SDI - INSPIRE News

Compass Informatics collates here a range of news items covering the topics of Spatial Data Infrastructures and the EU INSPIRE Directive.  Our policy and technical experts seek to inform you via this resource of the latest developments and activities in the SDI/INSPIRE area.

Access the blog / news items by clicking on the headlines below (the news item appears then at the base of this page), or by using the calendar or categories to select entries of interest.

Irish Statutory Instrument 382 on INSPIRE
<p>The Irish Statutory Instrument 382/2010 implementing the EU INSPIRE Directive came into effect on 1 August. The S.I. is published in the Irish Statute Book of the Office of the Attorney General.</p>
Compass at GeoValue 2010

Compass Informatics will be represented at a special ESDIN Project workshop to be held in EuroGeographics new Brussels offices on 7 September. INSPIRE expert Roger Longhorn, who also serves on three of the ESDIN Project Reference Groups, will be attending the workshop titled "Bridging theory and practice - a new business model for maximising the use of public sector geospatial reference data." See more about the workshop at this link.

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Compass INSPIRE/SDI Expert, Roger Longhorn, will be delivering one of the keynote presentations at the 10th Saxonian GIS-Forum (GI2010), organised by IGN e.V., which is taking place in Dresden 14 – 15 May 2010. The GI2010 Symposium - "10. Sächsisches GIS-Forum - Europe of Regions –Sustainability of Inter-regional Collaboration” is to be held in the framework of the European Community's Directives on Public Sector Information re-use and INSPIRE – Infrastructure... Read More »

Compass Informatics held another in their series of INSPIRE Master Classes, on 17 February 2010 at their offices in Blackrock, Dublin. Rather than the usual full day workshop covering most aspects of INSPIRE, this half-day event focused on the workflows required to locate, create and publish INSPIRE-compliant metadata. Metadata is covered by the first of the INSPIRE implementing rules to be adopted as an EC Regulation, on 3 December 2008. Under this... Read More »

Compass Informatics will co-sponsor the CEN/TC 287 Interoperability Workshop to be held on March 1st  in Paris.  This will be a particularly important meeting as it will bring the key organisations of CEN, ISO, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), and JRC/INSPIRE together with a view towards an agreement of further geo standards developments. Gearóid Ó Riain, managing director of Compass Informatics, will present at the workshop, which will also be attended... Read More »

From 21-22 January 2010, Compass INSPIRE Expert, Roger Longhorn, was a keynote speaker at two workshops conducted in Ankara, Turkey, hosted by the Turkish Satellite Corporation (Turksat), who hold the contract to implement more than 100 e-Government projects for the Turkish government. Creating the national SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) is one of these projects, and is being undertaken by the TurksatGlobe division within Turksat. The SDI Feasibility... Read More »

Compass INSPIRE Expert, Roger Longhorn, participated in the EuroSDR workshop on “Atlas of INSPIRE Implementation Methods, on 14-15 January 2010, hosted by IGN Belgium at the Club Prince Albert in Brussels. The workshop was attended by 22 staff representing the official SDI and INSPIRE implementation efforts in 10 countries, including Switzerland and Croatia. The purpose of the meeting, the second in this project, was to review progress to date on building the Atlas of INSPIRE Implementation Methods’, focusing on identifiable ‘best practice’ and challenges that have arisen since INSPIRE was published in 2007. Research staff from SADL at K. U. Leuven Belgium, plus ITC and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands were on hand, who are involved in the analytical work underpinning the Atlas development. Also present was Luc Van Linden, of 1Spatial, who is part of the team currently developing the Transformation Service Technical Guidelines for INSPIRE.

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The 2nd ESDIN (European Spatial Data Infrastructure with the Best Practice Network) Stakeholders' meeting is being held at EuroGeographics in Paris on 3 February. The ESDIN project team will present the achievements of the project in year one and discuss with the Reference group members, stakeholders, experts from different fields the future of the project. If you want to answer the question how can INSPIRE specifications be implemented or want to... Read More »

On 14-15 January 2010, the EuroSDR project for the “Atlas of INSPIRE Implementation Methods” sponsored a workshop at the Club Prince Albert in Brussels, hosted by IGN, the national mapping agency of Belgium, who are also directly involved in the project. The 22 participants represented 10 EU Member States now embarked on implementing national SDIs and INSPIRE. Also present were a representative from the INSPIRE implementation team at the European Commission and representatives from two of the commercial companies developing some of the interoperability technology needed for INSPIRE, including Compass’ INSPIRE Expert, Roger Longhorn. Several staff from Belgian (KUL) and Dutch (ITC and Univ. of Delft) research centres who have been involved in monitoring and studying various aspects of SDI implementation and impact for a number of years, at both national and pan-European levels, presented their findings to date, based on analysis of questionnaires circulated earlier to the Member State representatives responsible for INSPIRE in their respective counties.

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The INSPIRE Conference 2010 will take place from 23 to 25 June 2010 in Krakow, Poland. On 22 June pre-conference workshops will be organized. The theme of this year’s edition is "INSPIRE as a Framework for Cooperation". The Conference is organised through a series of plenary sessions addressing common policy issues, and parallel sessions focusing in particular on applications and implementations of SDIs, research issues and new and evolving technologies... Read More »

Standards making is a consensus process. This means that an International standard has to be usable and useful world-wide. Within a region such as Europe, a more focused approach is required by developing European specific standards or creating European profiles of existing ISO standards. This is the work of CEN/TC 287 Geographic information. Olaf Ostensen, the chair of ISO/TC 211, will be speaking at the Interoperability Workshop in Paris, 1 March... Read More »

On 26-27 January 2010, the European Commission’s DG Joint Research Centre (JRC) hosted a two-day Stakeholders Workshop in Ispra, Italy, of the FP7 GIGAS Project – an Action in Support to GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES, which began in June 2008 and ends in May 2010. Compass was represented at the meetings by INSPIRE Expert, Roger Longhorn.

INSPIRE is Europe’s attempt to create a regional (transnational) pan-European SDI. GMES is the Global Monitoring... Read More »