About INSPIRE

The Challenge

The INSPIRE Directive lays down general rules for the establishment of an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe, for the purposes of environmental policies and activities which may have a direct or indirect impact on the environment. To achieve this aim, public and private organisations within member states are required to exchange data in a consistent manner through a set of harmonised services defined within the directive’s implementing rules.

Implementing INSPIRE raises many questions, such as:

• Will my organisation be affected by the INSPIRE Directive?
• What must we do to be INSPIRE compliant?
• What types of data must be made available and when?
• Will we need to rework the data which we are already collecting?
• Will we need to change our workflow for geodata management?

What is INSPIRE?

Through INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) the EU is creating a consistent framework for sharing information about the environment across European countries. INSPIRE is based on the infrastructures for spatial information that are created by the member states and that are made compatible with common Implementing Rules and are supplemented with measures at Community level. These measures should ensure that the Infrastructures for Spatial Information created by the member states are compatible and usable in a Community and trans-boundary context.

The INSPIRE vision anticipates a geospatial information infrastructure that delivers a full range of integrated geospatial information services, enabling users to identify and access geographic information from participating data producers throughout Europe in an interoperable way for the purpose of formulating, implementing, monitoring and evaluating Community policies, providing public information etc. When complete this information can be used by any government organisation across Europe to enable strategic planning and service delivery for a variety of uses. This includes emergency planning, flooding and transport planning, regeneration and sustainable economic development and local service planning.

Related Links

Official INSPIRE website  

Steps towards INSPIRE compliance

INSPIRE defines common standards for publishing metadata about geospatial data and services, provision of interoperable network services, data harmonisation, data access and sharing principles, and monitoring and reporting the effectiveness of SDI implementation. The directive currently focuses on the discovery of available data through metadata creation and discovery services (CSW), data viewing services (WMS) and data download services (WFS).

INSPIRE will be implemented over time through a series of 'Implementing Rules' for the following elements:

• Metadata to describe existing information resources so data can be more easily found and accessed
• Harmonisation/Interoperability of key spatial data sets and services
• Network services and technologies to allow discovery, viewing, and downloading of information resources and access to related services
• Policy agreements on data sharing and access, including licensing and charging
• Coordination, monitoring, and reporting mechanisms

INSPIRE addresses 34 key spatial data themes organised in 3 groups: Annexes

INSPIRE.Insight, the solution by M.O.S.S.

INSPIRE.Insight is our solution to the challenge of becoming INSPIRE compliant. With INSPIRE.Insight we offer a range of consultancy services and software solutions specifically aimed at helping organisations meet their obligations under the EU INSPIRE Directive. The multi-tiered approach and offering is very flexible. Depending on your needs, you can simply select the specific service level you require, from downloading a free INSPIRE data model, comprehensive consultancy to fully outsourcing to M.O.S.S. Learn more about INSPIRE.Insight

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