2016 Topic Talk - become INSPIRE'd by OSGeo

Topic talk: become INSPIRE'd by OSGeo

• Robin Smith
• Dirk Frigne

Context:

The INSPIRE Directive is a major European policy helping public sector organisations to share geospatial data (about the environment but also other sectors) in coordinated and standardised ways as part of the creation of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure. INSPIRE is helping to focus collaboration efforts to create the infrastructure. Without software data cannot be shared online or consumed for use in a range of applications based on a range of tools and basic infrastructure components.

For the last four years, the ARE3NA project has been working with stakeholders to identify existing tools and building open source solutions that can help organisations implement and use INSPIRE. The project has recently set up a collaborative platform to help illustrate INSPIRE in practice. Following prototyping and testing, the coming months now focus on promotion and further engagement with different stakeholders who can now share and promote their examples through the platform. One key group are the software/solution providers who have tools that can help people implement INSPIRE or use its data and services. Similarly, the platform helps INSPIRE implementers to show how they are using tools in practice for a range of INSPIRE implementation tasks and for others to learn what steps can be taken to implement INSPIRE in practice. In addition, application developers can showcase their end-user web applications and mobile apps based on Spatial Data Infrastructures, with a special focus on those emerging applications being built on INSPIRE.

Today, already a lot of OSGeo software is used in an INSPIRE context. During the session we want to investigate how we can strengthen the relationship even more by identifying how OSGeo solutions can be improved to make life easier for those working on INSPIRE solutions and infrastructures.

The opportunity

The session is an opportunity to explore the current and future potential of this important resource in Europe, where ARE3NA will be launching a game to help solution providers, implementers and application developers easily provide content in a series of simple steps.

The session will also help to discuss how INSPIRE, as a whole, is an opportunity for the European FOSS community, bringing benefits and opportunities to government, business and research, as well as citizens.

Call to action:

As INSPIRE is a relevant example of a Spatial Data Infrastructure, embedding it in an open source context makes sense and could be an opportunity for the OSGeo community to embrace it fully.

Target audience:

We, therefore, would encourage all developers of different OSGeo projects who are both familiar or new to INSPIRE to join our discussion, as well as small business owners interested in providing services for the emerging INSPIRE market and those in research who would like to make use of official and harmonised data sources from across Europe.