Towards a European Spatial Data Infrastructure Paul Smits, Alessandro Annoni, Lars Bernard, Ioannis Kanellopoulos, Michel Millot, Steve Peedell European Commission DG Joint Research Centre Institutefor Environment and Sustainability
Outline Background Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Technical aspects RTD challenges Summary
EU Commission Parliament Counci DG Joint Research Centre DG AGRI DG INF Mission: to provide customer-driven scientific and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of European Union policies. The JRC functions as a reference centre of science and technology for the Union. Close to the policy-making process, it serves the common interest of the Member States, while being independent of special interests, whether private or national. 7 institutes in 5 countries, 2400 people
EU policies and Geographic Information Increasing interest for the spatial dimension GI-GIS needed to Assess needs Formulate the policy Monitor its implementation Evaluate its effectiveness, GI-GIS explicitly required in EU directives/regulations Water Framework directive, Habitat, IACS, LPIS, Olive Trees registers, ICZM, ESDP, Urban, Noise,
Examples of Problems Data policy restrictions pricing, copyright, access rights, licensing policy Lack of co-ordination across boarders between levels of government Lack of standards and their use incompatible information incompatible information systems fragmentation of information redundancy EU has islands of data of different standards and quality... Lack of data
INSPIRE INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe Need for action! Without a co-ordinated framework as minimum common denominator for all Member States the problems will persist. INSPIRE initiative launched in September 2001.
INSPIRE objectives Make relevant, harmonised spatial data available for Community Environmental Policy (formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation) and for the citizen... through the establishment of integrated spatial information services, based upon a distributed network of databases, linked by common standards and protocols to ensure compatibility.
ata resources cal data INSPIRE Information Flow INSPIRE specifications request for information services Users Government & Administrations National and Subnational SDI Discovery Service Technical Integration/ harmonisation Utility & Public Services Commercial & Professional Users ional and Subational SDI European Data Harmonised Data policy Research pean Data National and Subnational SDI Spatial Data Infrastructure 04 Anchorage 20/09/2004 Local data Collaborative agreements delivery of information services CEN / ISO / OGC NGOs and not-for-profit orgs Citizens
INSPIRE Outlook Oct 2002 May 2003 June 2003 March 2004 July 2004 2006 2006 2008+ : final position papers : Internet consultation : Extended impact assessment : Interservice consultation : Adoption of proposal by EC : Adoption of INSPIRE (EP,Council) : Transposition phase : Implementation of framework
Technical Aspects Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) are based on interoperable Geoinformation-Services to support platform independency = freedom of choice prevent from data conversion support decentralized management of geodata and geoprocessing enable a more efficient use of geoinformation allow easy access to up-to-date spatio-temporal information 1985 5 ~1995 1995 today today a-exchangeat era 04 Anchorage 20/09/2004 GI-Interoperabilityvia-API era OGC&ISO GI-Service-Chain -on-demand era
GI-Services in a SDI atalog WFS Background - GI-Services GI-Services are based on distributed computing platform architectures & protocols (CORBA/IDL, WEB/HTTP) Interoperability of GI-Services need standards WMS Client WCatS......... Interoperable GI-Services cooperate in infrastructures and can be chained Benefits: Provider: Easy to realize and to provide your own GI-Services User: Easy access to and use of geoinformation No need for specific systems nor for specific knowledge
Geographic Information Interoperability!?? Experiences in the INSPIRE EU GeoPortal development as well as in the JRC hosted Expert Meeting on connecting European Regional Spatial Data Infrastructures (Ispra, Jan. 2003) showed that: existing GI-related standards do not ensure their unambiguous interpretation only a few cross-border linkages of SDI components can be realized today development stages and expertise differs enormously existing applicable guidelines and cookbooks do not consider issues of cross border/cross institutional geographic information interoperability
Geographic Information Interoperability! Thesauri & Translation Gazetteer G az WFS European Geo-Portal WFS WMS WMS WCS WMS WCatS Existing de-facto and de-jure Standards (OpenGIS, ISO, W3C, etc.) are a good & important starting point for an ESDI, but need additional glue to provide Various providers of Geographic Information commonly agreed & harmonized, unambiguous application profiles quality measurement of distributed(!) services (certification of services) a trigger to additional standards where needed awareness and training on GI interoperability C a fu
ESDI Technical Guidelines are needed!! INSPIRE cannot be implemented without agreement on proper standards and guidelines for geographic information interoperability the ESDI Action is developing guidelines needed by INSPIRE, JRC, EC, National and Regional organisations (managing spatial data) including results of standardisation processes 04 Anchorage 20/09/2004 National and regional experiences will be considered this way! Considered Standards need to be proved by implementation. JRC acts as European Technical Reference Centre by implementing/testing upcoming standards
Key-Players in the development of ESDI Technical Guidelines Role name Legislation developer [n] Technical Coordinator of INSPIRE [1] Technical Coordinator of GMES [1] Standards developer [1] Developer and implementer [n] User of technical guidelines [n] ESDI - User [n] Conformance tester [n] Supporter of service providers [n] Organizations EC-DG Environment, Agriculture, Transport EC-DG JRC - (t.b.d.) CEN/TC287 INSPIRE related Projects (ITT, IST FP6, ESA EuroGeographics, European Soil Burea OpenGIS Consortium, National and region initiatives, Service providers (see above) Projects, Public administrations, citizens INSPIRE Technical / Scientific Service, OpenGIS Eurogeographics,... - (t.b.d.) Supporter of end-users [n] - (t.b.d.) Education and outreach [n] - (t.b.d.) 04 Anchorage 20/09/2004
Consensus processes on interoperability JRC s role in GI standards development JRC to host ISO/TC211 In Pallanza, October 2004 ISO/TC211 JRC Convener of CEN/TC287 WG 1 Spatial Data Infrastructures JRC currently co-chair of ISO/TC211-OGC Joint Advisory Group CEN/TC287
Development of the Guidelines 1/2 ncreasing levels of interoperability planned steps: 1. Catalogues and metadata (Common thesauri, Multi-lingual issues, Metadata generation, Geo-portals) Eu-Portal, EFICP, Forest Focus, INSPIRE Pilot, Soil Pilot,.. 2. Portrayal and simple queries (Common Coordinate Reference Systems, CRS-Registries, ) CRS ws, Map Projection ws, EVRS ws,.. 5 cm/year ITRF93 NNR-NUVEL1A
Use of ETRS89 in a cross border application
Soil database now accessible via EU-GeoPortal
Development of the Guidelines 2/2 ncreasing levels of interoperability planned steps: 3. Access to spatial objects (Common Georeferences, Common Conceptual Geodatamodel, Unique feature identifier, Feature catalogues, ) Euro GRID, EFAS, GMES Data Harmonisation Project, Nature-GIS,.. and to be addressed in near future 4. Complex queries and analysis (Service chaining, generalisation services, aggregation, ) ORCHESTRA 5. Authorization & authentications ORCHESTRA
Development of the Guidelines Example (from GDI NRW) A profile for the OGC WMS Standard, that unambiguously defines: Image Formats Image Style Default behaviour Client requirements Coordinate Reference System Scale Hints Accessibility Quality Metadata (Additional capabilities) that must be provided to be GDI NRW compliant. 04 Anchorage 20/09/2004
ESDI Technical Guidelines development Timescale SPIRE preparatory phase (2005-2006) 4/2004 ESDI Guidelines Structure and Implementation Plan 6/2004 INSPIRE Action Plan (pre- implementation phase) to be adopted by the Exp. Group INSPIR Task For for Action P Preparat 12/2004 Version 0.5 - Catalogue Services - Metadata Profile, UID, Thesauri - Portrayal Services - CRS 12/2005 Version 1.0 + Common Georeferences & Feature Catalogues, + Common Conceptual Geodatamodel INSPIRE transition phase (2007-2008) INSPIRE Spatial Da Interest Gro 12/2007 Final Version (adopted by INSPIRE Committee) INSPIRE implementation phase (2009-2013)
RTD challenges Enhancement of monitoring technologies (including novel insitu sensors) and standards; Improvement of models and capacity for analysis, forecasting, planning and decision support; Improvement of interoperability, linkage between observing systems and other data sources; Information technologies for improved accessibility to longterm data archives, implementation of metadata standards, actions to facilitate information retrieval and dissemination. Multi-lingual aspects High performance networks GRID-based computing for the essential data mining, sharing and analysing and visualisation of the results
Summary European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI) will be a web service-based infrastructure GRID should be a natural development of web services Semantic web All future EU-funded projects touching geospatial aspects MUST be INSPIRE-compliant in order to become ESDI components Image information mining relevant especially in the framework of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Cultural change Research communities should become familiar with concepts and terms related to Spatial Data Infrastructures Think of services rather than of data
Summary JRC Technical Reference Centre recognized role in international GI arena and focal point for the GI Community increasing demand for assistance to Regions and MSs technical coordinator of INSPIRE,.. Proactive role of JRC in geospatial standardisation necessary to address specific European requirements ESDI Technical Guidelines, important for sharing spatial information in Europe early version needed to support JRC work related to spatial data management JRC projects used as testbeds together with RTD&GMES projects
Thank you for your attention! INSPIRE: http://inspire.jrc.it GMES: http://www.gmes.info