Use of INSPIRE Data: past experiences and scenarios for the future – joint workshop of EuroGeohraphics and EuroSDR.

A very successful workshop was held on 27-28 November in Warsaw, attended by 48 participants, data users, data producers and researchers. The workshop was co-organised by the EuroGeographics INSPIRE KEN and by EuroSDR (Commission 4 on information usage). It is open to the different communities –practitioners and scientists- who can contribute to achieve the INSPIRE vision.

Background of teh event was as follows: The INSPIRE Directive aims to create a European Union spatial data infrastructure for the purposes of EU policies or activities related to the environment. This vision theoretically refers to a large list of usages like policy-making across boundaries, research, and communication to the citizens. INSPIRE data refers to data that have been or will be published in this European data infrastructure.
Whereas the implementation of data service conforming to INSPIRE implementation rules is recognized to have positive impact regarding the general principles aiming to build the European Spatial Data Infrastructure and has brought significant progress on data discovery, there are lots of doubts regarding the benefits of interoperability. Until now, it seems there are very few users of the INSPIRE compliant data.

Presentations from this interesting event will be available on the event website soon.