International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B4. Istanbul 2004
This opportunity provides a window for a wider range of data
providers using new affordable technologies. These providers
may in some cases work with the NMCAs or may opt to offer
competing products. This presents a challenge to the European
NMCAs who devote much of their resources and energy to data
maintenance which is rarely a priority for competitors.
Many of the NMCAs are also re-engineering their data and are
currently migrating from “digital mapping” to “geographic
information” to support a maturing customer need. This
provides an ideal opportunity to harmonise concepts, data
models and approaches. This is important to provide the
foundations for easily assembled harmonised and maintained
pan-European datasets. The delays in the introduction of
Location Based Services also provide a short but valuable
window of opportunity to develop a generic pan-European
specification.
There are examples where regional European activity is already
evident. for example the GiMoDig project involving Sweden,
Denmark, Finland and Germany to demonstrate LBS services ;
the Ordnance Survey Ireland, Ordnance Survey of Northern
Ireland and Ordnance Survey Great Britain collaboration
(Www.osmaps.org) and the harmonisation of the Linder
datasets in Germany by BKG (www.bkg.bund.de). These
examples provide evidence that successful collaboration is
possible and in turn could provide building blocks towards a
wider spatial data infrastructure.
There will be areas that require further research and
development and where resources and projects can be shared to
offer quicker and more proven results.
1.3 Early steps
Building an harmonised European Geographic Infrastructure
has been a concrete objective of EuroGeographics for a decade
now, starting in 1993 with EuroGeographics first avatar,
MEGRIN, named after an acronym for an early designation of
what we call now the ESDI : Multipurpose European Ground
Related Information Network. MEGRIN started pioneering
work with the first on-line CEN standard pan-European
metadata service — the GDDD.
MEGRIN also initiated the SABE project, the Seamless
Administrative Boundaries of Europe, a harmonised dataset
assembled from the official data provided by member countries.
SABE is permanently maintained by EuroGeographics, and the
current version now available covers some 35 countries — more
than the EU-25 and EFTA countries — and continues to expand
eastwards.
These two initiatives, although valuable, are only prototyping
the European infrastructure. Our Expert Group on Geodesy; in
collaboration with EUREF has defined a common European
geodetic reference system - ETRS89 - and is working on the
definition of € common vertical reference system. The first is
now adopted by the European Commission, that is also today
supporting the development of the second. Further, MEGRIN
has actively contributed to defining the ESDI by a diligent
participation in the GI2000 initiative, and later in the ETeMII
project for which MEGRIN was the main author and editor of
the White Paper on Reference Data.
EuroGeographics has continued its involvement in promoting
and defining the ESDI by its participation in the INSPIRE
Expert group and Working groups, directly through its Head
Office, and through the active contribution of many of its
member NMCAs.
In parallel to these high level discussions on strategies and
policies, EuroGeographics continues its own strategy of
concrete step by step implementation, among which the
EuroGlobalMap project is the first to bring a new pan-European
service on the market, a one million pan-European (30 countries
in the current version) topographic database comprising the
following themes : administrative boundaries, hydrography,
transport, settlements, vegetation, named locations and
miscellaneous (monuments, power lines, towers etc). A more
ambitious project, EuroRegionalMap, aims at a 1:250.000 scale.
A large ‘sample’ covering 7 countries, including France and
Germany, is already on the market, while work is in progress
aiming at covering the most part of Europe-25 by end 2006.
To make its vision into a reality, EuroGeographics has proposed
the development of a data specification to support the pan-
European harmonisation of geographic information. Early work
on the ETeMII research and more recently INSPIRE provides
supporting evidence. However, a comparison of the NMCAs
and their products and services today demonstrate just how big
a challenge the development of a harmonised European
Specification is. This is not a reason to avoid such a task, but
the task is large and needs to be broken into manageable phases
with check points at regular intervals.
1.4 Common Reference Data
While INSPIRE is primarily driven by the critical actuality of
environmental issues, it has also recognised that the
infrastructure, beyond environment, is eventually to cover all
other main sectors as well, such as transport, agriculture, etc.
The number one requirement for an operational infrastructure is
interoperability of data from different sources. and the key to
this interoperability is the linkage to a unique reference,
designated as the *Common Reference Data'. The needs for
definition, development and interoperability have been
researched in depth within the ETeMII project, of which most
findings have been later endorsed within INSPIRE.
The EteMII "White paper" and INSPIRE “Position papers”
defined the meaning of the term "reference data” on two main
principles:
e It is a series of datasets that everyone involved with
geographic information uses to reference his/her own data
as part of their work;
* It provides a common link between applications and
thereby provides a mechanism for the sharing of
knowledge and information amongst people.
In this context, reference data must fulfil three functional
requirements:
® Provide an unambiguous location for users information;
* Enable the merging of data from various sources;
*« Provide a context to allow others to better understand the
information that is being presented.
1.5 Basic Data
The long debate on the definition of the reference data and of its
components had reached a peak within the ETeMII project. By
the time that INSPIRE has reviewed the ETeMII findings, we
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