Building bridges: experiences and lessons learned from the implementation of INSPIRE and e-reporting of air quality data in Europe

The collection, exchange and use of air quality data require diverse monitoring, processing and dissemination systems to work together. They should supply data, which can afterwards be used in different contexts such as planning, population exposure and environmental impact assessment. As air quality is not dependant on national borders this would only be feasible on an international level. This manuscript reports on the lessons learned from using the world’s largest data harmonization effort for environmental information infrastructure - INSPIRE as a backbone of a European wide spatial data reporting system which involves an unprecedented number of actors and volumes of data. It is important in the context of Digital Earth, and the establishment of a global SDI through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), as the quality of ambient air is among the pressing environmental problems of today. We summarize our findings from the perspective of national public authorities, obliged by law to transmit spatio-temporal data in order to streamline reporting and facilitate the use of information, while keeping public expenditure at minimum. To identify what works in this type of reporting we established a cross-border case study, looking at the process of harmonization and exchange of data in Belgium and the Netherlands based on interoperable standards. Our results cover the legal, semantic, technological and organizational aspects of reporting. They are relevant to a cross-thematic audience, having to undergo similar processes of reporting, such as climate change, but also environmental noise, marine, biodiversity, and water management.

KOTSEV Alexander Alexandrov;  PEETERS Olav;  SMITS Paul;  GROTHE Michel; 

2014-06-04

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG

JRC90172

1865-0473,   

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12145-014-0160-8,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC90172,   

10.1007/s12145-014-0160-8,