The European Commission launched in March 2009 a new study to assess the implementation of INSPIRE and NSDI in 34 countries in Europe. A team of four people of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) supported by 10 international experts, worked on the study. Information on the status of the 34 countries was collected through the analysis of websites, documents, presentations at conferences & workshops, and by collecting input from national experts. This resulted in 34 country reports. In addition, a detailed survey on coordinating, funding and sharing measures was organized between November 2009 and April 2010 to collect detailed qualitative information regarding these particular aspects of INSPIRE & NSDI implementation. From May 2010 onwards, the results from the 8 indicators of the INSPIRE Monitoring & Reporting became available and were analyzed as well. The first results of the study were discussed during a two-day workshop in Krakow prior to the INSPIRE conference. The workshop was attended by 13 international SDI experts, 33 representatives from 21 countries and people from the Commission. During and after the summer period, the assessment was finalized by translating all the information into 32 indicators. A summary report with the most important observations was written including conclusions & recommendations for the further implementation of INSPIRE. All the documents are now available on the INSPIRE website.

Figure 1: combining different sources of information to assess the status of INSPIRE & NSDI

The majority of the EU member states have transposed or are on their way to transpose the INSPIRE Directive into national legislation. It seems that the establishment of coordination structures and arrangements, and the transposition of the articles on data and services sharing have caused many headaches. The survey revealed that the national level is crucial for INSPIRE & NSDI implementation. And although it is acknowledged that the sub-national levels (especially the local level) are crucial as well, in practice they are just starting to get involved. In general, mapping agencies, ministries and environment agencies are the most active organizations for implementing INSPIRE. The assessment shows clearly that there is a shift in the way countries are working: more and more users – typically the major Ministries  – are involved in coordination, while GI associations get a supporting role and National Mapping Agencies or similar organizations are playing the role of executive office (taking the technical lead). Overall, there is a high diversity in coordination/cooperation structures and arrangements across Europe. This confirms the idea that no single best solution or recipe exists since the context of each country is unique. It is also striking that many countries have no funding policy established which might lead to problems regarding the long-term sustainability of the NSDI. The minority of countries have an explicit strategic or implementation plan. Most countries are “just implementing the Directive and the rules” as they become available. Finally it should be noted that in several countries the NSDI is broader than INSPIRE, while other countries put more or less everything under the INSPIRE umbrella.

Figure 2: % of data sets with metadata as compared to the reported data sets (INSPIRE monitoring)

On the technological side, it is striking that national geo-portals - as one of the possible building blocks for INSPIRE implementation - still need to be established in many countries. From the desktop study, as well as the INSPIRE monitoring results (24 countries), it becomes clear that most countries are very active in developing the different components of their NSDI. Although many countries have metadata for a considerable part of their data sets, it seems that in the past, the situation was overestimated for some of them. From the figures of the INSPIRE monitoring, it seems that eleven countries have less than 50% metadata for the reported data sets and the minority of these metadata are conformant to the implementing rules. On the other hand, the are many spatial data falling under one of the 34 themes of INSPIRE resulting in a good European coverage (87% or more). We can also state that view services are very well developed and download services really start to emerge now. Also discovery services start to become available for most of the countries – 21 out of the 34 have them. Transformation and invoking services are rather the exception and it seems that these are not always fully understood. The level to which metadata – and thus their related data sets or services – can be discovered is very variable, but in general terms it is still very low. Only 7 countries score 50% or more. And the number of data sets that can both be viewed and downloaded is even lower: only 3 countries reach the 50% mark. This might not be surprising since 5 countries even do not have an operational catalog. In general terms, there is more and more focus on interoperability issues, and geo-standardization to reach this interoperability. This is often underpinned by specific standardization bodies and/or particular projects to develop country profiles. Countries that are active in the geo-standardization process (OGC, ISO, CEN) are also advanced in the application of existing standards, implementing rules and guidelines.

These are just a few of the striking results of the study which is now fully available on the INSPIRE website. A second round of the study is currently taking place. This time, a detailed survey will focus on the use of the infrastructure. A new assessment will be carried out and discussed in a closed workshop with representatives of the 34 countries prior to the INSPIRE Conference in Edinburgh. The final results are expected by the end of September 2011. 

The state of play reports for 2010 are available here:
http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/6/list/4

state of play

Last updated 59 days ago by loizos