An infrastructure built on those of 28 different countries in 24
languages by a truly democratic process, INSPIRE is a role model not
only in relation to the developments of SDI but more generally to the
formulation of public policy at the European level. Find out how INSPIRE
is facilitating consensus-based policy and is developing and
maintaining a network of stakeholders. By Max Craglia
For people who are not so familiar with the concept of an SDI, it is
easier to think of it as an extension of a desk-top GIS. Whilst in a
‘normal’ GIS, most of the data we use for analysis is our own, or
collected by the agency we work for, an SDI is an Internet-based
platform to make it easier for us to search and find data that may be
relevant for our work and that may be collected, stored or published by
other organisations, and often other countries. For this reason, SDIs
are often termed as children of the Internet, without which they would
not exist.
SDIs are the response to an increased recognition that the environmental
and social phenomena we are called to understand and govern are very
complex, and that no single organisation has the know-how and the data
to do the job alone. Hence, we need to share knowledge and data across
multiple organisations in both public and private sectors, and SDIs
support this effort.
INSPIRE: Why and how?
INSPIRE is a legal act (Directive 2007/2/EC) of the Council and the
European Parliament setting up an Infrastructure for Spatial Information
in Europe based on infrastructures for spatial information established
and operated by the 28 sovereign Member States of the European Union.
All the spatial data that is part of INSPIRE comes via the organisations
responsible in the Member States and this EU-wide SDI is developed in a
decentralised way, building on the SDIs and related activities
established and maintained by the Member States.
The prime purpose of INSPIRE is to support environmental policy, and
overcome barriers affecting the availability and accessibility of
relevant data. These barriers include: inconsistencies in spatial data
collection; lack or incomplete documentation of available spatial data;
lack of compatibility among spatial datasets that cannot, therefore, be
combined with others; incompatible SDI initiatives in the Member States
that often function only in isolation; cultural, institutional,
financial and legal barriers preventing or delaying the sharing of
existing spatial data.
The key elements of the INSPIRE Directive to overcome these barriers include:
- Metadata to describe existing information resources so that they can be more easily found and accessed;
- Harmonisation of key spatial data themes needed to support environmental policies in the Union;
- Agreements on network services and technologies to allow discovery,
view, download of information resources, and access to related
services;
- Policy agreements on sharing and access, including licensing and charging;
- Coordination and monitoring mechanisms.
INSPIRE addresses 34 key spatial data themes organised in three
groups (or Annexes to the Directive) reflecting different levels of
harmonisation expected, and a staged phasing (see Table 1 on Page 34).
 Legal framework
The legal framework of INSPIRE has two main levels. At the first, there
is the INSPIRE Directive itself, which sets the objectives to be
achieved and asks the Member States to pass their own national
legislation establishing their SDIs. This mechanism of European as well
as a national legislation allows each country to define its own way to
achieve the objective agreed taking into account its own institutional
characteristics and history of development. As an example, Germany does
not have a single SDI but a coordinated framework among 17 SDIs, one for
each of its states (Länder), and one at the federal level (which also
means that 17 different legal acts had to be passed to implement
INSPIRE). The INSPIRE Directive also requires the establishment of an EU
geoportal operated by the European Commission to which the
infrastructures of the Member States have to connect
(http://inspire-geoportal. ec.europa.eu/).
The challenge of having 28 different ‘flavours’ of INSPIRE is that
making the system work is undoubtedly more difficult. For this reason,
the Directive envisages a second level of legislation, more stringent
because it has to be implemented as is and does not require follow-up
national legislation. Therefore, INSPIRE envisages technical
implementation of rules in the form of regulations for metadata,
harmonisation of spatial data and services, network services, data and
service-sharing policies, and monitoring and reporting indicators to
evaluate the extent of the Directive’s implementation and to assess its
impact. Each of these regulations needs the approval of the Member
States and of the European Parliament. By December 2013, almost all the
regulations were approved. The only missing one, expected in spring
2014, refers to the technical specification for the harmonisation of
spatial data services.
INSPIRE has some characteristics that make it particularly challenging.
The most obvious is that it is an infrastructure built on those of 28
different countries in 24 languages. The requirements for multi—lingual
services and interoperability among very different information systems
and professional and cultural practices are, therefore, very demanding.
For example, existing standards have to be tested in real distributed
and multi—lingual settings. In the best scenario all works well, but for
a European-wide implementation, there is a need to translate the
standards and related guidelines into the relevant languages (ISO, OGC
and other standards are typically in English only). In other instances,
testing has demonstrated that the standards are not mature enough, or
leave too much room for different interpretations, and thus require
further definition or individual bridges to make different system
interoperate. This can be seen with tests on distributed queries in
catalogues all using the same specifications (OGC CS-W 2.0) that
identified a number of shortcomings, that required the development of an
adaptor for each catalogue, which in a Europe-wide system with
thousands of catalogues, would obviously not scale. These shortcomings
have been put forward to the OGC for consideration. In harder cases
still, there are no standards available, and therefore, they have to be
created. This applies, for example, to ‘invoke’ services that are needed
for service chaining and to the specifications required for the
interoperability of spatial datasets and services, which is a central
feature of INSPIRE.
To understand the context, it is worth reminding that each country in
Europe has its own heritage and traditions, which also include different
ways and methods for collecting environmental and geographic data,
different methods on how to analyse them, and also visualise them,
including different coordinate reference systems (sometimes more than
one in each country), projections, and vertical reference systems. These
different traditions mean that it is not enough for an SDI in Europe to
help users find and access data, it is also necessary to understand the
meaning of what we are accessing to make appropriate use of it. This
means, in turn, we need to develop not only translation tools to help
overcome the “natural” language barriers, but also agreed reference
frameworks, classification systems and ontologies, data models, and
schemas for each of the data themes shown in Table 1, against which the
national data can be transformed or mapped. This is necessary because it
is not possible to ask the Member States and their national and local
organisations to re-engineer all their databases. Thus, the approach
adopted is to develop agreed European models and systems of
transformation (on-the-fly or batch) so that the level of
interoperability necessary for key European applications can be
achieved. The approach sounds simple but putting it into practice is
very complex, as it required already three years of work to develop an
agreed methodology (the Generic Conceptual Model) and tools, mobilise
hundreds of experts in different domains, and deliver and test the
specifications for all the data themes shown in Table 1.
Organisational model
The organisational model put in place to develop INSPIRE is one of its
interesting features, drawing significant attention from outside Europe.
It is a huge exercise in public participation, the like of which is
most unusual in policy making, at least in Europe. From the outset, it
was recognised that for INSPIRE to overcome barriers to data access and
be successful, it was necessary for the legislators, implementers, and
practitioners in the Member States to come together and agree on a
shared understanding of the problem, and of possible solutions.
Therefore, an expert group with official representatives of all the
Member States was established at the beginning of the process in 2001,
together with working groups of experts in the fields of environmental
policy and geographic information to formulate options and forge
consensus. The INSPIRE proposal was subject to an extended impact
assessment to identify potential costs and benefits, before opening for
public consultation. The revised proposal was then debated by the
Council and European Parliament over a three-year period before final
adoption in 2007. This process in itself is a good example in democracy,
but the more interesting aspect is the way in which interested
stakeholders are continuing to participate in all the ongoing activities
required to develop the INSPIRE Implementing Rules (i.e. the follow-up
legal acts and detailed technical guidance documents).
To organise this process, two mechanisms have been put in place: the
first is to engage the organisations at the European national and
sub-national level that already have a formal legal mandate for the
coordination, production or use of geographic and environmental
information (the so called Legally Mandated Organisations or LMOs). The
second mechanism aims to facilitate the self-organisation of
stakeholders, including spatial data providers and users from both the
public and private sectors, in spatial data interest communities (SDICs)
by region, societal sector, and thematic issue. These SDICs identify
and describe user requirements, provide expertise to INSPIRE Drafting
Teams, participate in the review process of the draft implementing
rules, develop, operate and evaluate the implementation pilots, and
develop initiatives for guidance, awareness raising, and training in
relation to the INSPIRE implementation.
There was an open call in March 11, 2005 for the registration of
interest by SDICs and LMOs, who were also asked to put forward expert
and reference material to support the preparation of the Implementing
Rules. There was a second call in 2009 to support the development of
Annex II and III specifications, and an Internet Forum has also been set
up to help Member States share experiences and tools. As a result,
hundreds of organisations and experts throughout Europe have
participated in the development and testing of the technical
specifications of INSPIRE which makes the specifications more robust
from a technical point of view and more acceptable from an
organisational/political point of view.
The drafting teams have a challenging task in collecting and summarising
reference material, seeking common denominators and reference models,
and developing recommendations which satisfy user requirements without
imposing an undue burden on those organisations that have day-to-day
responsibility for data collection and management across Europe. Their
recommendations are then submitted for review to all the registered
SDICs and LMOs and to the representatives of the Member States. After
revision and checking, the draft implementing rule goes thorough the
final round of the democratic process before becoming a new legal act.
This involves qualified majority voting by the representatives of the
Member States and the scrutiny of the European Parliament.
The complexity of this participatory approach is certainly innovative,
not only in relation to the developments of SDIs but also more generally
to the formulation of public policy at the European level. The outcome
produces both consensus- based policy and the development, and
maintenance of a network of stakeholders that make it possible to
implement more effectively this distributed European SDI.
The challenges
Although a great deal of work has taken place with the support of many
stakeholders, there are several organisational and technical challenges
(and opportunities) that need to be addressed. Organisational: The most
crucial challenge was to maintain the momentum and the high level of
commitment of all the stakeholders and the experts contributing to the
development of the Implementing Rules. This requires a notable amount of
resources (time, money, expertise, commitment) to ensure that
stakeholders feel ownership of the process, which then becomes a
prerequisite for more effective implementation.
Another facet is the organisational challenges in the Member States to
implement INSPIRE. INSPIRE Directive asks Member States to establish and
maintain their SDIs, nominate an organisation as a contact point with
the Commission, and set up appropriate coordinating mechanisms. In many
countries, SDIs already exist at national or sub-national levels. So the
effort is more focused on agreeing division of responsibility than in
setting up new structures. In other countries, INSPIRE offers an
opportunity for organisations that have been leading SDI developments
for years to get their just recognition, and acquire new status and
legitimacy. In others still, the opportunities for some organisations
are perceived as threats by others. INSPIRE, like anything changing the
status quo, has therefore become the spark for settling scores among
stakeholders.
The current difficult financial climate makes it more challenging to
invest in new infrastructures and ways of working. Hence, one of the
challenges in most countries is to leverage resources available from
different sources (European, national, international), and/or ensure
strong synergy between the investment required by INSPIRE and those
committed in related projects, for example in the framework of
e-government.
Underpinning this organisational challenge, there are the key issue of
awareness, education and training. Although the Joint Research
Commission of the European Commission has involved thousands of people
in the development of INSPIRE, and most national-level organisations in
the Member States are aware of this initiative, few people belonging to
these organisations are actively participating, and the level of
awareness of INSPIRE and its future impacts may be lost to other parts
of the same organisation. Moreover, many public sector administrations
at the sub-national level still have limited or no knowledge of INSPIRE.
Last but not the least, the complexity of the technical documentation
being produced at the present time is posing to be a limiting factor as
very few people can understand or use, requiring education and training.
However, there is not enough staff, nor training material designed and
translated across Europe so that everybody implements exactly the same
specs.
Technical: The main challenge here is to develop and
maintain an infrastructure that works, and that delivers added value. As
indicated earlier, the suite of international standards and
specifications available is sometimes not mature enough to deliver, or
subject to different interpretations, changes, and inconsistencies.
INSPIRE took the view that it was not feasible for it to include all the
detailed specifications down to rules for encoding into a legal act, as
any change in standards, technologies, or good practice would then
require lengthy procedures to amend the legislation. As a result, the
INSPIRE Implementing Rules are short and only say what functionalities
are required, leaving the detailed implementation to non-binding
Guidelines documents. This of course has its drawbacks as one cannot
guarantee that everyone will use the Guidelines and that
interoperability will be achieved immediately.
A second challenge is to facilitate the transition from an SDI
perspective that only addresses relatively few technical experts towards
a spatial information infrastructure, which is a service providing
information products and analyses that are of wider use to non-experts.
This requires turning many of the functionalities and analytical
processes encoded in GIS software and usable by few trained geospatial
professionals, into geo-processing services that can operate in
established workflows over the datasets available on the Web, and
provide an answer to questions posed by the many who are not experts.
The research issues include eliciting and formalising processes and
models, turning them into geo-processes which can be understood and used
across disciplines (which includes explanation of the theoretical
underpinning of models so that they can be used appropriately), ways of
selecting the appropriate service to go with the appropriate data to
contribute to addressing a question in ways that are methodologically
robust.
Towards a next-generation digital earth
The Vespucci Initiative (www.vespucci.org) brought together in 2008 a
number of environmental and geographic information scientists to
consider the changes that have taken place since the 1998 digital earth
speech by US Vice President Al Gore. The meeting was an opportunity to
consider the major technological developments that have made it possible
to bring the experience of digital earth to hundreds of millions of
people. It also reviewed many public sector-led initiatives aimed at
organising geographic information (e.g. INSPIRE, GEOSS), and private
sector developments aimed at organising the world information
geographically (e.g. Google Earth and Virtual Earth), which have made it
possible for citizens to contribute and share geographic information
easily and interact with each other in what is labelled as Web 2.0.
On this basis, the expert meeting articulated a revised vision of
digital earth that recognises the need to integrate scientific, public
and private sector data to help understand the complex interactions
between natural, man-made, and social environments, over time and across
space. To support this vision, the meeting identified key research
topics to focus on, including improved methods for the spatial-temporal
modelling of heterogeneous and dynamic data (citizen-provided, sensors,
official); the visualisation of abstract concepts in space (e.g. risk,
vulnerability, perceived quality of life); and ways to assess and model
reliability and trust in information coming from many different sources.
Since then, the International Society for Digital Earth has mobilised
the broader community of science to articulate further the vision for
Digital Earth for 2020, publishing the outcomes in 2013.
One could argue that with all the work still underway to develop and
implement INSPIRE, it is not the time to look for new organisational and
technical challenges and research topics. Yet, it is important never to
lose sight of the reasons for building these infrastructures, and
investing significant public resources to do so. They are not an end in
itself but a means to improve Europe’s understanding and stewardship of
the environment, and develop knowledge-based society. Without a clear
view of where one wants to go and what is needed to get there, one will
not be able to guide the process effectively, and address the grand
challenges of today and tomorrow.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are of the author’s
alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Joint Research
Centre or of the European Commission
source: http://geospatialworld.net
| The European Commission’s Directorate-General Environment is
inviting comments on the implementation of the Infrastructure for
Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) Directive
(2007/2/EC). Views are sought from stakeholders including INSPIRE
national contact points, regional and local public authorities who
produce or use spatial data and services, the academic sector, the
private sector and European citizens. Stakeholders can submit their
views till Feb 24, 2014. The views are sought to assess whether the
actions underway to establish an Infrastructure for Spatial Information
in the European Community according to the INSPIRE directive are on
course to meet the objectives pursued. http://goo.gl/LkJ6Xm |
|
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