ESDIN INSPIREs geospatial community by laying foundations for a European Location Framework

Project delivers quality-led tools for data harmonisation, generalisation, edge-matching and access control

ESDIN INSPIREs geospatial community by laying foundations for a European Location Framework

National geographical datasets can be harmonised to meet INSPIRE obligations whilst also addressing issues such as generalisation, quality evaluation, edge-matching and access control, the European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (ESDIN) has concluded.

The work, by a consortium of National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies, academic institutions, technology providers, stakeholders and users of location data, lays the foundations for a European Location Framework. This will enable cross-border information to be geographically-referenced and allow citizens, businesses and governments to gain maximum benefit from the reuse of existing national datasets.

“Setting up an infrastructure with a significant number of distributed datasets, network services and data processing tools, all under different responsibilities and with complex specifications, is a challenging task,” says Antti Jakobsson, EuroGeographics’ Programme Manager with responsibility for delivering ESDIN.

“The diverse expertise of the consortium has enabled us to successfully deliver rich INSPIRE-compliant data models into the service environment using information that can be automatically edge-matched and potentially generalised to support harmonisation and reuse. This automated, consistent approach to quality evaluation for all spatial data infrastructure (SDI) processes will provide cost savings and improved efficiencies for data providers; indeed we believe there is no other quality evaluation methodology that is as comprehensive and cost effective.

“Our recommendations and best practice guidelines are scale and theme independent and, although we focus on aggregation and the update of data for INSPIRE Themes in Annex I, they will be applicable to other themes. The experience gained during the ESDIN project will be a helpful asset for building and improving the architecture of the European Location Framework.”

Key results

·       Proposals for a technical architecture for harmonising pan-European geospatial data and flexible licensing and access solutions for data and services

·       Quality-led processes and tools for harmonisation and best practice to achieve INSPIRE compliance

·       Best practice guidelines for data specifications, quality evaluation, generalisation, edge-matching, transformation, metadata, licensing, data management and access control

·       Development of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)/Shibboleth prototypes for SDI access control enabling contributors to know who is attempting to use data access services.  To take this work forward in a European Location Framework, attention needs to turn towards the political context and issues relating to legal and organisational interoperability.

Key findings

·       A thematic expert does not want to be an expert in geographic information (GI)

·       The GI industry lacks a comprehensive method to find and use existing data

·       Quality in the data provision process leads to trust in the users’ own resultant service and data

·       Names (and addresses) are at the root of most geographical searches so the Geographical Names (GN) theme of INSPIRE is the cornerstone of any proposed European Location Framework

·       For sustainable edge-matching maintenance, agreed boundary representations are needed. EuroGeographics’ State Boundaries of Europe project is creating a EuroXBoundary dataset as the basis for the edge-matching service proposed by ESDIN.

·       Building services and harmonising data has limitations: users need to know how data can be acquired as quickly and efficiently as possible using available metadata and services.

·       It is desirable to have a harmonised policy for data providers, however it is not likely that National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies can harmonise their policy on all aspects.

Research into user requirements underpinned the ESDIN project. It showed that users of location reference data would like:

·       Consistent geospatial reference data and identifiers for a much stronger framework for analysis

·       Clear updates and indicators of validity, such as the data origin, to aid integration with user datasets

·       Trustworthy, quality-assured data to eliminate the need for verification at the user end

·       Data from consistent processes to ease the integration process with users’ own datasets

·       An "open" policy for data.

Following the close of ESDIN, the project partners have agreed to maintain all services, which provide access to 50 datasets conforming to INSPIRE/European Location Framework, for specific test areas for a period of six months. All software created will become available under Berkeley Software Development (BSD) licence, making it open in the most permissive way.

Antti Jakobsson concludes: “Feedback from our pricing and licensing workshops, and the user insight work, demonstrated that on-going efforts to advance best practice in harmonising, accessing and processing geographic information are needed and will be well appreciated. It is now up to individual National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies, EuroGeographics and other stakeholders to progress and fund the creation of data and services to these specifications and therefore align the European Location Framework with INSPIRE.”

Comments from members of the ESDIN Consortium

Steven Fruijtier, Research Director, from GEODAN, The Netherlands commented: “Probably the most valuable thing we got out of ESDIN is being part of a diverse European community of professionals that are all working towards having a ESDI that really works. In this process, continuous communication and cooperation between all stakeholders, and a shared sense of the right way ahead, is of the utmost importance. We intend to keep on playing a role in this worthy effort.”

Chris Higgins, Work Group Leader, from EDINA, the national data centre based at the University of Edinburgh said: “It’s a good example of the kind of optimal, mutually-beneficial relationship that can result where public sector requirements are fed into the academic sector.  At the end of ESDIN, the academic sector has made a contribution assisting the NMCA’s in rolling out INSPIRE, and we have also succeeded in getting INSPIRE conformant data out to students.  But probably more importantly, we have an academic sector best practice network in place to continue working with our ESDIN partners to deliver continued mutual benefit.”

Jaana Mäkelä, Researcher, from the Research Group of Geoinformatics at Aalto University believes that: “The most remarkable thing from our point of view is that with ESDIN project, EuroGeographics has managed to create a network of European centres, both in academia and in practice, interested and active on geographic information quality issues. Meeting colleagues and sharing experiences during several ESDIN meetings and workshops has been a most inspiring experience and led to novel ideas in research topics on the future.”

Lassi Lehto, Senior Research Scientist, from the Finnish Geodetic Institute (FGI) said: “In the ESDIN project FGI has learnt many practical lessons on the implementation of INSPIRE services. The understanding and experience gained during the project helps the FGI greatly in its future tasks related to the development of INSPIRE services in Finland. Many of the challenges encountered during the project also provide useful input for the planning of the Institute’s research activities in the area of geospatial web services and interoperability.”

Matt Beare, Principal Consultant, 1Spatial, concluded that: “Working with the ESDIN partners, exchanging knowledge and developing ideas and solutions together, has been a most rewarding experience for 1Spatial, and we look forward to continuing our work with them in the future.”

Lysandros Tsoulos, Professor, from the National Technical University of Athens Cartography Laboratory said: “The most important contribution of ESDIN has been that it brought together the European NMCAs towards the implementation of INSPIRE. We are convinced that without ESDIN the situation would be completely different and we would not be in a position to speak about deadlines and optimization in INSPIRE implementation.”

Ko van Raamsdonk, Advisor, from KADASTER, The Netherlandsexplained why they became involved in ESDIN: “The border regions of the Netherlands with Germany and Belgium are united in large extensive and dynamic communities. Social-economic, infrastructural and spatial planning issues of the separate regions need an integral cross-border approach. Kadaster contributed to ESDIN with a prototype of the INSPIRE delivery process for the Annex I themes cadastral parcels, administrative units, addresses, geographical names, hydrography and transport networks. This prototype is implemented in a test area situated around the municipality of Losser. For this area the ExM model for large applications was tested. Via http://inspire.kademo.nl users can view the translated INSPIRE data themes and download technical documentation of the INSPIRE prototype.”

Gabriela Dragan, from National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (ANCPI), Romania added: “The project had a great impact as it revealed important values containing relevant information, and created the opportunity to connect to the current requirements of modern societies with regard to the use of spatial information. Now we can better appreciate the benefits of bringing together the European NMCAs towards the implementation of an important European Directive; working together we overcame the difficulties, faced the challenges and acknowledged the opportunities offered by the spatially enabled society.” 

Interactive Instruments joined the ESDIN consortium as it brings several of its focus areas together. Clemens Portele, Managing Directorsaid: “The main focus of our activities in ESDIN was the development and use of test components to test INSPIRE/ESDIN network services and datasets. Due to the expertise available within the project and the high commitment of the contributors, we believe that a very valuable set of test tools has been developed, valuable not only for the assessing the ESDIN implementations but also for testing INSPIRE data and services in general. The feedback that we have received within the project has been very encouraging. Based on these experiences, the test components will be useful in the future for our own projects, but should also be useful for stakeholders in INSPIRE in general. We have started discussions with other stakeholders how to continue to improve and maintain the ESDIN test framework in the future.”

Tamas Palya, from the Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (FÖMI), Hungary added: “It has been a very useful experience for us referring to data processing and transformation. We will use this knowledge on the national level for the creation of data specifications, for the web-based data services, for the license policy, for the data quality management, for the data maintenance according to the implementation of INSPIRE directive. The project had a great impact on the harmonisation of the spatial data between different areas.”

-ends-

For further information please contact Antti Jakobsson, EuroGeographics’ Programme Manager tel +38505994123, emailantti.jackobsson@eurogeographics.org or Patricia  Sokacova, EuroGeographics‘ Marketing and Communication Manager tel: +421 903 056 418/+421 948 388 908, emailpatricia.sokacova@eurogeographics.org

Notes to Editors

A copy of the summary ESDIN report is attached.

EuroGeographics is the membership association for the European national mapping, land registry and cadastral agencies. It brings together 56 members from 44 countries, from Portugal to the Ukraine and Iceland to Turkey. EuroGeographics’ members invest around €1.5 billion in the development of geographical information each year and use cutting-edge technology to create, manage, maintain and make available authoritative national databases.

EuroGeographics members are developing an infrastructure to integrate their national data – including topographic and land information – to deliver the definitive pan-European location framework for a wide range of uses. By sharing best practice and creating standard data specifications and policies, EuroGeographics aims to ensure that members’ individual geographical databases are compatible and can interact with one another. This will provide Europe with the high quality geographical information it needs to develop policies and legislation for the environment, business competitiveness, public services, legal systems, security and more.

The Association moved its head office from Paris to Brussels in May 2010 enabling it to continue to provide objective and constructive support to the European Commission, Parliament and institutions of Europe more quickly, efficiently and effectively.

To find out more about EuroGeographics, please visitwww.eurogeographics.org

To see our Members’ geographical information in action, please visit our showcase at www.youtube.com/eurogeographics

About the European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (ESDIN)

ESDIN was a collaboration between mapping and cadastral agencies, academic institutions and technology providers to help prepare data for the INSPIRE Directive. Its results will benefit a wide range of people including data users and suppliers, systems integrators, software vendors, consultants, academics, those working in standard development and implementation and those involved in establishing spatial data infrastructures.

ESDIN was co-ordinated by EuroGeographics and supported by funding from the European Commission. The project started in September 2008 and ended in February 2011. More information is available at: www.esdin.eu