INSPIRE

INSPIRE is a European based approach at solving interoperability issues for gespatial data. Join the INSPIRE Mailing list.

Introduction (from http://eu-geoportal.jrc.it/)

INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) is an initiative launched by the European Commission and developed in collaboration with Member States and accession countries. It aims at making available relevant, harmonized and quality geographic information to support formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Community policies with a territorial dimension or impact. INSPIRE intends to trigger the creation of a European spatial data infrastructure that delivers to the users integrated spatial information services linked by common standards and protocols.

The INSPIRE Geo-Portal is Europe's Internet access point for Spatial Data and Services. From there, you can search for spatial data, services, and organisations.

The INSPIRE Components

There are five major components:

• Metadata
• View Services. Digital maps served through WMS 1.3 / ISO 19128)
• Download Services. Digital data served through WFS 2.0 / ISO 19142) -> see this discussion The larger issue here is the harmonization of data. This currently requires lots of transformations with GML 3.2.1 (and not enough software package supporting 3.2.1)
• Networking Servcies. Performance, uptime, bindings, etc. & still under work.
• Reporting and Monitoring. This is more domain specfic to EU public administrations. Not clear yet whether any software will be involved in this. But the monitoring services will be of help to control things.

OSGeo's involvement

There is no coordinated effort at involving OSGeo as an organization in the INSPIRE initiative but many OSGeo projects are already tied into processes and the emerging INSPIRE architecture. A formal meeting of OSGeo representatives with people (from JRC) involved in INSPIRE was planned for the end of 2008 but never happened. In 2010 JRC and OSGeo joined forces to make an Open Source Mash-up at the INSPIRE conference possible.

FIT/GAP analysis

How good does Open Source GIS software fit into the INSPIRE picture? Can it be used as a software stack to build INSPIRE SDI's? It would be interesting to make a fit/gap analysis between what the INSPIRE standards require and what the OSGeo stack provides. Also, a plan could be made up to fill in the gaps (in time). The reasoning behind this is that the regular customers will not be able to make this analysis by themselves, so it would be good to have something written up. Of course this is an ongoing effort as not many of the standards are final as yet, and most are still in draft.

Who is interested in collaborating in such a fit/gap analysis?

• Bart van den Eijnden
• Dirk Frigne
• Jo Walsh
• Arnulf Christl
• Rafal Wawer
• Thomas Piechl
• Wolfgang Tinkl
• Just van den Broecke
• Jeroen Ticheler

What is already available?

• Viewing services (MapServer, deegree, MapGuide, Mapbender, OpenLayers, others)
• Meta data services (GeoNetwork, Mapbender, deegree, others)
• Download services (deegree, GeoServer, MapServer, others)
• Transformation services (usually as part of the functionality provided by above software, Proj4, MetaCRS, others)
• INSPIRE Publish/Download/View services demo using deegree, GeoExt and OpenStreetMap; source code at http://code.google.com/p/inspire-foss

What is still missing?

• Comprehensive tutorial / how to / white paper on security of SDIs

What is in progress?

• Meta data editor by JRC: http://www.inspire-geoportal.eu/index.cfm/pageid/342
• NAS data converter for the German cadastral base map
• transformation and WFS/WMS for INSPIRE by the Dutch Cadastre: http://inspire.kademo.nl ; source code and documentation at http://code.google.com/p/inspire-foss
• http://tinyows.org/ and access to GML 3.2.1 through PostGIS (V 1.5)
• ESDIN; The Europen SDI Network, an eContent+ funded project of major European NMCAs
  • OpenLayers learned about GML 3.2.1 (contact Steven Ottens for more information)
  • lots of GeoServer and deegree instances serving WFS as INSPIRE Download Services
  • lots of MapServers serving WMS form the same data as INSPIRE View Services

Presentations

• AGIT 2009 (Germlish) Workshop: [INSPIRE: Umsetzung mit Open Source Software] (version 0.2)
• FOSSGIS 2009 (German) INSPIRE: Umsetzung mit Open Source Software (version 0.1)
• INSPIRE Status Report in Germany given by Andreas von Dömming at GSDI
• Implementing INSPIRE with Free and Open Source for Geo given by Just_van_den_Broecke at Bolsena_Code_Sprint_2010

Use Cases

• German Pollutant Release and Transfer Register Web application and OSGeo SDI for public use with OpenStreetMap data.
• Dutch National Geo Register INSPIRE-compliant metadata server implemented with GeoNetwork
• The Swiss Geographic Catalogue INSPIRE-compliant metadata server implemented with GeoNetwork

See also

• FOSS SDIC
• Geospatial Integration Showcase. This showcase aims to be an easily deployable testbed of inter-operable software and should provide a good basis for testing an INSPIRE stack. This showcase is initially targeting FOSS4G in October 2009.

Blogosphere

• 1st INSPIRE Open Source Mash-Up
• The European Union, Open Source and INSPIRE

OSGeo INSPIRE Initiatives

• http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/INSPIRE_data_experiments and inspire-data at lists.osgeo.org mailinglist