK.
MASSER, Ian (2005): GIS Worlds: Creating Spatial Data Infrastructures, ESRI Press, Redlands, USA.
114

European Commission
EUR 22318
DG Joint Research Centre, Institute for the Environment and Sustainability
Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities
2006 –120 pp. – 29,5 x 21 cm
Scientific and Technical Research series
ISBN 92-79-02083-8
Abstract
The EC GI & GIS Workshops focus on the development of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI).
The presentations of the workshop give an overview of progress of the INSPIRE initiative, SDI
implementation challenges, costs, and benefits at national, regional, and local level. In addition, key research
issues are identified and discussed, including new methods for indexing, searching and retrieving metadata,
new methods for distributed geo-processing, social and economic impacts. The lessons learnt at local, regional,
national and international levels may contribute to capacity building, and better understanding how to build up,
manage and exploit Spatial Data Infrastructures.
115