INSPIRE-EMODnet Technical Meeting, 7-8 December 2015, Brussels
The INSPIRE marine pilot[1], co-funded by the Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) programme, contains an activity on the alignment of INSPIRE and EMODnet. In EMODnet and INSPIRE: benefits of closer collaboration[2] proposals have been made for a closer collaboration at technical level. As a direct follow-up of this, a technical workshop was organized on 7 and 8 December 2015 in Brussels.
The workshop considered the practical and technical aspects of EMODNet delivering INSPIRE-compliant data services. Although the focus was on EMODnet, the subject matter and scope was relevant to similar inter-EU thematic data communities such as Copernicus. The meeting was attended by representatives of the EMODnet data portals with Inspire training delivered by members of the JRC INSPIRE Team and INSPIRE Thematic Clusters.
The workshop covered the following topics:
- The existing INSPIRE legislative framework including the Directive legal text, associated Implementing Rules and supporting Technical Guidance. Particular emphasis was placed on navigating through these documents, their key relevance to EMODNet and supporting tools aimed at INSPIRE implementers such as the Interactive Data Specifications and Thematic Cluster Communities. Discussion clarified specific issues raised by the EMODnet communities and this is to published via a dedicated EMODNet section on the Thematic Cluster.
- Available IT solutions for the implementation of discovery, view and download services required by INSPIRE, with emphasis on open source technology and real world examples. A key focus here was on ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools for transforming existing data structures to those mandated as part of Inspire and a practical demonstration of this was given. Discussion clarified different strategies for managing data transformation and situations where data transformation would not be beneficial as it could result in information degradation.
- Architectures for implementation of INSPIRE. This highlighted the concept of the Service Orientated Architecture and explored the architectures used in EMODNet and how this could evolve in the future. Key considerations were (i) the strategic role EMODNet could play in supporting member states deliver INSPIRE compliance for marine data, (ii) the role EMODNet could play in the delivery of products to support EU policy such as MSFD and (iii) having an equal separation in EMODNet between services available via the user interface those through a well-defined API (application-programming interface). As a benchmark, a user should be able to use the API to replicate any services available through the EMODNet portals.
The marine community is overall an advanced adopter of INSPIRE. There are some requirements of the marine community that extend what is current 'INSPIRE best practice' due to the structure of some of the datasets (primarily coverage-based data) and supporting technologies for their view and download. There is an ongoing requirement for INSPIRE to work with EMODNet to establish and consolidate best practices in the domain of marine data management.
[1] https://circabc.europa.eu/w/browse/2a4ccd57-2ced-4046-8343-b6dfcd8046da
[2] https://circabc.europa.eu/d/a/workspace/SpacesStore/d949cc14-31aa-49e9-983a-158759f84c25/ DIKE_12-2015-05b_EMDODnet_and_INSPIRE.PDF
Presentations from first and second day
pillars of interoperability, tools and guidance
mapping of EMODnet parameters onto INSPIRE themes