IGARSS 04 –Anchorage – 20/09/2004
Towards a European Spatial Data Infrastructure
Paul Smits, Alessandro Annoni, Lars Bernard, Ioannis Kanellopoulos, Michel Millot, Steve Peedell
European CommissionDG Joint Research Centre
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
IGARSS 04 –Anchorage – 20/09/2004
Outline
• Background• Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe• Technical aspects• RTD challenges• Summary
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DG Joint Research Centre• 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
Commission Parliament Council …
DG AGRI DG INFSO …
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• 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, …
EU policies and Geographic Information
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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
• Lack of data
EU has islands of data of different standards and quality...
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INSPIREINfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe
Need for action !
Without a co-ordinatedframework as “minimum common denominator for all Member States” the problems will persist. INSPIRE initiative launched in September 2001.
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INSPIRE objectivesMake 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.
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INSPIRE Information Flow
HarmonisedData policy
Collaborativeagreements
CEN / ISO / OGCNational and Sub-
national SDI
Commercial & Professional Users
Citizens
Utility & PublicServices
NGOs and not-for-profit orgs
Government & Administrations
ResearchEuropean Data
National and Sub-national SDI
National and Sub-national SDI
Local data
Local data
European Data
Discovery Service
Technical Integration/harmonisation
Data resourcesINSPIRE specifications
Users
request for information services
delivery of information services
SDI – Spatial Data Infrastructure
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INSPIRE Outlook
• Oct 2002 : final position papers • May 2003 : Internet consultation• June 2003 : Extended impact assessment• March 2004 : Interservice consultation• July 2004 : Adoption of proposal by EC • 2006 : Adoption of INSPIRE (EP,Council)
• 2006 : Transposition phase
• 2008+ : Implementation of framework
Pre
-imp
lem
enta
tion
ph
ase
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~1985
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
~1995
Data-exchange-format era
GI-Interoperability-via-API era
GI-Service-Chain -on-demand era
OGC&ISO OGC&ISO
todaytoday1985 1995
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Background - GI-Services
• GI-Services are based on distributed computing platform architectures & protocols (CORBA/IDL, WEB/HTTP)
• Interoperability of GI-Services need standards
• 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 geoinformationNo need for specific systems nor for specific knowledge
GI-Services in a SDI
Client
WFS
Catalog
WCatS
WMS
.........
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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
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European Geo-Portal
GI Services
Various providers of Geographic Information
Gazetteer
Thesauri &Translation
WFS WMS WMS WCSWFS WCatSWCatSWMS
Cascading oraggregatingfurther services
Gaz
Geographic Information Interoperability !
• 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 – 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
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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
• 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
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Key-Players in the development of ESDI Technical Guidelines
- (t.b.d.)Education and outreach [n]
- (t.b.d.)Supporter of end-users [n]
- (t.b.d.)Supporter of service providers [n]
INSPIRE Technical / Scientific Service, OpenGIS, Eurogeographics,...
Conformance tester [n]
Projects, Public administrations, citizens ESDI - User [n]
Service providers (see above)User of technical guidelines [n]
INSPIRE related Projects (ITT, IST FP6, ESA), EuroGeographics, European Soil Bureau, OpenGIS Consortium, National and regional initiatives, …
Developer and implementer [n]
CEN/TC287Standards developer [1]
- (t.b.d.)Technical Coordinator of GMES [1]
EC-DG JRCTechnical Coordinator of INSPIRE [1]
EC-DG Environment, Agriculture, TransportLegislation developer [n]
OrganizationsRole name
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Consensus processes on interoperabilityJRC’s role in GI standards development
ISO/TC211
CEN/TC287
JRC currently co-chair ofISO/TC211-OGC Joint
Advisory Group
JRC to host ISO/TC211In Pallanza, October 2004
JRC Convener of CEN/TC287
WG 1 Spatial Data Infrastructures
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Development of the Guidelines 1/2 Increasing 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
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Use of ETRS89 in a cross borderapplication
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Soil database now accessiblevia EU-GeoPortal
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Development of the Guidelines 2/2
Increasing 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 future4. Complex queries and analysis
(Service chaining, generalisation services, aggregation, …)– ORCHESTRA
5. Authorization & authentications– ORCHESTRA
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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.
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ESDI Technical Guidelines development Timescale
4/2004 ESDI Guidelines Structure and Implementation Plan
6/2004 INSPIRE Action Plan (pre- implementationphase) to be adopted by the Exp. Group
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
12/2007 Final Version (adopted by INSPIRE Committee)
INSPIRETask Force
for Action Plan Preparation
INSPIRESpatial Data
Interest Group
INSPIRE preparatory phase (2005-2006)
INSPIRE transition phase (2007-2008)
INSPIRE implementation phase (2009-2013)
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RTD challenges• Enhancement of monitoring technologies (including novel in-
situ 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 long-
term 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
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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
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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
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Thank you for your attention !
INSPIRE:INSPIRE:http://inspire.jrc.ithttp://inspire.jrc.it
GMES:GMES:http://http://www.gmes.infowww.gmes.info
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