1. INSPIRE Data, metadata and tools
A proposal
Against the background of the seven hypotheses presented in this document, the European Forum for Geostatistics (EFGS), under a generous grant from EUROSTAT, have from the beginning of this year started work on the GEOSTAT ESSnet project. The project consortium of nine NSI’s is led by Statistics Norway. The need to take action for the integration of geography and statistics should not be limited to the European scale.
We therefore propose:
The establishment of a Global Forum For Geostatistics (GFGS) to serve as a professional reference group (PRG) for Geostatistics and provide a professional link between UN and the NSI’s in issues related to this field.. This PRG will primarily be concerned with questions related to the integration of geography (GSDI projects) and statistics (GEOSTAT)
The initiation of a joint UN spatial data infrastructure (SDI) project for geostatistics. This is the first step towards a GSDI based Global Integrated Information System (GGIISS) and should be developed in close cooperation with the national mapping agency (NMA) -led GSDI and INSPIRE projects.
The initiation of the GEOSTAT GSSgrid project to provide a high-resolution harmonised infrastructure for geostatistics liberated from administrative areas and demonstrating its power and utility through a UN project to plot the global population on km grids.
Keywords: GSDI (Global Spatial Data Infrastructure), GSS (Global Statistical System), Small area statistics, GIS (Geographical Information System), GGIISS (Global Geographic Integrated Information Systems of Systems)
Mr Ekkehard Petri
GIS project manager for Geoportals and the GEOSTAT project
Eurostat, European Commission
Unit E4, Regional Statistics and GI
BECH A3/031 L-2920 LUXEMBOURG
Tel:
ESTP course on Geographic Information Systems (GIS):
Use of GIS for making statistics in a production environment
Statistics Norway, Oslo, 26th to 30th of March 2012
Attribution (by) Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.

2. Content Introduction What is INSPIRE? (~15 min)
Information sources on INSPIRE (Demo ~5 min)
INSPIRE for data producers
INSPIRE metadata (~15 min)
Demo of tools to prepare metadata (~5 min)
Break (5 min)
Exercise on INSPIRE metadata (~20 min)
INSPIRE data models (~5 min)
INSPIRE for data users
Exercise on the INSPIRE geoportal (~10 min)
Wrap-up (5 min)

3. Block I INSPIRE overview

4. What is INSPIRE? INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe
A framework directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 (Directive 2007/2/EC) on the establishment of such a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)

5. INSPIRE is about improving access to spatial information:
The environment doesn’t stop at borders
Distributed infrastructure: INSPIRE is to be based on the infrastructures for spatial information established and operated by the Member States
Organisational and technical harmonisation
Data held by or on behalf of public authorities (including Statistical Offices)
Data falling under the themes listed in the Directive
For Community environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.

6. What is a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)?

7. Why INSPIRE?

8. Why INSPIRE?

9. Why INSPIRE?

10. Why INSPIRE?

11. A little INSPIRE history
2007 Adoption of INSPIRE directive
2008 First implementing rule on Metadata
2009 – 2013 Further Implementing Rules
Since 2007 Transposition into national law
Since 2011 INSPIRE geoportal
Until 2020 Implementation phase in Member States

12. INSPIRE principles
Data should be collected once and maintained at the level where this can be done most effectively
It should be possible to combine seamless spatial information from different sources across Europe and share it between many users and application
It should be easy to discover which geographic information is available and under which conditions it can be acquired and used
Geographic data should become easy to understand and interpret

13. INSPIRE non-principles
No requirement to create new spatial information
No obligation to provide data for free
No minimum level of quality

14. INSPIRE Legislation INSPIRE Directive – a framework directive
Transposition into national legislation
Detailed technical definition in Implementing Rules (Regulations)
Implementing rules on Metadata, Network Services, Interoperability, Monitoring and Reporting and Data Sharing
In addition non binding Technical Guidance documents

15. Scope of INSPIRE Metadata Content: fixed list of elements
Format: to treat it automatically (catalogues, search engines)
Data specifications: data from different sources is comparable
Annex I, Annex II, Annex III (3 lists of spatial data themes)
Network services (machine to machine communication)
Discover service: to be able to find the data in distributed catalogues
View service: to evaluate the data visually
Download service: to actually get the data
Transformation service: coordinate transformation
Invoke service

16. Scope of INSPIRE – spatial information
Metadata
Spatial data sets
Spatial data services

17. Scope of INSPIRE – the technical network

18. Scope of INSPIRE – data themes
Annex I
Coordinate reference systems
Geographical grid systems
Geographical names
Administrative units
Addresses
Cadastral parcels
Transport networks
Hydrography
Protected sites
Annex III
Statistical units
Buildings
Soil
Land use
Human health and safety
Utilities and government service
Environmental monitoring facilities
Production and industrial facilities
Agricultural and aquaculture facilities
Population distribution - demography
Area management/restriction/ regulation zones & reporting units
Natural risk zones
Atmospheric conditions
Meteorological geographical features
Oceanographic geographical features
Sea regions
Bio-geographical regions
Habitats and biotopes
Species distribution
Energy resources
Mineral resources
Annex II
Elevation
Land cover
Orthoimagery
Geology

19. Sources of information on INSPIRE
INSPIRE website
INSPIRE forum

20. Block 2 INSPIRE Metadata

21. Metadata Metadata are data about data
We distinguish between structural metadata and descriptive metadata
SDMX for statistics covers both
INSPIRE metadata for spatial data are descriptive metadata
Metadata serve different purposes (data discovery, assessing fitness for use, data access, data transfer, use)
INSPIRE metadata are for discovery, some elements on access and fitness for use
Within the publish-find-bind pattern of a service oriented archtitecture MD are essential
Metadata for data users (find) and for data producers (publish)

22. Metadata for spatial information
EN ISO standards for metadata on spatial data (ISO ) and on spatial services (ISO )
Lists almost 300 possible metadata elements
MD elements can be mandatory, optional or conditional
Contain a core profile mainly for use in catalogue services
ISO core the starting point for INSPIRE metadata
For specific communities profiles are recommended (selection of metadata elements in addtion to

23. Metadata for spatial information
Metadata are structured in packages

24. Metadata are usually encoded in XML (ISO standard 19139)

25. INSPIRE metadata
INSPIRE metadata are regulated in „COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1205/2008 of 3 December 2008 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards metadata”
Contains in total 21 metadata elements (19 for data sets and 17 for spatial data services)
Further implementation details in INSPIRE Metadata Implementing Rules: Technical Guidelines based on EN ISO and EN ISO (Version 1.2)

26. Obligations in Member States regarding Metadata
03-Dec-2010 Metadata available for spatial data sets and services corresponding to Annex I and II
09-Nov-2011 Discovery and view services operational
03-Dec-2013 Metadata available for spatial data sets and services corresponding to Annex III

27. INSPIRE metadata what is inside?

28. Technical Guidance document

29. Problems with metadata
Nobody likes to create metadata
Structure well defined, content not
Semantic interoperability not enforced
Unclear titles
Empty abstracts or other fields

30. Tools for metadata work
Metadata editor
Metadata validator

31. Exercise
Create Metadata on NUTS 2006
Download the exercise sheet from the EFGS website

32. Recommendations Rather write too much than too little.
Make the title speak for the full dataset.
Begin the abstract with a short summary paragraph which is often shown in a geoportal.
Put into the abstract information on the main attributes, the data sources and references to legal acts.
Some information could be redundant (geographic coverage, dates) but help the user
In the lineage field carefully document the way the data have been produced.

33. Block 3 Spatial Data

34. INSPIRE not only for geographers – data themes with direct relevance for statistics
Annex I
Coordinate reference systems
Geographical grid systems
Geographical names
Administrative units
Addresses
Cadastral parcels
Transport networks
Hydrography
Protected sites
Annex III
Statistical units
Buildings
Soil
Land use
Human health and safety
Utilities and government service
Environmental monitoring facilities
Production and industrial facilities
Agricultural and aquaculture facilities
Population distribution - demography
Area management/restriction/ regulation zones & reporting units
Natural risk zones
Atmospheric conditions
Meteorological geographical features
Oceanographic geographical features
Sea regions
Bio-geographical regions
Habitats and biotopes
Species distribution
Energy resources
Mineral resources
Annex II
Elevation
Land cover
Orthoimagery
Geology

35. Data models and transformations
The INSPIRE data specifications prescribe a specific data structure.
This should help users to immediately understand the data
INSPIRE does not require the creation of new data -> Transformation of data into the INSPIRE format will be common practice.

36. Data transformation – population grid

37. Block 4 Geoportals

38. How to search for data Publish – Find - Bind

39. Search for data
INSPIRE queryables in the Metadata – e.g. title, abstract, resource type, keywords, topic category
Thematic search and spatial search

40. Tour of the INSPIRE geoportal
Exercise I: Search for all datasets on Hydrography with English metadata in Luxembourg
Exercise II: Add 2 View services from the same area on top of each other and change the transparency of the top one.

41. Further reading on INSPIRE
Spatial data from Eurostat:
INSPIRE website:
INSPIRE geoportal: