The GEOSS INSPIRE and GMES Action in Support (GIGAS) project seeks to carry out a Support Action (SA) aiming at a rapid adoption of standards, protocols, and open architectures in support of INSPIRE, GMES, and GEOSS initiatives.

The three existing initiatives GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems), INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) and GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) share commonalities, including their focus on environmental policy support, use of geomatic and geographic information, their Europe- or worldwide dimension, their reliance on international standards and the advanced Spatial Data Infra-structures that are needed for their implementation. In this respect, all three initiatives are key facilitators for the vision of “Digital Earth”. However, at the same time each initiative follows its own timeline and approach for technical development, thereby risking evolving into separate, incompatible services and not profiting from the benefits of a common approach.

The GIGAS Support Action was launched in 2008 with the specific aim to assess and address interoperability gaps and opportunities for establishing bridges between GEOSS, INSPIRE, and GMES. GIGAS makes use of a formal and structured approach to identify and analyse commonalities and interoperability gaps in architectures, standards and governance issues in the three initiatives. This study and the subsequent comparative analysis lead to a set of draft recommendations directed towards the initiatives and the main standardization bodies (OGC, ISO, and CEN).

See http://www.thegigasforum.eu

sif, inspire, gigas, geoss, geo, interoperability, standards

Last updated 940 days ago by Stefano Nativi