Portugal and Spain Twin SDI

8/8/2019 Portugal and Spain Twin SDI

1/10

GSDI 11 Conference 1

Portugal and Spain twin SDIs From national projects to an Iberian SDI

Rui Pedro Julio1, Sebastian Mas Mayoral2, Antonio Rodriguez Pascual3, DaniloFurtado4

1Instituto Geogrfico Portugus (IGP), [email protected] 2Instituto Geogrfico Nacional (IGN), [email protected] 3Instituto Geogrfico Nacional (IGN), [email protected]

4Instituto Geogrfico Portugus (IGP), [email protected]

AbstractPortugal was one of the pioneer countries on SDI conceptual and operationaldevelopments and Spain is at present one of the most active countries on this type ofprojects.Both countries are very actively involved in developing their own National SDI,focusing, like every nation, on meeting INSPIRE requirements and national needs.However, there is a common vision assumed by IGN and IGP, that a SDI cannot bedeveloped considering only the European and national needs. There is a naturalobligation to work together with the neighboring countries, shaping policies,coordinating activities and implementing tools jointly.According to the principles mentioned above, and based on several actions, in thispaper it will be described how Portugal and Spain are moving from two successfulSDIs to a new concept of fully integrated Iberian SDI.

Keywords: IDEE, SNIG, guidelines

1. BACKGROUND

1.1 Portuguese National SDI

SNIG is the Portuguese Spatial Data Infrastructure, launched on the Internet inMay 1995, which enables users to identify, visualise and explore GeographicInformation accessible by a geoportal (http://snig.igeo.pt). It is also an area of contactthat allows articulate and organizes activities related to this subject in Portugal and inthe European directive INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe).

The Portuguese geoportal has the following implemented components:- Catalogue- Viewer- Applications- Geocommunity

Through these four main components of SNIG, the user has public and freeaccess data, applications and services about Portuguese spatial data.

Our metadata catalogue has more those 10 000 records about data, dataservices and applications. These records are increasing every day, mainly due to thecreation of a specific tool (ISO and OGC compliant) to support metadata productioncalled MIG Editor. The MIG Editor is a geographical metadata editor that implementsa subset of the 19115, 19119 and 19139 ISO formats, based in the PortugueseMetadata Profile and INSPIRE requirements. The new version of MIG editor wasentirely developed using Java 6 technology, relying on the Swing toolkit forpresentation components. This made multiple operating system integration possible,
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


2/10

GSDI 11 Conference2

so each user can edit their metadata in virtually any java virtual machineimplementation such as Windows, Linux or even Mac OS X!

The Catalogue interface enables users to create a set of multi-options queries. Itis possible to select based on free text, keywords, temporal and spatial frames, andalso geographic names using a detailed gazetteer.

The Map Viewer provided data visualization for all SNIG data services and alsoother providers, as long as they support OGC standards like Web Map Service(WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS). SNIG iscurrently delivering several OGC Web Services (WMS and WFS), most of themprovided by IGP, like CAOP (Official Administrative Boundaries Map), CRIF (FireRisk Assessment Map), Atlas (a set of maps produced for the Atlas of Portugal),MDT50m (Digital Elevation Model with 50 meters pixel), RGN (Portuguese GeodeticNetwork) and SC500k (National Cartographic Series at 1:500 000).

Figure 1: SNIG geoportal


3/10


In Applications area users can search the catalogue applications that providenational thematic interactive maps, geoprocessing tools or free software (such asMIG Editor or m@pas on-line service).

The Geocommunity space is the meeting point for users and knowledgeexchange, namely at Forum SNIG, as well as the entrance for some specific thematicnetworks, like RISE (Risk Network) or RGN (Geodetic Network) and SNIG Education.

Training in Metadata Editor (MIG) and OGC web services is one of the priorityareas to support all public organisations that wish to create metadata or implementOGC Web Services.1.2 Spanish National SDI

On the other hand, the geoportal of the Spanish National SDI(www.idee.es) wasopened in July 2004, to provide a basis for spatial data discovery, evaluation, andanalysis oriented to all kind of users and providers, taking into account the threelevels of Spanish government (national, regional and local), the private sector,

academia and citizens in general.Nowadays, a set of nine different services following OGC specifications, ISO

standards and INSPIRE principles has been implemented in the national node:WMS, CSW, Gaz, WFS, WCS, WMC, SLD, WCTS and WPS. The IDEE viewerallows to access to more than 450 Web Map Services and 6 000 layers. Through thenational Geoportal is possible to access other Spanish SDI geoportals, to consultdocumentation about the project, and a new approach is being implemented to offerclient applications to access to the whole set of available services in all the nodesintegrated in Spanish NSDI.

From the organizational point of view, the National Geographic High Council(NGHC), and advisory body with representatives of all has defined in 2004 theWorking Group for the IDEE (WG IDEE), open to all actors involved from publicsector, private sector and Universities. It has more than 300 individual members andmore than 100 organizations, holds three meetings per year and one annual SDIWorkshop. Its main objectives are: to share experience and knowledge in the area ofSDIs; to define technical recommendations based on consensus.
http://www.idee.es/http://www.idee.es/http://www.idee.es/http://www.idee.es/


4/10

GSDI 11 Conference4

Figure 2: IDEE Geoportal

The legal framework defined by INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/CE is complementedby R.D. 1545/2007, defining a new composition and role for the NGHC. There aredifferent initiatives to legislate on SDIs at Regional level; three Regions (Catalua,Andaluca and Castilla y Len) have approved their specific laws establishingRegional SDIs. To complete the framework, the text of the Spanish law transposingINSPIRE Directive is finished from the technical point of view, it has been agreed inWG IDEE and it is expected to be approved during 2009.

2. TOWARDS AN IBERIC SDI

There is a common vision assumed by IGN and IGP, that a SDI cannot bedeveloped considering only the European and national needs. There is a naturalobligation to work together with the neighbouring countries, shaping policies,coordinating activities and implementing tools jointly.

An SDI has always a global character and international aspects need to beconsidered.

If an SDI can be considered as a set of interoperable and standardized geospatialresources supported by an organized community of actors, opened via Internet to aglobal arena, it is clear that an SDI cannot be restricted to a single and isolatedcountry.

The natural tendency of such type of infrastructures is to overflow nationalboundaries to constitute a sort of virtual international SDI integrated by the set ofavailable resources implemented in several countries.


5/10


We think horizontal collaboration and harmonization among SDIs in Europe isvery important to contribute to the strength and cohesion of the European SDIdefined by INSPIRE, to spread good practices, to create links between the differentcommunities of national stakeholders, and to enhance interoperability amongdifferent projects.

In this sense, the experience of collaboration between National SDI of Spain andPortugal is that it is possible to have a relevant level of mutual integration based onlyin a good spirit of collaboration, a background of technical cooperation of the twobodies responsible for the coordination of NSDI in both countries, IGN and IGP, anopen mind to think not only in domestic requirements and a very few informalagreements to work in coordination.

One of the benefits of this kind of collaborative approach is that it gives theopportunity of testing technical and organizational solutions in different contexts.

As a result of this common vision both NSDI, SNIG and IDEE, have beencollaborating from 2007 progressing in the direction of having a virtual Iberian SDI,based on the interoperability of the Spanish and Portuguese initiatives.

3. INTEROPERABILITY ACTIONS

Interoperability is defined as the ability of a system to provide information sharingand inter-application co-operative process control (EN ISO 19101:2003 ReferenceModel), or in other words, the possibility for spatial data sets to be combined, and forservices to interact, without repetitive manual intervention (Directive 2007/2/EC).

In order to describe and plan the interoperability of SNIG and IDEE it would beconvenient to take into account some of the available interoperability models definingsome levels as independent and different categories of aspects and factorsdetermining interoperability.

The levels of interoperability considered in the Metadata Based InteroperabilityModel (MBIM) (M. A. Manso and others, 2007), which has been defined as asynthesis of the main and more known models of interoperability, are:

I) Technical Interoperability (TI), taking into account the interchange of data andmessages by mean of protocols at the lowest level, at level of bits.

II) Syntactic Interoperability (SNI), dealing with the available standardized formatto interchange data and messages (XML, JPEG, PNG, GIF,).

III) Semantic Interoperability (SMI), allows the interchange of information usingcommon and standardised vocabularies, terms and definitions to have a commonunderstanding of the data and messages interchanged.

IV) Pragmatic Interoperability (PI), making possible that systems can exploit anduse other system services (services metadata and specifications).

V) Dynamic Interoperability (DI), focused on the ability of systems to react toerrors and miscommunication in a dynamic way.

VI) Conceptual Interoperability (CI), covering all the aspects needed to know andreproduce the functionality of system, normally based on engineering standarddescriptions (UML schemas, CASE tools, DescribeFeatureType operation).


6/10

GSDI 11 Conference6

VII) Organizational Interoperability (OI), considering the business objectives,business model, data and services policy, legal framework, organizational structureand others aspects related.

Technical Interoperability is covered by W3C standards and protocols; Syntactic,Semantic and Conceptual Interoperability are considered by ISO 19100 standardsand INSPIRE Implementing Rules, but there is some room for transborderharmonization and coordination in some practical aspects; Dynamic Interoperabilityaspects are faced in practical implementations and is included as a key-issue inchoreography and orchestration of services (WS-BPEL, RestFUL and othersolutions).

Pragmatic and Organizational Interoperability are the two main levels wheresome significant progress can be made as far as they are not directly addressed byINSPIRE Implementing Rules because they includes a lot of practical issues thatneed to be managed by ad hoc specific actions.

Splitting the mentioned levels, a set of practical and concrete sublevels can bedescribed when dealing with interoperability between two NSDIs, followed by a shortdescription of the interoperability actions executed or planned:

0) Collaboration, covering all aspects related to the sharing of experiences,knowledge and good practices between both communities of technicians anddecision-makers, at technical level as well as organizational level.

- In this sense, there is an excellent collaborative atmosphere and there havebeen a lot of contacts and actions of consultancy and interchange of information. Avery active cross participation has been taken place at several national workshop,seminars and events in Spain and Portugal.

- A representation of Portuguese SDI has been integrated into the WG for theSpanish SDI (WG IDEE) and this WG is opened to all Portuguese actors.- We have celebrated a WG IDEE meeting in Lisbon (February 2009) combinedwith an SDINet + Workshop to share experiences and good lessons learnt inimplementing SDIs in both countries.

- The Spanish national annual event in this field, the Spanish IDE Workshop(JIDEE for Jornadas de la Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de Espaa) has beenredefined as an Iberian Workshop on SDIs (JIIDE for Jornadas Ibricas deInfraestructuras de Datos Espaciales) and it is going to be held two years in Spainand the third year in Portugal.

1) Interoperability of national geoportals, including all actions and adaptations inthe contents of the geoportals static web pages, done in order to allow and easiertheir usage by users from the other country.

- There is a version of each geoportal in the other country language, and all thecontents has been translated and checked in collaboration with the other part.

- Crossed links has been included in the two geoportals for the services,resources, geoportals and projects of the other part.

- A banner has been included in both cases to have a more direct and visible linkto the other geoportal.

In future, news and events are going to be interchanged via RSS.

2) Transborder SDI projects:

2.1) OTALEX(www.otalex.eu), the Territorial Observatory of ALenteixo (Portugal)and Extremadura (Spain), defined as a transnational, multilingual SDI based on thecollaboraton of ten public bodies from Spain and Portugal.
http://www.otalex.eu/http://www.otalex.eu/http://www.otalex.eu/http://www.otalex.eu/


7/10


Figure 3: OTALEX Geoportal

2.2) SIGN II(www.proyectosign.org), an SDI project involving seven partnersand covering the are of 56 municipalities from Galiza and the Norhern part ofPortugal.
http://www.proyectosign.org/http://www.proyectosign.org/http://www.proyectosign.org/http://www.proyectosign.org/


8/10

GSDI 11 Conference8

Figure 4: SIGN II Geoportal

2.3) Terra Douro (www.sitcyl.jcyl.es/sitcyl/infodloc.sit), a transborder territorialobservatory for the definition and evaluation of policies of sustainable developement,defined as an SDI project, involving seven partners and covering the area of 4 NUTS

III, Salamanca and Zamora in Spain, and Alto Trs-Os-Montes and Douro inPortugal.

The three projects have been developed under the umbrella of INTERREG III Aprogram.

3) Client applications interoperability, allows the exploitation of services of a NSDIfor the users community of the other part in combination of their own resources.

- Translation of the client applications running in both sites, devoting specialattention in first place to WMS, CSW and Gaz clients.

- Configuration of the WMS client (viewer) to have a non-limited extent to coverboth countries and to have the WMS of the other part included by default as availablecartography.- We plan during 2009 and 2010 to experiment and check the two available freesoftware clients for multiple Catalogue and Gazetteer services. The first one, namedCatalogue Connector, has been developed by IDEC technical team, leaded by VictorPascual. It is able to make the same standard petition to a set of previouslyregistered Catalogue services, independently of the standard they are using. Thesecond one is being developed by Zaragoza University and it is an application able toquery at the same time several gazetteer services conformant to WFS-MNE, WFS-Gand others.

Figure 5: Portuguese and Spanish WMS in snig viewer


9/10


4) Transborder Services implementation, specially: Web CoordinateTransformation Services transforming coordinates among the official SpatialReference Systems and the most commonly ones used in Spain and Portugal; andtransborder Web Map Services made of national WMS by integration of the servicesin one unique service..

5) Data harmonization further than INSPIRE Implementing Rules conformance,specially geometric and semantic edge matching at large scales, Feature Cataloguesmapping and multilingual metadata implementation.

6) Metadata harmonization, including multilinguism, national metadata profilesharmonization, adoption of common criteria and guidelines to document resources.All this actions can be applied for data as well as services metadata.

7) Services harmonization, to offer two similar sets of services, including as far aspossible the same type of services at both sides of the border to be chained andused to create added-value services.

8) Business models interoperability, which is now sensibly solved as far as wethink that INSPIRE Directive spirit and SDI philosophy are compatible with most datapolicy. Nevertheless, there are some very interesting points to be solved: how to dealwith different data licenses and make them compatible for specific transborder usecases; the harmonization of measures related to DRM,

Figure 5: Portuguese and Spanish WMS in IDEE viewer

4. CONCLUSSIONS

Spanish and Portuguese NSDI has performed some actions to be actuallyinteroperable in the four first levels described, technical and organizational


10/10

GSDI 11 Conference10

collaboration, Geoportal interoperability, transborder projects and clientsinteroperability.

We have the intention of collaborate and get results in the other levels during nextyears.

All those actions and initiatives have been performed without signing a formalcollaboration agreement and without any specific budget assigned to them, but in anexcellent collaborative atmosphere of good spirit of cooperation and sharingexpertise.

Therefore, the result is a virtual Iberian SDI integrated by a set of integratedstandard services supported by a transnational community that share experiences,knowledge and information.

We think the Portuguese-Spanish environment can be considered a good testbedfor study how INSPIRE principles can be put in practice regarding NSDI pragmatic

and organizational interoperability, to test different solutions, identify problems andfind further interoperability requirements.

It is clear for us that a SDI must not be limited in any way to an isolated country,because it would imply a strong contradiction: to apply open system philosophy todigital resources, and not paying enough attention at the same time to the practicalbarriers precluding the effective exploitation of those services in an internationalarena.

We think that more attention need to be paid to NSDI interoperability becausehorizontal interoperability can be play the role of the glue that create cohesion andmakes possible the effective virtual Global SDI.

REFERENCES

Rodrguez, A., Mas, S., Abad, P., Alonso, J. A., and Snchez, (2008) IDEE:Towards a National IDEEv2.0 Offering GIS Functionality on the WebProceedings GSDI 2008,St. Augustine, Trinidad, February 25-29 2008.

JULIO, Rui Pedro (2008): Building a SDI for small countries the Portugueseexample, ESRI User Conference, ESRI, San Diego, U SA.

Portugal and Spain Twin SDI

Documents

Transcript of Portugal and Spain Twin SDI