INSPIRE Thematic Cluster on Environmental Monitoring, Observations and Measurements

INSPIRE Thematic cluster on ..Name / Final report (phase 1) / p. 1 of 13
Common template for Thematic cluster reports / 2015-05-06
/ EUROPEAN COMMISSION
JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
Digital Earth and Reference Data Unit

INSPIRE Thematic cluster on Environmental Monitoring, Observations and Measurements

Phase 1 and 2 - Final report

Author / Alessandro Sarretta
Reviewed by
Approved by / Robert Tomas
Date of Approval / 26.1.2016
Title / INSPIRE Thematic cluster on Environmental Monitoring Facilities, Observations and Measurements Phase 1 and 2– Final report
Creator / Alessandro Sarretta
Date of last revision / 2016/01/16
Subject
Type of Deliverable / Report
Status / Draft
Publisher / European Commission JRC
Description / Report on the promotion and facilitation of the INSPIRE Thematic Cluster Environmental Monitoring Facilities and Observations and Measurements
Contributor / Alessandro Sarretta
Rights / Internal
Language / EN
Distribution List / JRC , ENV
Identifier / INSPIRE Thematic clusters – final report
INSPIRE Thematic cluster on Environmental Monitoring and Observations / Final report (phase 1 and 2) / p. 1 of 12
Common template for Thematic cluster reports / 2016-01-16

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. Purpose and Scope

1.2. Structure of the report

2. The use of the INSPIRE Thematic Cluster on Environmental Monitoring Facilities, Observations and Measurements

2.1. Main Statistics

2.1.1. Members

2.1.2. Cluster content

2.2. Promotion and facilitation of the clusters

3. INSPIRE thematic clusters – SW environment

4. Current and planned support and pilot activities

5. Recommendations and conclusions

1.Introduction

1.1.Purpose and Scope

This report is the deliverable D2.0 “ Report on the use of the on-line platform” as defined (Annex 2: Chapter 7) in the Expert contracts (Nr 391046 and 392073). The report describes users activities that have taken place in the INSPIRE thematic cluster on Environmental Monitoring Facilities, Observations and Measurements, facilitator’s recommendations on improvements on the used SW environment as well as the general recommendations on INSPIRE implementation in the community addressed by the cluster.

1.2.Structure of the report

Section 2 describes statistically the activity taken place in the thematic cluster platform (e.g. number of members, discussion topics, responses, uploaded good practices etc...). The chapter also describes a method used by the facilitator to promote and facilitate the platform. Section 3 presents facilitator’s view and improvement recommendations (if relevant) on the structure as well as functionality of the SW collaboration tool. Section 4 summarises facilitator’s experience with supporting the community in implementing INSPIRE, it highlights interesting discussion topics and / or agreed additions / changes to the INSPIRE technical guidelines. Section 5 presents facilitator’s recommendations and conclusions, if relevant, for improvements related to the follow up activities .

2.The use of the INSPIRE Thematic Cluster on Environmental Monitoring Facilities, Observations and Measurements

The Environmental Monitoring Facilities and Observations and Measurements Cluster (abbreviated in the web platform as Environmental Monitoring and Observations Cluster) has as main goal to support the implementation of the INSPIRE theme "Environmental Monitoring Facilities" (EF) data specifications and the use of the "Observations and Measurements" (O&M) standard.

The two sub groups, EF and O&M, were put together in the INSPIRE Thematic Cluster platform because of their strict relation; in fact, observations and measurements are directly mentioned in the definition of the Environmental Monitoring Facilities INSPIRE theme.

For this reason, in the EF Thematic Working Group (TWG), this relation was actively discussed and in the EF data model there is explicitly the possibility to provide observations and measurement through Environmental Monitoring Facilities.

Both EF and O&M have a common cross domain nature, being applicable to various environmental contexts.

In fact, in the Executive Summary of the EF Data Specifications[1] is clearly written that “the INSPIRE spatial data theme Environmental Monitoring Facilities (EF) is cross-cutting to any thematic area dealing with the environment” and “the focus is on environmental monitoring facilities as a linking element between spatial data themes as defined by the INSPIRE Directive and observations and measurements on specific aspects of the environment”, while the Executive Summary of the document Guidelines for the use of Observations & Measurements and Sensor Web Enablement-related standards in INSPIRE Annex II and III data specification development[2] lists various INSPIRE themes that considered O&M “integrally relevant for their thematic domains” and several others “to which observational information, while not at the core of the data specification, is relevant”.

The main Environmental Monitoring and Observations Cluster page[3] is the entry point for people interested in discussing issues common to EF and O&M, while there are two sub group pages dealing with theme-specific issue:

: Environmental Monitoring Facilities
: Observations and Measurements

2.1.Main Statistics

2.1.1.Members

The main Environmental Monitoring and Observations Cluster currently (16th January 2016) has 82 group members, while the EF has 31 and O&M 26, showing an increase of more than 30% compared to the previous report. A big part of the new users joint the groups after the INSPIRE conference organised on May 2015, but there has been a slow, constant increase also during the rest of the year.

This distribution depends from the fact that users have to join (register) specifically each group (cluster or sub-group), and in general they seem to prefer to join only the main cluster.

49 members are registered only in 1 group, 11 in two, and 22 are registered in all the three groups.

Almost all members who subscribed 1 sub group (EF or O&M) are also registered in the main cluster. In one single case, a user registered only for EF.

46 users registered only in the main cluster group, while others are registered in more than one (see figure below)

This seems to be a general issue common to most of the Clusters in the platform, maybe due to the fact that users think that subgroups are simply part of the main one. A specific e-mail was sent by the Facilitator on this issue, explaining the behaviour of the platform and suggesting to join also the EF and O&M groups, but the pattern remains.

The Cluster members represent a wide diversity of communities and organizations across Europe, sharing a common interest in understanding and implementing INSPIRE concepts, standards and products.

The members represent a wide spectrum of data stakeholders including:

National public bodies with responsibilities to implement INSPIRE
Technical experts and researchers dealing with the management and distribution of environmental observations and measurements
Software company representatives
Potential users of INSPIRE services, data and observations and measurements
Representatives form INSPIRE related activities: former TWG EF and O&M discussion group members; national contact point and MIG representatives; INSPIRE Pool of Expert representatives
European institutions (EEA, JRC) representatives
Thematic clusters facilitators

2.1.2.Cluster content

Discussions

The distribution of registered users is partly reflected also on the discussions present inside each group: the main cluster having 16 discussions, while both the two subgroups have only 7 discussions.

Not all discussions have been active; the average number of replies to discussions in the main cluster is around 4, with the most discussed one having 15 replies, while in the sub groups EF and O&M there is in average 1 reply per discussion.

Some of the most important discussions are described in section 4.Current and planned support and pilot activities.

Pages

Few pages have been created to collect information relevant for the groups.

Given the distribution of members described in 2.1.1.Members, it has been decided to create the pages in the main Cluster group, so that they can be seen and accessed by most of the members.

A new Html widget was added and put as the top widget in the main EF and O&M Cluster page to list and make visible the available pages:

The content of the pages is dynamic, so that can and will be improved and updated in the coming months. Editing rights can be assigned to the group members so that they can actively collaborate to add information on the pages.

2.2.Promotion and facilitation of the clusters

In the Terms of Reference of the facilitators' contract it is written:

[The facilitators] should help in identifying and aggregating the relevant stakeholders in order to build communities of INSPIRE implementers (and users) across the EU, and in collecting information on the current state of play of the implementation of INSPIRE in the relevant thematic cluster in order to help populate the on-line collaboration platforms.

Furthermore, the identified experts are expected to administer platforms, facilitate on-line discussions, and to promote their on-line collaboration platform in the relevant communities.

These indications have been followed and applied as much as possible by the EF-O&M facilitator with the goal to activate and help discussion in the platform and support the implementation of INSPIRE.

E-mails were sent and direct contacts (phone calls, Skype meetings) activated to involve people to the platforms, with a particular attention towards experts with specific expertise and knowledge related to the implementation of INSPIRE.

In particular, e-mails were sent to a few contacts provided by the JRC for some of the Member States to inform and involve them in the discussion, but with very limited new input for the cluster.

Inside the INSPIRE Thematic Clusters platform, the facilitator has tried to follow the discussions happening also in the other clusters, to find links and topic interesting for the EF-O&M cluster. Some specific discussions in EF-O&M were started to draw attention to relevant discussions in other clusters. In particular, the Marine and Atmosphere Cluster[4] has been considered for the strong relations with both Environmental Monitoring Facilities data specifications and the use of the Observations and Measurements standard.

At the national (Italian) level, the platform was presented in a few communities involved in the production/use of geospatial data and/or implementation of INSPIRE: working groups inside the “Comitato Dati Territoriali”[5] (geospatial data committee); GFOSS.it[6] (Geospatial Free and Open Source Software) community and association; RITMARE project[7] experts dealing with the implementation of the spatial data information platform[8].

The Thematic Clusters and in particular the EF and O&M Cluster were also presented and discussed during an event organised in Bologna (Italy) by the Emilia-Romagna Region on October 13th 2015 to promote and discuss the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive.

The facilitator is also following and participating at the MIG-T sub-group “SOS-based download services” for its relevance to the exchange of information related to observations and measurements in INSPIRE.

The main event to present and promote the EF-O&M cluster and related activities, and to attract interest people for new contributions to the platform, was the INSPIRE and Geospatial World Forum joint conference[9], 25-29 May 2015, in Lisbon.

During this event, the EF-O&M facilitator participated to the relevant activities organized by JCR to promote the INSPIRE Thematic Cluster Platform and, in particular, organised two workshop strictly related to the EF-O&M cluster activities:

"Capacity building with the Geoinformation Enabling ToolkIT (GET-IT)”[10]
"Providing INSPIRE measurement data”[11]

Despite all the work described above, from the facilitator point of view, it has to be highlighted that the result of this engagement has not been as productive as wanted and expected. The creation of an active community in the platform has been only partially done, given the fact that only a small percentage of the members so far have actively participated to the community and contributed to the discussions. This has to be improved during the next phases of the promotion and maintenance of the platform.

INSPIRE Thematic cluster on Environmental Monitoring and Observations / Final report (phase 1 and 2) / p. 1 of 12
Common template for Thematic cluster reports / 2016-01-16

3.INSPIRE thematic clusters – SW environment

The INSPIRE Thematic Clusters platform is based on the “Elgg Social Network Engine”[12] that is an open source platform to build and connect communities.

The platform contains all the relevant tools to organize information related to different groups and seems to be flexible enough to be adapted to small changes.

It is structured so that the users have to join specific groups to be allowed to discuss their topics. This is totally correct but it seems that it can discourage the joining of subgroups (as also briefly described in 2.1.1.Members).

As for all the groups in the INSPIRE Thematic Clusters platform[13], all the content is public and visible to all users (i.e. also non registered). Registered users, has generally the possibility to contribute to the discussion adding comments to discussions and pages.

There is also the possibility, for the facilitator, to allow users to edit the content in pages (not in discussions), modifying the Write access menu:

When directly collaborating with few other experts in the creation of some content for a page, the facilitator might find useful to have the possibility to assign writing access capabilities only to those experts, to increase the speed of the writing and share tasks. This can be valid also for pages that are of common interest for the facilitators. This is, to my knowledge, currently not possible, and it would be an useful enhancement.

In general, the platform would probably benefit from a high level design study to differentiate the interface from the default Elgg one, and customize the graphical appearance and user experience with the specific goals of the INSPIRE community.

One of the disadvantage to create and maintain a specific discussion and promotion platform is that interested people have to specifically join that platform, while other platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) used by people and professionals are not easily reached. A more easy connection/sharing of content from the Thematic Clusters Platform towards main social media could be a plus for the dissemination of information.

4.Current and planned support and pilot activities

As described in section 2, both the Environmental Monitoring Facilities theme and the Observations and Measurements standard are cross domain and can involve different expertise coming from different domains. Despite this could possibly attract interest from various experts, it seems that the lacking of a specific and well identified community can make it difficult to have a strong commitment on the implementation of these two INSPIRE models.

This aspect, combined with some difficulties the facilitator had encountered during the first months of the contract in activating the community, influenced the optimal promotion of the portal and the facilitation of the cluster during the first phase of the activity.

Even if discussions in the EF-O&M cluster started later compared to other clusters, there are issues deeply discussed and commented. The main problem is anyway that only few members have actively contributed to the discussions and that the level of questions/answers is highly technical, making difficult for non-experts to contribute.

The most discussed topics are related with the understanding and tailoring of the O&M model in INSPIRE, how to use SOS services for environmental observations and measurements, and issues on identifiers and referencing and some of them can be cited here as examples:

“WFS vs. SOS: Which Features are provided by which download service?”[14]
“INSPIRE and Referencing”[15]
“FoI Encoding”[16]

Another cross domain issue is how to use the INSPIRE Environmental Monitoring Facilities (EF) and O&M data model for reporting obligation under different policies (Air Quality, WFD, MSFD, WISE, SoE) as a way to get harmonized implementation of INSPIRE across domains and making it easier for MS to implement already developed solutions.

Other topics discussed regard the scope - matching data topics to INSPIRE themes, the relation with marine related topics and EMF data specification issues.

Finally, a couple of topics related to the extensibility of code lists brought to the compilation of a corrigendum request for the harmonization of the extensibility of the code lists in the EF data specifications: here the page summarizing the issue in the Thematic Cluster platform and the corresponding issue in the MIG Issue tracker

5.Recommendations and conclusions

As described in the previous sections, the lack of specific and well identified communities for EF and O&M hasn't favoured the involvement of experts in different phase of the implementation of INSPIRE, making it difficult for non-experts to enter the discussion..

What would be more relevant to present in the Cluster are examples of implementations from different domains dealing with observations and networks of monitoring facilities and, even if some of them are coming (e.g. AQD services[17]) more are needed to help a wider understanding and implementation.

Software and tools dealing with O&M and SOS are also less mature than other “standard” services and this is not encouraging users to embrace these “new” standards.

The 2015 INSPIRE Conference was a very good opportunity to interact with active and new members of the EF and O&M cluster and to stimulate new activities, but this was not easily translated into new discussions in the Thematic Clusters Platform. If it will be possible to promote also this year the Thematic Clusters in the INSPIRE Conference, this should be probably prepared well in advance together with the various communities so that to capitalize this opportunity.