towards a european spatial data infrastructure

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


Outline

• Background• Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe• Technical aspects• RTD challenges• Summary


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 …


• 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


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...


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.


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.


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


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


~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


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

.........


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


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


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


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


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


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


Use of ETRS89 in a cross borderapplication


Soil database now accessiblevia EU-GeoPortal


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


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.


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)


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


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:INSPIRE:http://inspire.jrc.ithttp://inspire.jrc.it

GMES:GMES:http://http://www.gmes.infowww.gmes.info

towards a european spatial data infrastructure

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