As of 15 December 2009, here is the status of the EU’s INSPIRE Directive, which is designed to build an interoperable, cross-border Spatial Data Infrastructure for the 27 EU Member States. The Directive covers five areas: metadata (creation and publishing), data and services interoperability, network services specifications, monitoring and reporting, and data sharing. While the Directive exists as an official EU legal document, additional legislation is being prepared, in the form of Implementing Rules, covering the specific ways in which the Directive is to be implemented in all Member States. These are published either as Commission Regulations (which take effect immediately) or as Decisions, which may require further legislation on the part of a Member State to implement them.

The official text of the Directive is available at the EUR-Lex website.

Metadata.

On 4 December 2008, an EC Regulation (1205/2008) was published, which took effect from 24 December 2008, requiring that metadata be created according to the specification set out in the Regulation by 3 December 2010, for Annex I and II data themes. The Regulation is available at the the EUR-Lex website.

Annex I contains Hydrography and Protected Areas data and Annex II includes Elevation (bathymetry and coastlines). Many organisations in the coastal/marine community will certainly hold datasets containing such data.

Metadata must be created by any public authority or any organisation acting on behalf of a public authority (as defined in the Directive). This may apply to many coastal and marine research institutes, especially those responsible for any level of legally mandated environmental research or monitoring. The organisations who must comply are determined within the INSPIRE Directive implementation legislation adopted in each Member State – and many states have yet to adopt such legislation.

Data Specifications.

Specifications for harmonising your datasets to the INSPIRE standard for the nine data themes from Annex I of the Directive (including Hydrography and Protected Areas) were adopted by the INSPIRE Regulatory Committee on 14 December, in a draft EC Regulation that will be published shortly. (Copies of this draft can be had by contacting Roger Longhorn, of the EUCC Information and Data Management Working Group, at ral@alum.mit.edu for those who simply cannot wait!). The underpinning Technical Guides covering all nine data themes are available from the INSPIRE web site at: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/2.

Of more importance to our stakeholders is an open call for Expressions of Interest to join one of the Thematic Working Groups (TWGs) who will be responsible for developing the legally mandated INSPIRE data specifications for the 25 data themes in Annex II and III of the Directive. This contains many of the themes that are directly relevant to the coastal/marine community. The call and Terms of Reference are also available at the URL in the para above. It is important that members of the coastal and marine science and management communities apply to these TWGs in order that our sector may have responsible input to the data specification process. Remember – the resulting Implementing Rules become EU law – and may affect your institution!

Network Services.

Commission Regulation 976/2009 was published on 19 October 2009, and came into effect on 6 November 2009. It covers requirements for providing Discovery and Viewing services for INSPIRE datasets. These two services must be available by May 2011. The Regulation is available at the EUR-Lex website.

The draft EC Regulation covering Downloading and Transformation services was accepted by the INSPIRE Regulatory Committee on 14 December 2009 and will be published in the first quarter of 2010, at which point it will become EU-wide law 20 days following publication date. The network services are intended to be compliant with current ISO and OGC standards for web services, for example CSW 2.0.2 for Discovery.

Monitoring and Reporting.

The INSPIRE Implementing Rules regarding Monitoring and Reporting were published as a Commission Decision on 6 June 2009. These relate mainly to the reporting that the Member States’ official INSPIRE contact authorities must produce for the Commission, to be passed to Parliament and the Council of Ministers. The Decision sets out the indicators that are to be used to monitor INSPIRE implementation. First reports are due mid-May 2010. The Decision is available at the EUR-LEx website.

Data and Services Sharing.

A draft Commission Regulation regarding “access to spatial data sets and services by the Member States to the Community institutions and bodies under harmonised conditions” was published in May 2009. It has yet to be adopted and concerns only sharing of datasets between Member State public authorities and EU institutions - not between public authorities within a Member State or across borders – although the latter is a requirement of the Directive itself.

A Plea and Recommendation!

EUCC is a registered SDIC – Spatial Data Interest Community – within the INSPIRE consultation framework, as are many other marine-related institutions and companies across Europe. It is important that these organisations now become more fully engaged in the data specification process, especially for those data themes buried in the Annex II and III list of themes, which are pertinent to the coastal and marine communities. Otherwise, your specific needs may not be met in the future, legally binding Implementing Rules that are developed by these groups.

Please look at the call for Expressions of Interest to participate in Annex II and III TWGs, and look at the Terms of Reference for these groups.

More importantly, if you feel that you can make a contribution to any one TWG, then do not be bashful about putting yourself forward as an expert. Also, the TWGs collect hundreds of reference documents used in their harmonisation work, so be forthcoming with such documents as you think may be appropriate when these are requested. We will do our best to keep you informed of developments via the EUCC Web site and news letters.

by Roger Longhorn, Information Policy Advisor, EUCC – The Coastal Union
Leader, EUCC Information and Data Management Working Group
ral@alum.mit.edu

INSPIRE Data Themes considered to be of direct application to coastal information needs

INSPIRE Data Themes considered to be of indirect importance to coastal information needs