Improving Access to Environmental Information in Europe: the INSPIRE Initiative

Ioannis Kanellopoulos, Alessandro Annoni, Paul Smits

European Commission - Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Ispra (IT)

At European level there exists a huge amount of information particularly at regional and local level which is related to the environment. This information however is fragmented: it contains gaps and very often it is duplicated. These obstacles prevent our governments from dealing efficiently with the increasingly complex and interconnected issues that affect our quality of life today. Many of our policies need to be underpinned by information on spaces and places in order to assess the need for action, to inform policy-making and to evaluate impact.

The European Commission has launched several initiatives to unlock the potential of GI. One of these in particular is the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) that intends to trigger the creation of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI) that delivers to the users integrated spatial information services. This infrastructure will allow users to co-ordinate their needs with data providers, so that they will then be able to easily find, access and combine existing data from various sources (e.g. various regions in Europe, different levels of government, different government departments).

The INSPIRE implementation will follow a step-wise approach, starting with unlocking the potential of existing spatial data and spatial data infrastructures and then gradually harmonising data and information services. The first step will focus on the harmonisation of documenting existing datasets (metadata) and on the implementation of basic query, view and access mechanisms. Portals will be established at EU, national and regional levels that will provide the opportunity to access and query the data.

In this paper we will present the INSPIRE initiative and its current status, as well as the requirements and development of a European geographic information portal.