GRISI: Geomatic Regional Information Society Initiative.
Maria Cabello (Spain), Rafael Moreno (France), Andres Valentin (Spain)
GRISI is a European project financed by the Interreg IIIC program. GRISI mainly focuses on helping local development stakeholders to create new geomatic services in the following fields: e-economy, e-identity (local promotion), e-government and interregional cooperation. At present, GRISI main objective is to bring “geomatic added value” to existing or already finished initiatives and to show how Geomatics can be a tool to foster economic development.
GRISI work plan is carried on simultaneously by three regional and one national governments: Midi-Pyrénées (France), Navarra (Spain), Abruzzo (Italy) and Latvia. Global coordination is carried on by the Gers Chamber of Commerce (France) who has conceived the GRISI project.
In 2005 all participants analyzed the available Geographical Information, SDI developments and EU funded projects in their regions, presenting the state of art in January 2006. Based on this knowledge and previous experiences, four SDI were implemented in 2006.
Through 2006, in order to streamline the implementation of various geomatic tools in these 4 regions, GRISI partners have decided to apply INSPIRE European directive to the project actions. INSPIRE has therefore become the common framework for GRISI partners although they work in very different local context. Consequently, each partner has set up a regional GRISI Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI):
- which serves local reference data that allows new spatial data creation;
- which uses GRISI metadata profile, based on ISO 19115 and Dublin Core standards;
- and finally includes OGC-compliant web services to explore and use data and metadata.
Thanks to regional GRISI SDI, local development agencies are able to produce spatial data, to describe it in a catalogue or create new spatial web services. This enables local stakeholders to take part in the GRISI SDI development.
GRISI provides financial support to five interregional initiatives producing new spatial data and web tools: GRISI for SOHO (local promotion), GEOPOP (e-government), REGIS (interregional cooperation), GISST (e-economy), AGT (e-economy).
The use of OGC standards and similar metadata profile by all partners involved in GRISI has fostered cooperative work among local stakeholders which was one of the expected results of the project. Standards will ensure services integration independently from technologies used in each region.
The challenge to incorporate Geomatic concept into the culture and resources of citizens and administration would be encouraged by the use of new technologies, allowing its diffusion to the Global Society
Finally, emphasizes that thanks to GRISI, local stakeholders, especially those involved in spatial services, have discovered how INSPIRE can provide new cooperation opportunities within spatial data issues. The expected outcome is that they will now apply the GRISI good practices to their own local projects regarding spatial data harmonization and integration.