A thematic pan European SDI, as the Nature-GIS network objective is, requires either a pan European GI data model or an interoperability system between national GI models. The Regione-Piemonte/ Cemagref/ UJF node prototype demonstrates the validity of an interoperability system able to make compatible the French and Italian GI data models applied to protected areas and environmental GI for a specific use.

The node is related to the 2006 Torino Olympic Winter Game organisation. Although the main organisation town is Torino (Italy), the games will held in the Sestriere area, in the Alps Mountain, close to the French border. Many new winter sport installations (race tracks, sport complexes) and other infrastructures (highways, buildings) are being built. On the other hand, as in many other mountain areas, many protected areas are located in the Sestriere region (Natura2000, National Parks, etc.) both in Italy and in France. So the environmental impact of the Torino/Sestriere OG will certainly reach beyond the border not only because of its proximity: the Sestriere region might lack of accommodation and people might choose to stay in Briançon, on the other side of the border but closer than Torino. This will create a great amount of traffic on the road network between the two areas, with a great environmental impact.

The Nature-GIS node has two main practical objectives: the first one is to allow a better global and qualitative assessment of the environmental impact of the OG organisation, including the possible environmental impact in the French natural area. The second objective is to inform the public of this possible impact and to give him objective elements so that he will be able to make his own idea about the environmental impact.

The node is an Ionic RedSpiderWeb GAF like web site (Graphic Application Framework) where GI from the different Italian and French geo-data bases are displayable in the same graphic frame. GI layers are grouped into thematic chapters: the first chapter contains eighteen different French and/or Italian kind of protected areas proposed to the end user of the site. The second chapter concerns the main new installations (race tracks and other sport installations, etc.) built for the OG. Displaying both protected areas and new installations maps allowed the end user to have an idea of the spatial relationship between them (proximity, intersection) with the aim to assess the environmental impact. Two other chapters concerns natural land cover and human (anthropic) land cover, and one more chapter contains reference vector layers (notably administrative entities). Users have possibility to zoom on one of the three main area of interest, i.e. Sestriere area (East), Briançon area (West) or Maurienne area (North). Some specific data, protected with special copyright, are not displayable at large scale.

Next steps of the node development will have two priorities: on a functional level, the priority will be to make most of the data downloadable, what will need to go back on negotiations with data producers and providers. The aim will be to better respond to the objective of trans-national data exchanges of such a node. On the system architecture level, the next step will be to re-locate geo-database on the different partner servers, while only one node interface will be accessible (for the moment, the geo-data base is centralised at one the node server). Distributing the geo-database will allow the different database administrators to directly update and maintain data so that information provided by the node is complete and up-to-date.