INSPIRE AND NSDI IMPLEMENTATION IN EUROPE:
ITS STATUS IN 2009
D. Vandenbroucke1, J. Crompvoets2, K. Janssen3, D. Billiouris1 and I. Masser4
1
K.U.Leuven (SADL), Leuven, Belgium
2
K.U.Leuven (Public Management Institute), Leuven, Belgium
3
K.U.Leuven (ICRI), Leuven, Belgium
4
Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
The INSPIRE initiative aims to contribute to the development of a European Spatial
Data Infrastructure. The aim of this infrastructure is to allow the public sector users at
the European, national, regional and local levels to share easily spatial data from a wide
range of resources in an interoperable way for the execution of a variety of public tasks.
INSPIRE is not developed from scratch, but builds upon existing and emerging
components of the national, sub-national and thematic Spatial Data Infrastructures
(SDI). Although INSPIRE should assist policy-making in relation to policies and
activities that may have a direct or indirect impact on the environment (European
Commission, 2007), it is believed that it will be useful for and have a positive influence
on other sectors as well.
Since SDI emerged in the beginning of the nineties, there has been a requirement to
assess and evaluate their performance, whether it is in terms of reaching the objectives
of the SDI in the narrow sense - i.e. enhancing direct access, instant use and broad
sharing of spatial data and services - or to estimate its impact on specific processes,
organisations or society as a whole. Several methodologies have been proposed and, in
some cases, applied to assess existing (components of) SDI, as can be read in the book
"A multi-view Framework to Assess Spatial Data Infrastructures" (Crompvoets et al,
2008). Also for INSPIRE it was imperative to assess its impact at the beginning of the
process (Craglia, 2003), and to monitor its development, implementation and impact
once the initiative started in 2002 and even more when the Directive entered into force
on 15 May 2007.
Along with the preparation of the European INSPIRE legislation, the Commission
monitored therefore since 2002 the development of the national and (and some) subnational SDI in 32 countries in Europe, the so called INSPIRE State of Play study
(Vandenbroucke at al, 2008a). The study - which aimed at getting a better insight in
ongoing initiatives and activities in the field of spatial data collection and
harmonisation, metadata, access services, standards, and organisational and legal issues
- was carried out between 2002 and 2005 with the GSDI Cookbook (Nebert, 2004) and
the position papers of the INSPIRE working groups as baseline material. In 2006 the
State of Play methodology was reviewed and another update took place. The last update
took place in 2007, which was released in 2008 (INSPIRE, 2008). Since then, the State
of Play was not updated anymore.
In the meantime, the INSPIRE Drafting Team on Monitoring & Reporting prepared in
2007 a draft version of the Implementing Rules which defines the indicators to be used
to monitor the implementation of the Directive (Vandenbroucke at al, 2008b). The final
implementing rules were voted by the INSPIRE committee in December 2008 and
published as Commission Decision 2009/443/EC on 5 June 2009. Since then Member
States are legally bound to monitor the implementation of INSPIRE through the
calculation and publication of 8 indicators, and to prepare a 3-yearly report with more
quantitative and qualitative information including information on the use of the
INSPIRE infrastructure, examples of costs and benefits, how stakeholders collaborate,
the way coordination is done, etc.
In March 2009, the European Commission launched a new "INSPIRE & NSDI
implementation, State of Play" study. Although the two processes - the INSPIRE State
of Play and the Implementing Rules for monitoring and reporting - are not the same, one
can wonder why a new State of Play is necessary if Member States have the legal
obligation to monitor and report INSPIRE implementation? There are mainly three
reasons for that. First of all, the INSPIRE & NSDI State of Play collects additional
information that is not required according to INSPIRE obligations: e.g. information on
NSDI components beyond the scope of INSPIRE; information regarding related
legislation; etc. Secondly, the INSPIRE & NSDI State of Play will not only collect and
structure this additional information, but also analyse the information at the European
level, derive some ‘lessons learnt’ (good practices) and give recommendations for
further implementation of INSPIRE and NSDI. Finally, the INSPIRE & NSDI State of
Play is analyzing 34 countries in Europe (from 2009 onwards also Croatia and FYROM
are included), 7 more than the 27 Member States.
The objectives of the renewed INSPIRE & NSDI State of Play are threefold: 1) To finetune the methodology used in previous State of the Play Studies in order to bring it more
in line with the development of INSPIRE and the latest work carried out by the
INSPIRE drafting teams; 2) To prepare an annual State of Play study for two
consecutive years, based on the work done in the previous State of the Play studies; and
3) To carry out an in depth study of specific aspects that have emerged as being
important within the development of INSPIRE, going beyond legal compliance, to
better grasp some key issues on successful implementation and best practice (also
during two consecutive years).
The methodology to assess the NSDI and INSPIRE implementation was reviewed
during a one-day workshop in May 2009. At the same time, collection of new
information began through the analysis of key documents, screening of geo-portals, etc.,
and a detailed survey was prepared. The detailed survey for the year 2009-2010 took
place between November 2009 and February 2010. Its focus is on different aspects
related to the implementation of INSPIRE: coordination, funding and sharing measures.
The survey relate to five important topics of INSPIRE implementation. First, the
analysis of the status of INSPIRE transposition, including the problems encountered
during this phase and the link with other (existing) legislation. Second, the assessment
of the existence or absence of an implementation strategy, including the organisations
involved. This topic also covers the funding of INSPIRE. The third topic of the survey
focuses on coordination and cooperation aspects. It tries to answer questions like: "Has
a specific coordinating structure (body) been created", "What is its composition", "How
many and which stakeholders are involved", etc. Particular attention is paid to the
potential impact on the structure of existing organisations and the way they work. The
fourth topic relates to the measures taken to improve data and service sharing and the
way access to spatial data sets falling under the 34 themes of the three annexes of the
Directive is regulated. Limitations regarding public access and data sharing restrictions
are part of this analysis. The status of the geo-portal, if such a portal exists, is the last
topic of survey.
The paper presents the current status of INSPIRE and NSDI development at the
European level, analyses the results of the desktop study and the survey in detail and
highlights some of the remarkable developments in Europe, with particular attention on
what seems to work well and why. The paper ends with an overview of the topics which
deserve particular attention at the European level in order to obtain a dynamic and well
performing European SDI consisting of many national and sub-national SDI nodes. The
ongoing and future work within this study is highlighted as well.
Acknowledgement
The INSPIRE & NSDI State of Play study is commissioned by EUROSTAT. The study
is carried out by the authors and supported by a group of international experts whom we
want to acknowledge for their contribution to the assessment: Mauro Salvemini
(EUROGI, Sapienza University of Rome), Angela Ionita (ICIA, Romania), Arnold
Bregt (University of Wageningen), Bastiaan van Loenen (T.U. Delft), Marie-Louise
Zambon (IGN France), Mark Probert (Geolink Consulting), Pedro Muro-Medrano
(University of Zaragoza), Christian Elfers and Kristian Senkler (con terra).
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