Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) is a European Parliament and Council Directive from 14 March 2007 on Spatial Data Infrastructure establishment in European Community. The Directive came official on 15th of May 2007 and forms a future frame for National Spatial Data Infrastructures.

The INSPIRE is a framework Directive where technical provisions are defined by implementing rules and technical specifications. It has been established on existed Member States’ spatial data infrastructures and it does not requires new data collection but does requires data harmonization of existing data according to prescribed INSPIRE standard.

INSPIRE Directive data

• 34 spatial data themes ( Annex I, II and III) needed for environmental applications
• The spatial data owned by states bodies or other institutions on behalf of the state bodies, as well as data used by state bodies in carrying out their public tasks

• Data should be collected only once and kept where it can be maintained most effectively.
• It should be possible to combine seamless spatial information from different sources across Europe and share it with many users and applications.
• It should be possible for information collected at one level/scale to be shared with all levels/scales; detailed for thorough investigations, general for strategic purposes.
• Geographic information needed for good governance at all levels should be readily and transparently available.
• Easy to find what geographic information is available, how it can be used to meet a particular need, and under which conditions it can be acquired and used.

This video provides an overview of why INSPIRE is needed and what types of spatial data are covered by INSPIRE. It is very important to have the spatial data between states and that is possible by establishing the national spatial data infrastructure according to the unique standard – INSPIRE.

Member States should provide access to theirs infrastructures via European Community Geoportal (INSPIRE Geoportal)  managed by European Commission, as well as other access points that Member States chose to manage, to support the integration of national infrastructures into INSPIRE.