Introduction and background
Background
Infrastructure for spatial information in the european community—INSPIRE
Data theme | Relevance |
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Human health and safety | Geographical distribution of dominance of pathologies and information indicating the effect of environmental conditions on human health and well-being. |
Environmental monitoring facilities | Representation of the established stations for observing the quality of ambient air, organized in monitoring networks. |
Population distribution - demography | Spatial distribution and quantitative information about the socio-demographic characteristics of population. Possible input for air pollution exposure modelling. |
Area management/restriction/regulation zones & reporting units | Air quality zones which are defined in 2011/850/EU and are subject to reporting to the European Environmental Agency (EEA). |
Administrative units | Representation of the administrative units and how they correspond to the air quality zones defined in 2011/850/EU. |
Atmospheric conditions and meteorological geographical features | Spatio-temporal characteristics of the atmosphere which comes from the established meteorological monitoring networks. |
E-reporting
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Support air quality reporting authorities through the identification of problems and present potential solutions;
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Document experiences for other communities which will be undergoing a similar process of coordinated e-reporting (marine, environmental noise, water management, etc.);
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Guide European institutions, most of all EEA and Directorate General “Environment” of the European Commission on how to better manage data flows within a complex multinational data infrastructure;
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Provides input for the evolution of GEOSS through identification of the applicability of a SDI-centred approach for sharing and the reuse of environmental data on national and international levels.
Approach
Redesigned dataflow
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Common rules for encoding of data, once acquired for all air quality related features;
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Interdependence and synergy with other data providers, forming a building block of a spatial data infrastructure;
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Interoperable network services organized within a SOA allowing easy discovery, view and download of information, also in near-real time conditions.
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Mapping elements of the existing production databases to the newly established common reporting model, described by Schleidt (2013) and available at www.eionet.europa.eu/aqportal/datamodel;
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Identification and testing of technology which offers interoperable network services for easy discovery, viewing and downloading of near-real time information, incl. for e-reporting purposes;
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Application of a reporting layer which encodes data into compliant GML/XML and establishes network services;
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Provision of feedback to the European Environmental Agency and the European Commission.
Data transformation
Web services
Findings
Legal
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Data should be collected only once and kept where it can be maintained most effectively.
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It should be possible to combine seamless spatial information from different sources across Europe and share it with many users and applications.
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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.
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Geographic information needed for good governance at all levels should be readily and transparently available.
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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.
Organisational
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Continuous involvement of the management board as resources in the described reporting organisations are becoming scarce, especially for data management and ICT;
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ICT experts are not always familiar with service oriented architectures and more specifically OGC and INSPIRE network services demand. Sometimes even completely new software choices need to be made and specific installations are needed, for instances for serving observations through SOS;
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Abstract models such as “Observations and Measurement” (ISO 19156:2011) in the e-reporting information needs practice and experience to understand and to work with.