INSPIRE State of Play: generic approach to assess the status of NSDIs

Abstract

The European Commission launched the INSPIRE initiative in 2001. With this initiative the European Union wanted to contribute to developing a European SDI. The aim of this infrastructure is to allow public sector users at the European, national and sub-national level, to easily share spatial data from a wide range of sources in an interoperable way so as to execute a variety of public tasks. In order to have a common legal basis throughout Europe, in 2004 the European Commission drafted a proposal for a Directive of: “Establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE)”. After intensive discussions between the Commission, the Parliament and the Council, the final directive was adopted on 25 April 2007. From the very beginning it was recognised that INSPIRE should build upon the existing components of the emerging SDIs at a national and sub-national level. To have a better view on the status and development of these SDIs, in 2002 the Commission launched a study known as INSPIRE State of Play. The study collected information on 32 National SDIs in Europe according to the components as described Chapter 8. INSPIRE State of Play: Generic approach to assess the status of NSDIs 146 in the GSDI cookbook. A list of 30 indicators was established to assess the SDIs at organisational, legal, funding and technical level. From this perspective, the State of Play follows a generic approach. While most of the indicators are not quantitative, they allow to ‘measure’ the ‘distance-to-target’, that is the degree of development as compared to the ‘ideal’ situation described in the GSDI cookbook. On the other hand, some indicators are not meant to measure, but rather classify the SDIs according to the organisational approach. Between 2002 and 2006, the State of Play was repeated to make an assessment of the European situation over time. In 2006, the approach was reviewed in light of the INSPIRE Directive. This chapter focuses on the methodology elaborated in 2002 and applied up until 2006. It discusses how the results can be read and used and gives the most important conclusions from the assessment itself. This chapter also outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and compared with other approaches. Finally, this chapter presents ideas to enhance the methodology in order to improve the assessment of SDIs at the European level.

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