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Proposal for simplification of Inspire

Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket)

Agency For Marine and Water Management (Havs- och Vattenmyndigheten)

The Swedish County Administrative Boards (Länsstyrelserna)

Version 0.7

2017-10-25

1. Change the way spatial datasets within environmental directives are reported, moving over to data harvesting from Inspire services

Our organizations are currently under the requirement of reporting spatial datasets as GIS files to Reportnet, as part of the obligations set by environmental directives. At the same time, we are also required to set up Inspire services for many of these same spatial datasets. This implies in most cases a duplication of effort and costs that could be reduced if Inspire services are accepted as valid spatial datasets within the reporting obligations set by the environmental directives.

We therefore suggest that provisions are made for enabling up-to-date Inspire services for spatial datasets contemplated in the environmental reporting obligations to replace and supersede the traditionally reported spatial datasets.

2. Simplify the core Inspire models while creating extensions adapted to the needs of the environmental reporting obligations

We consider that the current division in rigid themes with complicated, nested information models based on database concepts is impractical and unsuitable for an effective flow of environmental information.

We therefore suggest that:

  • The mandatory information models are replaced by a minimalistic core of common attributes ordered in a flat structure (single features, one table) to ensure interoperabilityand increase the use of Inspire services.
  • The minimalistic core is expanded by compatible extensions specifically suited to the semantic and informational needs of different applications. Ideally, an arbitrarily large number of specific optional attributes could be created and defined in code lists, from which the attributes would be available as building blocks for custom datasets. In the case of environmental data flows in the context of the EU, combinations of mandatory and optional attributes could be advantageously used to define spatial data sets that are perfectly suited to the needs of the environmental reporting obligations, as defined in each directive.
  • Only single feature types are defined and used for both the core and the extensions, in a flat structure with a single table that is usable by conventional GIS tools.
  • The characteristic “voidable” is reformulated to imply “optional” to avoid creating unnecessarily complicated GML files.

3. Reduce and simplify required metadata fields: Find vs. Use

Metadata can serve several purposes. One is helping find available data; another is providing complete descriptions of datasets for correct usage. There is a trade-off between the cost of setting up and maintaining metadata and the benefit gained in the usefulness of the data.The current Inspire profile tries to support both use casesbut the way it is implemented results in a profile that is costly to maintain for finding data, while not being rich enough for describing data in a thorough way.

We suggest the metadata profile for Inspire acknowledges the existence of the two use cases described above and adopts a sparse metadata setup for the discovery services, while providing for a richer metadata specification for the latter. Specifically, we suggest that the mandatory and core metadata attributes are selected by targeting the discovery of datasets and therefore only having the first type mandatory for the Inspire discovery services.

We furthermore suggest that the core metadata attributes are based on mandatory attributes defined in the DCAT-AP standard. In this way, we may lessenthe burden of metadata administration while maintaining a very broad interoperability with non-Inspire metadata catalogs.