INSPIRE

What is INSPIRE?

INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe (INSPIRE) is an initiative that aims to solve the problems regarding the availability, quality, accessibility and sharing of spatial information among public sector organisations and improve public access to spatial information across Europe.  The directive came into force on 15 May 2007, transposed into UK law in 2009 and will be implemented in varying stages with full compliance required by 2019.  The primary driver for INSPIRE is to support policy making in issues concerning protection of the environment.

Public sector organisations provide for the community, aiming to deliver better services and improve the standard of living for citizens. They achieve this through social, economic and environmental improvement and sustainability. Spatial data underpins many services provided, including development planning, waste management, water and draining networks and risk management. The data needed for this can be related to the 34 data themes of INSPIRE, organised into three annexes considering contextual as well as environmental condition and performance data:

• Annex I (Base Data and Infrastructure) - e.g. Administrative Units, Hydrography, Transport
• Annex II (Terrain) - e.g. Elevation, Land Cover
• Annex III (Natural and Human Factors) - e.g. Soil, Land Use, Statistical Units

What is required under INSPIRE?

INSPIRE requires that all public sector organisations make provisions for any data that is collected and published externally to be made more effectively available and shared for reuse. This regulation applies to spatial data sets that are:

• In an area of a Member State or its Exclusive Economic Zone, or equivalent
• In electronic format
• In a public authority including person(s) acting for or on behalf of a public authority
• Relate to the themes listed in Annexes I, II or III

Any public sector organisation that possesses such data is considered a Legally Mandated Organisation (LMO) and, as such, is required to implement the rules of the regulation.

 

 

INSPIRE and 1Spatial

 

The conceptual architecture of INSPIRE is based on a classic Service Oriented Architecture where the primary business asset is the data. The geoportals and user applications determine what data is required for use and when, whilst network services provide the know how to effectively access and process the data as required.

Key to the success of INSPIRE is the provision of harmonised and compatible data and, with it, the obligation of legally mandated data producers to publish their data to this framework. Immediate questions that 1Spatial can help you answer are:

"How do we deliver and publish data to this framework?"
"How much will it cost, and can we afford it?"
"What's in it for us, or is it just for somebody else's gain?"

Beyond the obligations of INSPIRE, organisations are increasingly recognising the opportunities it offers to improve everyday data management operations and to better achieve strategic business goals. 1Spatial has been working closely with organisations across Europe to help identify and realise these opportunities, to ensure a return on their investment in INSPIRE.

1Spatial is registered with the Spatial Data Infrastructure Community (SDIC) and has participated in many voluntary and funded projects relating to INSPIRE, Spatial Data Infrastructures and general data sharing initiatives. These include Northern Ireland's GeoHub SDI, the EU funded eContentplus ESDIN project and, more recently, the development of technical guidance for INSPIRE Schema Transformation Services.