Compass Informatics - SDI / INSPIRE Blog

Irish Statutory Instrument 382 on INSPIRE

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:44:00 GMT

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.

Category: SDI
Category: INSPIRE

Compass at ESDIN meeting in Brussels on 7 September

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:06:00 GMT

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.

ESDIN is an EU-funded eContentplus project - the European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network. More information on the project and the work of the various Reference Groups can be found at the project web site www.esdin.eu.

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Category: SDI
Category: INSPIRE
Category: Events & Meetings

Compass at GeoValue 2010

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:00:00 GMT

Roger Longhorn, Compass Informatics INSPIRE expert, will deliver a keynote presentation at the GeoValue 2010 Workshop to be held in Hamburg, Germany, from 30 September to 2 October, hosted by HafenCity University Hamburg. This workshop presents an expansion of the discussions held last year in at GeoValue '09 in Hannover. Longhorn's keynote is titled "Valuing the Invaluable: a Geoinformation Conundrum" and examines the issues surrounding assigning value to geospatial information that inherently has different values to different users, for different uses at different times. More details about the workshop at this link.

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Category: SDI
Category: INSPIRE

Compass INSPIRE Expert speaks at INSPIRE 2010 Conference

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:43:00 GMT

Compass Informatics INSPIRE expert, Roger Longhorn, delivered a presentation at the INSPIRE 2010 Conference in Krakow, Poland, on 25 June, for a paper co-authored by Compass staff who are working on Irish SDI and INSPIRE Directive implementation in Ireland. The co-authors were Gearoid O'Riain, Manuel Treiber and Alison Robinson on a paper titled "Experiences in Developing an INSPIRE Compliance Toolkit - Are Tools Alone Enough?". The presentation can be downloaded from the INSPIRE 2010 Conference web site from this link. Compass senior analyst Manuel Treiber, who has been instrumental in developing GeoNetwork appilcations in Ireland, also attended the conference.

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Category: SDI
Category: INSPIRE

10th Saxonian GIS-Forum (GI2010), Dresden, May 2010

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:29:00 GMT

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 for Spatial Information in the European Community, with a special local and regional focus on PSI re-use, INSPIRE, and the Shared Environmental Information System. The open call for presentations is open until 15 March 2010 at http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/.

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Category: SDI
Category: INSPIRE
Category: Events & Meetings

Compass holds INSPIRE action planning seminar, 17 February 2010

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:24:00 GMT

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 Regulation, metadata for the 13 data themes listed in Annexes I and II of the Directive must be created by the end of 2010.

The workflows are incorporated into the Compass' INSPIRE Compliance Porfolio of services, and the resulting metadata can be collected, edited and then published using the Compass INSPIRE Compliance Toolkit, using either open source or proprietary toolsets.

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Tags: INSPIRE
Category: SDI
Category: INSPIRE
Category: Events & Meetings

INSPIRE/SDI Solutions Whitepaper & Website published by Compass

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:50:00 GMT

At Compass Informatics, we have published our INSPIRE/Spatial Data Infrastructure Solutions Whitepaper to coincide with the opening of our dedicated http://inspire.compass.ie website.

Please download the Whitepaper by clicking on the logo to the left. This paper describes how Compass Services can provide a full compliance solution to meet the requirements of the European Union INSPIRE Directive and assist participation of your organisation in your National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) strategy that must support INSPIRE. The services are also applicable for organisations wishing to create individual SDI components for their own use, based on acknowledged ‘best practice’ in creating SDIs, e.g. conducting information audits, creating and published metadata, mounting effective Geoportals.

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Standards/SDI: Compass to Sponsor and Present at International CEN/TC 287 Workshop

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:26:00 GMT

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 by other policy and technical Compass staff. The topic of his presentation will be development and implementation issues surrounding the Irish SDI and especially INSPIRE compliancy.

The CEN/TC 287 interoperability workshop will be hosted by AFNOR, at their head offices in Paris.

In the field of geographic information, CEN/TC 287 is mandated to create European specific standards, technical reports, guidelines and other documents where appropriate. The aim is to achieve interoperability and consistency of geographic information across borders in CEN member states. While CEN is the European standards body, its members reach beyond Europe into countries who agree to adopt these standards.

It is widely recognized that the work carried out by INSPIRE is of international interest, while maintaining its strong European focus, and CEN needs to be ready to complement this important work in the form of best practices and standards.

OGC has, for some time now, successfully promoted development of geomatics industry standards and operated test beds for these standards. To combine these activities will lead to a stronger, more interoperable Europe. While based in the USA, OGC has regional affiliates, including OGC Europe Ltd, where nearly half of its total membership have offices or significant operations.

The ISO TC 211 Geographic information committee develops and maintains international standards. However, there is an increased awareness that the development of European standards specifically to meet the needs of Europe will be of benefit, specifically in the area of creating European profiles for the global ISO geo standards.

This workshop will look at how national spatial infrastructures, mandated by the INSPIRE Directive, can be supported by CEN/TC 287 for the purpose of both best practice and interoperability, taking into consideration the standards making or testing activities of both ISO and OGC.

For more information adn to register see http://http://inspire.compass.iewww.gistandards.eu.

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Category: SDI
Category: Events & Meetings

SDI: Compass INSPIRE Expert speaks at Turkish NSDI Workshops

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:18:00 GMT

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 Study phase of this work is now underway, led by Dr. Hayati Tastan, of TurksatGlobe.

The first day of the workshop saw presentations from numerous distinguished and high-level government representatives, all recognizing the importance of SDI to the future of Turkey. Around 40 high-level representatives of numerous departments attended this half-day session, during with Turksat staff introduced the SDI Feasibility Study project, its goals and timetable. Many questions were fielded by the team, following Mr. Longhorn’s presentation on SDI developments in other parts of the world, and for INSPIRE particularly, which initiative is of very great importance to the Turkish government.

Day two was a full day session, at which some of the earlier presentations from day one were made, as well as an extended session from Mr. Longhorn, on a range of policy, legal and technical issues relating to SDI creation. Dr. Tastan introduced an extensive on-line data collection form that TurksatGlobe project staff will launch on 26 January, to gather background on a range of topics pertinent to implementing an SDI in Turkey. More than 120 Points of Contact attended the meeting, which concluded with an extensive and far-ranging Question & Answer period.

Participants from both days expressed their thanks for the presentations and their continued great interest in development of the Turkish SDI, while realizing that very much work lies ahead.

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Category: SDI
Category: Events & Meetings

INSPIRE: EuroSDR workshop on Atlas of INSPIRE Implementation Methods

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:14:00 GMT

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.

During the first day of the workshop, participants presented developments regarding implementation of INSPIRE as part of their national SDI initiatives, including challenges that had been faced so far – and those remaining to be overcome. On day two of the workshop, participants and the organisers developed a list of more than 50 research questions that they considered still needed attention in regard to SDI implementation across Europe. They agreed that a concerted effort would be made to embed this line of research in future Framework RTD programmes (FP7 runs through 2013) and in the CIP ICT PSP programme overseen by DG Information Society. The Atlas will be published as a wiki later in 2010, so that it can be kept up to date over time, as more experiences are gained with INSPIRE implementation issues.

All expressed their appreciation to Ingrid Vanden Berghe, Director General of IGN Belgium, the national mapping agency of Belgium, for organising the meeting in such a superb venue as the Club Prince Albert.

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Category: INSPIRE
Category: Events & Meetings