Establishing common ground through INSPIRE: the legally-driven European Spatial Data Infrastructure

Abstract

Back in the 1990s, there were several barriers to accessing and using the spatial data and information necessary for environmental management and policy making in Europe. These included different data poli-cies, encodings, formats and semantics, to name but a few. Data was collected for, and applied, domain specific use cases and standards did not exist, all impacting on the re-usability of such public sector data. To release the potential of spatial data and improve evidence-based EU environmental policy making, action was needed at all levels (Local, Regional, National, European) to introduce more effective data and in-formation management for policy-making and to make data available for citizens’ interest. The INSPIRE Directive, the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe, directly addresses this set of problems. The Directive came into force on 15 May 2007, with full implementation in every EU Member State required by 2020. It combines both a legal and a technical framework for the EU Member States to make relevant spatial data accessible and reused. Specifically, this has meant making data discoverable and interoperable through a common set of standards, data models and Internet services. The Directive’s data scope covers 34 themes of cross-sector relevance as a decentralised infrastructure where data remains at the place it can be best maintained. A great deal of experience has been gained by public administrations through its implementation. Due to its complexity and wide scope, this is taking place in a stepwise manner, with some benefits already emerging as the first series of deadlines approach. Efficient and effective co-ordination are following the participatory approach established in its de-sign and it is timely to reflect on 10 years of progress of this European Spatial Data Infrastructure. We, therefore, consider the lessons IN-SPIRE is offering for those interested in joined-up and federated ap-proaches to geospatial data-sharing and semantic interoperability across borders and themes, and how the approach itself is evolving through this experience.