Presentation by Alexander Kotsev at the Atmosys (http://www.atmosys.eu) final conference November 2013

1. INSPIREd solutions for Air Quality
problems
Alexander Kotsev
www.jrc.ec.europa.eu
Serving society
Stimulating innovation
Supporting legislation

2. The European data puzzle

3. The European data puzzle
•
•
•
•
•
24 official languages
3 official alphabets
Different institutional setups
Diverse data governance
Celebrated diversity

4. Air Quality data exchange on EU level
• Broad spectrum of initiatives & projects
• Excellent results on project level, however …
 Projects do end …
 Full European coverage on finite scale is still a challenge
 On EU level still no operational capability for:
– Easy combination of data
– Across domains
– Across borders
– In near-realtime
– Mutual use of official data and such collected by citizens
– Combinations of all the above
• New EEA e-Reporting on ambient air quality
• Operational from Jan 2014

5. Interdisciplinary perspective on Air Quality
• AQ is closely related to at least the
following:
• Environmental Noise
 Same sources of AQ and noise pollution
• Health
• Exposure of population
 long term and short term
• Meteorology and Climate change
• Quality of life measures
• Ecosystem services

6. INSPIRE to the aid
• EU-wide SDI perspective on data
• Ultimate goal is to unlock spatial data and lay down
foundations of European SDI
• INSPIRE is a Framework Directive
•
Into force since 15th of May 2007
• Detailed technical provisions are laid down in:
Implementing Rules on
•
Metadata
•
Spatial Data
•
Network services
•
Data and Service sharing (policy)

7. INSPIRE principles
 Data should be collected once
 Distributed Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
 Possible to combine data from different sources
 Focus on information relevant for governance
 Focus on reusability
 GI should be easily discoverable, together with
its metadata

8. INSPIRE thematic scope
Annex I
1. Coordinate reference
systems
2. Geographical grid systems
3. Geographical names
4. Administrative units
5. Addresses
6. Cadastral parcels
7. Transport networks
8. Hydrography
9. Protected sites
Annex II
1.
2.
3.
4.
Elevation
Land cover
Ortho-imagery
Geology
Annex III
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Statistical units
Buildings
Soil
Land use
Human health and safety
Utility and governmental
services
7. Environmental monitoring
facilities
8. Production and industrial
facilities
9. Agricultural and
aquaculture facilities
10.Population distribution –
demography
11. Area management/
restriction/regulation
zones & reporting units
12. Natural risk zones
13. Atmospheric conditions
14. Meteorological
geographical features
15. Oceanographic
geographical features
16. Sea regions
17. Bio-geographical regions
18. Habitats and biotopes
19. Species distribution
20. Energy Resources
21. Mineral resources

9. A collaborative effort

10. INSPIRE Roadmap for Implementation
2020 All Annex II+III data
2018 All Annex I data
2015 New Annex II and III data
interoperable
2013 New Annex I data interoperable,
Harmonized conditions for access to data
Metadata Annex III
2012 Download and transformation services
2011 Discovery and view services
2010 Metadata Annex I and II

11. Value added of INSPIRE
• Platform for establishment of partnerships
• Fully synchronized with other EU policies
• Re-use of public sector information (PSI, Directive 2003/98/EC)
• Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) principles
• Domain specific EU legislation (AQ directive, END directive, etc.)
• Built around
• Consensus of all stakeholders from:


Domains
Member States
• International standards
• CEN
• ISO
• Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

12. Value added of INSPIRE
• Building blocks for interoperable SDI in the
following context
• Cross-country
• Cross-domain
• Combination of the above
• Harmonization and standardization of
environmental data across Europe (and beyond)
• Legally binding for public administrations with
data in scope
• Business aspects of INSPIRE
• Rapidly growing geospatial sector
• Powered by INSPIRE conference

13. Relevant components
• Consolidated data
model (extensible)
• Encoding into GML
• Coordinate and temporal
reference systems
• UML model
• INSPIRE Metadata
• Enable the discovery of
Data and Services in a SOA

14. Relevant components
INSPIRE Registry
Online service for
common identifiers
and definitions for
data encoding
purposes
http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/registry/

15. Relevant components
INSPIRE Network services
• In INSPIRE data should be made available where best
managed
1. Discover
 Expose metadata through INSPIRE compliant discovery service
2. View
Interactive view of data through an INSPIRE compliant data
service
 Unified portrayal through OGC Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD)
3. Download

 Web Feature Service
 Atom feeds
4. Transform
 ETL

16. Relevant components
INSPIRE Geoportal
• Central access point to the INSPIRE
infrastructure and resources
(250000+)
 “The face” of INSPIRE
• Connection to all MS
network services
 cross-border data
discovery and
visualisation
 support to
 policy making

17. Key pillars of data interoperability
Conceptual data
models
Encoding
Harmonised
vocabularies
Registers
• conceptual
• to overcome
• provide unique
models
interoperability
INSPIRE Conceptual Frameworkand persistent
documents
independent of
issues caused by
identifiers for
concrete
free-text and/or
reference to
• cross-domain
encodings
multi-lingual
resources
harmonization
content
• standard
• allow their
• based on a
encoding: GML,
• allow additional
consistent
common
but also
terms from local
management
modelling
possible to
vocabularies
and versioning
framework
derive other
• managed in a
encodings (e.g.
common UML D2.6:Methodologyon RDF)
based
repository
D2.7: Guidelines
D2.9: O&M
D2.10.3: Common
for Specification
D2.5: Generic
for Encoding
Guidelines
data models
Development
Conceptual Model
• objects types,
properties &
described in
relationships

18. JRC INSPIRE/Air Quality pilot
Apply INSPIRE and Shared Environmental Information System
(SEIS) principles to Air Quality e-Reporting to the EEA
• Close collaboration with
• European Environmental Agency
• DG Environment
• Volunteer Member State institutions

19. Project Outputs
• One reporting model, satisfying both the legally binding
requirements of:
1. Extension of INSPIRE (2007/2/EC) data model with reporting obligations
from Directives 2004/107/EC and 2008/50/EC as regards the reciprocal
exchange of information and reporting on ambient air quality.
• Cross-border case study for the exchange of harmonized air
quality data in near-real time (NL-BE)
• Open source reporting instruments
•
INSPIRE compliant Sensor Observation Service (SOS)
•
Air Quality “Plans and Programs” e-Reporting tool
• Reflect lessons learned for INSPIRE evolution

20. Air Quality “Plans and Programs” e-Reporting
platform
• Platform for e-Reporting in compliance with AQ directive
implementing provisions
• High relevance to Appraisal FP7 project

21. Air Quality “Plans and Programs” e-Reporting
platform
• Open source solution
• Hierarchy of regional levels
• Multilingual
• Data Upload
• Exports into xml
• Fully compliant with Directives 2004/107/EC
and 2008/50/EC

22. Thank you 
the INSPIRE community looks forward to
working with you
• INSIRE forum: http://inspire-forum.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
• INSPIRE National contact points
• Joint Research Centre JRC team
http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/