INSPIRE

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe

INSPIRE Thematic Clusters Facilitators Report

Title / INSPIRE Thematic Clusters Facilitators Report
Creator / INSPIRE Thematic Clusters Facilitators
Date of last update / 2016-10-24
Subject / MS communities of INSPIRE implementers: burning issues, good practices and suggestions for improvement
Status / Report to the MIG-T face-to-face meeting on 25-26 October 2016
Publisher / JRC
Type / Text
Description / INSPIRE Thematic Clusters Facilitators Report
Format / MS Word (doc)
Source / INPSIRE Thematic clusters discussions, INSPIRE 2016 Conference
Rights / Reuse is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged. The reuse policy of the European Commission is implemented by aDecision of 12 December 2011.
Language / EN

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Table of contents

1Introduction

2Earth Science Cluster

3Facilities, Utilities and Public Services Cluster

4Topographic and Cadaster Reference data Cluster (TC6) & Elevation, Otrhoimagiry, RS and GRID Cluster (TC3).

5Environmental Monitoring and Observations ClusterBy Kathi Schleidt (Austria)

6Marine and Atmosphere Cluster

7Land Cover & Land Use Cluster

8Biodiversity Cluster

9Statistical and Human Health Cluster

1Introduction

This document represents a summary of the discussions, compiled by the individual TC facilitators, that took place during the INSPIRE 2016 Conference. It also reflects the discussions that are presented on the INSPIRE Thematic clusters collaboration platform.

The report is structured by each of the Thematic Cluster and follows mainly the agreed structure i.e. the most burning issues reported by the communities, good examples of implementation and finally suggestions for improvements.

2Earth Science Cluster

By Amelia Baptie(UK)

Burning issues

All sub-groups

  • The burning issues within the Earth Science cluster, which I have discussed with members this week, is the struggle to get people to engage and answer questions. People have admitted to me that they see questions that they want to answer, but they struggle to find the time to respond. I will keep pushing people on this. Just one of the things I have discovered this week is new people who can respond to questions. This is very useful as I have new people to chase.
  • Question of when changes will be implemented - particularly from Minerals

Soil

  • Question of the category 3 change (the multiplicity of soilDerivedObjectObservation)
  • There may be a request to change ParticleSizeFractionType.
  • There is still a struggleto interact with the JRC soil group and a lack or response when we try to interact with them. (Maybe we can discuss this further at some point)
  • Otherwise Einar Eberhardt (BGR, Germany) is arguing (following the harmonisation of the German soil map 1:200,000) that the model is complex but flexible, and shouldn't be simplified until it has been further used by other member states. I.e. we should wait for more examples before trying to simplify.

Good examples

For Natural Risk Zones theme a lot of work has been completed on the Life+Imagine project. The clusters were not used during this project, but there is a lot of experience (problems and solutions as presented during the conference) that can be shared with the rest of the groups. Action here to speak to Matt/Carlo/Manuela to try to get this information shared.

For Geology, there is an excellent example (as presented by Tim) of the work, facilitated on the Geology cluster, for EGDI where 28 Geological surveys worked together to created harmonised Geology services.

There is much work currently happening within the EPOS (EU project) to agree a way forward for harmonising and sharing various datasets across Europe. There is an action here to find a way to share this work on the clusters.

The German Federal Soil Map (1:200,000) is an excellent example that can be used by others implementing the soil data specifications.

We have discovered that work has been done using theGeophysics data specifications (for EGDI) and we need to share this on the Cluster

In addition, there is anhave an example of Natural Risk Zones mapping (from ICGC) that can go on the cluster. Again there is an action here to share this.

Suggestions for improvements

I wonder if a very general Q&A could be sent out to project managers (i.e. Carlo Cipolloni (ISPRA, Italy) for life+imagine), to ask them to fill in and add to the cluster as a way to share experience,

1) what is the project & who is the contact

2) what issues did you come across

3) what solutions did you implement

3Facilities, Utilities and Public Services Cluster

By Angel Lopez (Spain)

Burning Issues:

  • Utilities: Municipalities initiatives. Compliance with metadata and view services. Some technical questions resulting for implementation most of them already reported and in the process to be solved by MIG. AMny comment in reference to Digital waste registry applications and portals and also to potential use cases related with the waste management cycle.
  • Agricultural Facilities: No issues. Some examples of entities at Facility level. For marine human activities.
  • Industrial Facilities: Industrial Emissions Directive (IED). PRTR. Community is stuck waiting for official guidelines about what is going to happen in reference with reporting obligations. A workshop for implementation under the context of PRTR is going to be promoted within the community in order to present and discuss ways for implementation and links with INSPIRE Model entities in order to facilitate evolution to e-reporting.

Implementation examples:

  • E-WISE
  • GeoSmartCity
  • Eenviper
  • Different projects refer to entities related with the cluster. Metadata and View services are defined somehow as compliant or potentially compliant with inspire.

Suggestions for improvements:

  • Active involvement and coordination between main EU actors. Clear and harmonized messages must be sent to communities from EU as single body.
  • Involvement on the Thematic Platform must be encouraged to main stakeholders in order to enrich the content and comments in the platform.
  • Coordinated and EU funded pilots involving key actors should be promoted with a clear view of producing clear outputs for the communities (reports, guidelines, diagrams of matching entities.
  • INSPIRE Bureaucratic procedure for official solutions/answers must be simplified. This has been defined during the conference as adequate the “time to market” of potential users/data consumers (services purveyors, SMEs, …).
  • Encourage the harmonization when implementing by sharing/requesting info info through the platform.
  • Put in place actions to improve the confidence of users on the quality, reliability and maintenance of inspire data and services in order to them to trust on data sources and build added-value services on top with reliable medium-large business models.

4Topographic and Cadaster Reference data Cluster (TC6) & Elevation, Otrhoimagiry, RS and GRID Cluster (TC3).

By Anja Hopfstock (DE) and Jordi Escriu (Spain)

Joint report based on the informal meeting:

Participants

TC#3: Elevation, Orthoimagery, Coordinate reference systems and Geographical grids / TC#6: Topographic and Cadastral Reference Data
Jordi Escriu (Facilitator) / Anja Hopfstock (Facilitator)
Guillermo Villa Alcazar (IGN Spain) / Nathalie Delattre (IGN Belgium)
Julián Delgado (IGN Spain) / Florence Couvreur (IGN Belgium)
Peter Baumann (Jacobs University, Germany) / Dolors Barrot (ICGC Spain)
Pierre Jamagne (Belgium) / Dominique Laurent (IGN France)
Dolors Barrot (ICGC Spain)
Dominique Laurent (IGN France)

Meeting overview

Burning issues

  • Validation of data and services.
  • SLDs in the DS are not correct, implementation takes time as the SLD has to be corrected -> sharing INSPIRE SLDs in a repository provides opportunity to directly take them and avoid makings errors and their subsequent correction.
  • New TC#6-MIG-T liaison needed.

Implementation examples (see TC respective actions below)

Suggestions for improvement

  • Repository of examples (realistic basic GML)
  • To organize webinars and/or regional workshops on specific topics, preferably in native language. Cooperation with national SDI contact point/organization will be probably needed.
  • Organize face to face cluster activities on specific topics.
  • Tagging discussions for beginners/intermediate/experts, depending on the content level.
  • Implement a button “Ask your facilitator”, to get issues or questions that the members may be afraid to publish directly in the platform.

TC#6 Actions

-Anja to re-open discussion on view of common transport elements, Jordi to provide answer.

-Florence/Dominique to provide GML samples (e.g. road).

-Dolors to provide issues (URL not working, issue in BU).

TC#3 Actions

-Jordi to ask for the evolution of the implementation experiences that has been already identified in the platform (content pages).

-Julián is near to have WMS/WMTS IGN-Spain services implemented. Jordi to link them when ready, and make an overview of the whole experience in the platform when ready.

-Pierre is working in the implementation of bathymetry data in the Nordic Sea. Jordi to follow the evolution of his work and provide results in the platform.

-Jordi to publish ICGC INSPIRE EL & OI services in the platform, requesting for comments.

-Jordi to check contents from Research Data Alliance working group on Array Database Assessment (coverage data), in which Peter Baumann is participating. It may contain useful examples for INSPIRE implementation.

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5Environmental Monitoring and Observations ClusterBy Kathi Schleidt (Austria)

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6Marine and Atmosphere Cluster

By Keiran Millard (UK)

Burning Issues

-Simplification. Both the marine and atmospheric community cited a need for a simplified approach to Inspire compliance. However, at the same time they are looking forward to the benefits of rich data interoperability – but not sure how to realize this (implementation too daunting). I see two sides to this. One is the need for a ‘click by click’ approach to deliver Inspire services. A key area where this is needed is for EF / OF / MF point time series where a template implementation would be very helpful. The second is ensuring there is a fall-back approach for ‘lightweight publishing’; this may not yield all the benefits of ‘full interoperability’ but would fulfil the use case of ‘sensible plotting on a map’. I think this can be done using the existing data models.

-Scoping. Questions are still being asked about ‘what data do I need to publish?’ and in converse attempts to publish data that stretches and breaks what Inspire can do (Inspire cannot do everything!). A stronger and clearer message on ‘what is needed to be published’ would ensure better quality, coherent data being made available by Member States, i.e. a larger number of a few data types done well is far better for users than data diversity at this time. The re-focus on the ‘environmental reporting’ use case may facilitate this.

Good Examples

-EMODNet and Copernicus continue to be good examples of communities implementing data interoperability and looking at Inspire for this. At the Thursday plenary (Plenary 3) both EMODNet (Marine) and Eumetnet (Meteorology) acknowledged the Thematic Clusters as a valuable tool to support their implementation aims.

-It is useful to note that the Inspire technical specifications were built on the planned practices of the marine and atmospheric communities to adopt an O&M approach for their observation based data. Now this is in place via Inspire, the marine and atmosphere communities are looking to implement this approach.

Suggestions for Improvements

-Discovery metadata in English as well as national language. This request came from two established pan-European networks for marine and atmospheric data who already provide their discovery metadata in English. This allows ‘anyone’ in the network to browse catalogues and support access to data. Having discovery data in national language, especially less widely spoken languages, will limit the data re-use.

-Interoperability is still demonstrated (in presentations) as portrayal of symbolized features on a map and ‘click and display’ feature attributes. No examples were presented of using some of the richer aspects of the Inspire data models to do more, e.g. to provide reporting products in an automated way by combining features from 1..* Inspire data sets. This seems to be more of the use case for ‘environmental reporting’ so maybe this will change.

7Land Cover & Land Use Cluster

By Lena Hallin-Pihlatie (Finland)

Do you have some good concrete implementation examples that you think should be shared that is missing?

-Spain published services (Julian)

Julian will provide the links to the TC

-Matching tables for LCV available (CLC, UA)

Matching tables for ELU missing

Stephan will ask the German mapping agencies if they are willing to share their matching tables

-Missing: links to UNGGIM Core themes: LC and LU

  • global initiatives, spatial information
  • Nuria will help in providing the right links
  • 6th session (August)
  • Core reference datasets for Europe PLU + Area Management

Concrete good examples from the Conference sessions:

-Implementation is proceeding very nicely with Land Cover Vector

  • There are GML samples and ArcGIS for INSPIRE database template examples
  • examples to follow EAGLE INSPIRE project in 2015, eEnvplus project
  • CLC and Urban Atlas paving the way
  • Activities in Portugal, Austria – national datasets mapped to GML with HALE
  • First WFS services published by ELF and by EEA. EEA’s comparison of software and sharing of results support the data providers in their task.

-Open Land Use Map

  • re-use of national and European (such as Copernicus) datasets to fill the gap of full European coverage for the INSPIRE Existing Land Use theme (SDI4Apps)
  • priority of layers: cadaster, LPIS, Urban Atlas, Corine Land Cover, Spatial Plans, Other sources

-Collaboration and team spirit has been asked for. There are many examples of that:

  • cross-border Nordic INSPIRE Land Use Plan meeting

-The INSPIRE Planned Land Use data model has been used and incorporated

  • Amendment of the SOSI planned land use standard in Norway
  • Production database template for Regional Land Use plans in Finland in the spirit of the PLU model

-INSPIRE offers solutions for cross-border Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP)

  • HELCOM in the Baltic Sea is waiting for the INSPIRE datasets and services to build their infrastructure on (Use Case)

-Estonian Land Board has published a lot of INSPIRE WMS, WFS and Atom feeds with ArcGIS for INSPIRE

Burning issues regarding the implementation

-Referencing (units member of a dataset) seems to be the solution

  • we need more proof…
  • to convince FME, ArcGIS for INSPIRE to do possible required changes

-Find out if you can produce the referenced encoding (versus embedded) alternative with all software

  • usability issues
  • Sulevi has promised to provide an example of the LCV GML produced by ArcGIS for INSPIRE, even if its not open data

-” You’re not going to get what you want if you don’t ask for it” @Ulla et al.

  • top-down steering to define what datasets the Commission wants – a need to define the package which is the dataset
  • the more precise guidance the better!

-Network Services TG WFS Requirement 5.2

  • one endpoint per dataset and metadata (e.g. Natura, natura protected sites)
  • any other solutions to link a dataset to a metadata?

-Software restrictions which make obstacles and implementation and maintenance of services costly:

  • For example, GeoServer (App Schema) does not support the use of MultiFeatues (feature that consists both of lines and polygons)
  • You don’t seem to be able serve both Natura and Natura Protected Sites from the same GeoServer instance as they use the same namespaces (the only way is to put them into the same database and serve them as one WFS, but then you are not following the TG Req 5.2)

-Spain has published services

  • Julian will share on the Cluster

Suggestions for improvement, in general and related to the TC activity

-organize cluster-wise (or joint cluster) meetings/workshops, where data providers can test tools to transform their data and to publish INSPIRE services – this would also help in building a bridge between the software developers and implementers -> increased understanding and know-how

-have a look at the Network Services TG requirements

-the software developer are also a central part of the INPSIRE community. Find solutions to interact with them related to the requirements to help them in their job to help the thematic communities (see suggestion one)

-To clarify and to support implementers, software developers and users to make the”right” choices

  • make recommended examples on how code lists linked to the INSPIRE registry works and should be encoded
  • Make recommended examples of URI implementation and URI encoding

8Biodiversity Cluster

By Stefania Morrone (Italy)

The cluster is very active, above all the PS sub-group. Very good examples have been shared.

Burning issues:

cross-cutting issues:

-code list management (6out of 7 interviews have addressed this issue as hottest one):

broken links, upper vs lower case, ISO code lists, externally managed code lists

-deployment of INSPIRE Services with focus on WFS 2.0 (mentioned in 4 interview)

Issues in the PS Technical Guidelines

-The members have asked when and how will TG be updated and what to do in the meanwhile to deal with addressed issues, mostly related to code list values.

Good examples

-EEA feasibility study 2016:

-from source data to INSPIRE compliant GML dataset served by means of view and download services (links to 7 reports published on the Eionet, describing how the source data has been transformed into compliant gml and how services were set up)

-How to use WFS 2.0 in QGIS

-Links to WFS and WPS provided by Romania

Suggestions for management of Thematic Cluster platform

-Very much appreciated the creation of the following dedicated pages:

-[PS] Collection of observed issues - [PS] Sharing good practice.

-It was suggested to re-use this methodology (dedicated pages) to deal with cross thematic issues in a “cross-theme” cluster.

-These pages should work as a sort of Ariadne’s thread summarising what is being discussed on the TC platform and re-directing to relevant posts.

-Track discussions in which you’re involved

Urgent: