INSPIRE – Progress Update – March 2009
Date: 3/3/2009
Sources: inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/; AGI INSPIRE Working Group
INSPIRE, which stands for INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in the European community, is an EU Directive concerning the sharing and harmonisation of spatial datasets across Europe. The INSPIRE Directive has considerable implications for the Highways Agency and other UK road administrations, because such organisations will be required to create standardised metadata (descriptions of the spatial data), as well as having to provide access to data that has been collected or created in standard form. The Directive covers many types of spatial data; of particular relevance, spatial data relating to transport networks is covered in Annex I of the Directive.
The INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 was published in the Official Journal on the 25 April 2007 and came into force on the 15 May 2007. The Directive, which is a framework, lays out a process and road map for implementation using a series of Implementation Rules (IR) to define the details of requirements and an agreed procedure to transpose these into Member States' national law.
Draft IRs are created by expert teams, and circulated for comment before being processed and reviewed by several European bodies, such as the Comitology Committee, before ultimate publication in the Official Journal. Commenting is restricted to two forms of registered organisation - Legally Mandated Organisations (LMOs) and Spatial Data Interest Communities (SDICs). For more information on registration see the INSPIRE web site. The DfT and the Highways Agency are both registered as LMOs; the Travel Information Highway is a SDIC.
The IRs cover the following areas:
o Metadata
o Interoperability of spatial data sets and services – i.e. agreed data specifications for describing specific types of data
o Network services - this includes:
o Discovery services, where the data is indexed and searchable;
o View services, where it is possible to display, navigate, zoom in/out, pan etc. spatial data sets;
o Download services, where the data can be downloaded or accessed directly;
o Transform services, where the input dataset can be transformed from one Coordinate Reference System (CRS) into another
o Access rights of use to spatial data sets and services for Community institutions and bodies
o Monitoring and reporting the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive by Member States.
More information can be found here.
Following the articles on INSPIRE in the September and November Newsletters, the current status of the IR are as follows:
o Metadata – The INSPIRE Metadata Regulation was adopted by the Commission on 3 December 2008. The regulation has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, OJ number L 326, of 4 December 2008. It entered into force 20 days following its publication (see article (4)).
On adoption of the Implementing Rule for metadata, metadata must be created:
o within 2 years for Annex I, II spatial data themes
o within 5 years for Annex III spatial data themes.
Note: Transport Networks, which is the most relevant theme for the Highways Agency, is an Annex I spatial data theme; and therefore metadata must be published by December 2010.
o Interoperability and harmonisation of spatial data sets and services for Annex I spatial data themes – draft IR and data specifications for the nine Annex I themes have been open to LMO/SDIC comment until 20 February 2009. These themes are: Co-ordinate reference systems, Geographical grid systems, Geographical names, Administrative units, Addresses, Cadastral parcels, Transport networks, Hydrography, and Protected sites. It is expected that final versions will be published in Summer 2009.
o Network services:
o Discovery services/View Services - on 13 January 2009 the Comitology committee registered the proposal for INSPIRE Implementing Rules for Discovery and View Services. See here for more details.
o Download services – deadline for submission, May 2009 - Draft IR not yet publicly available on website.
o Transformation services – deadline for submission, May 2009 - Draft IR not yet publicly available on website.
o Access rights – the INSPIRE Data and Service Sharing Draft Implementing Rule was published for comment on 12 December 2008. This commenting period is now closed and it is expected that final versions will be published in Summer 2009.
o Monitoring and reporting the implementation – on 13 January 2009 the Comitology Committee registered the proposal for INSPIRE Implementing Rules for Monitoring and Reporting. See here for more details.
Other IR will be drafted for Annexes II and III.
Article 7.3 of the INSPIRE Directive says that:
“Member States shall ensure that all newly collected and extensively restructured spatial data sets and the corresponding spatial data services are available in conformity with the implementing rules … within two years of their adoption, and that other spatial data sets and services still in use are available in conformity with the implementing rules within seven years of their adoption.”
This implies that the HA will have to fully comply with the Metadata IR by December 2010 and the Interoperability IR by May 2011 (estimate), etc.
DEFRA, the UK government lead on INSPIRE, will shortly issue a consultation process with respect to the transposition of INSPIRE into UK law.
ITS Radar International will continue to monitor developments in INSPIRE
Keywords: European Commission, Geographic information, Policy, Standard, Traffic information
