1. The "WAY 4 INSPIRE" -
SEIS versus SISE
Approaches
Karel Charvat
Czech Centre for Science and
Society

2. 4 whom is INSPIRE important?
• Is INSPIRE really important for European citizens or is
it only political driven activity?
• The some question has to be answered for GMES?
• What are differences between SEIS and SISE
• How to deal with spatial or environmental
information around Europe?
• What we have to change in SEIS (INSPIRE, GMES)
approach to be accepted by European citizens?

3. SEIS
• The development of a now prioritised Shared
Environmental Information System in Europe SEIS,
should
– improve the usage of environmental data
– allow „streamlining and harmonisation of monitoring and
reporting obligations“, and
– include INSPIRE as a core element
• SEIS is in some way interaction of INSPIRE and GMES

4. SEIS
• The concept of “Shared Environmental
Information Space” (SEIS) is mainly
information support for implementation of
European Environmental Policies. The SEIS is
mainly top down driven and SEIS expected
mainly participation of public organisation. It
is focused on three aspects, organisational,
content and infrastructure.

5. SEIS
• EEA vision
Political commitment (legal framework)
Sharing (organisation) Partnership (win-win)
Networking (connecting)
Horizontal integration (thematic)
Environmental Information Vertical integration (local to global)
(content) Online access - real time
Multi-purpose (policy makers, public, research)
Tools for interoperability
System Mainly existing ICT Infrastructure
(infrastructure and services) Inspire, Reportnet, GMES etc.
New eServices for environment

6. SISE principles
– Bottom up approach
– Participation of public bodies, but also private initiatives,
communities and social networks on building of SISE
– To support not only sharing of information, but also their
analysis, modelling
– To support such activities like education, participation
access to information, protection, preparedness etc.
– The solution has to be focused on sharing not only data,
but also services

7. Key question for SISE
• Key question is not How?
• Key question is not What?
• Key question is “Why?”

8. Key question
• We need to ask, Why we need harmonize
concrete data, what will be purpose of sharing
this data across Europe, for which purpose is
important to know in Czech about Spanish
data for example.
• If we will be able to answer on this questions,
we can easy agreed about common data
model, services, architecture etc

9. How to answer on this question?
• “Why?” model is focused on user demand. It
is already implemented for example in
Plan4all
• We have to be focused on user participation
• User validation of solution

10. What is currently missing in SEIS
(INSPIRE, GMES) approach
• The awareness about INSPIRE (GMES, SEIS) is almost
zero on local, eventually on regional level in Europe
• INSPIRE is till now considered mainly as politically
driven initiative
• INSPIRE is more often understand as “you have to
do”, instead “it will bring you”
• The gap between “INSPIRE community” and “local
and regional users and data providers”

11. Tunnel concept
• SEIS and SISE has to be two ways of building
one tunnel from two sides of rock
– Top down SEIS approach
– Bottom up SISE initiatives
• We have guarantee, that we will meet and at
final we will have one tunnel

12. 3 ways …
Public Administration Portals
INSPIRE Google, Yahoo, …
Defined life‐cycle (?) Common internet user
Standards (OGC) Proprietary
Administration, legislative … Dependent on providers (data
Top‐down initiative ownership, licences…)
Community
OSM, soc. networks
Unclear life‐cycle 4th Way ?
+/‐ Standards
Rich data sources

13. 4th WAY ?
• Focus on interconnection of
information of public
administration, commercial sector
and social networks into one large
distributed network of information
and services. Intellectual Property
Rights to information and services
are preserved (provider can decide
to whom and how the data and the
GEOPORTAL services will be provided).
• INSPIRE compliant, exploitation
of open standards. “4th WAY” is a
support for building of Single
Information Space in Europe for
the Environment (SISE) a Shared
Environmental Information Space”
(SEIS) .

14. What we have to change for SEIS
• To move from “Pyramidal” approach of
INSPIRE, SEIS and GMES in the direction of
“Web (spider web)” approach, which really
reflect better user needs
– Current approach doesn’t support easy
integration of INSPIRE data into local and regional
solutions
• Use INSPIRE mainly as regulative framework
for building infrastructure reflecting needs of
regions, cities, citizens

15. What we have to change for SEIS
• Modify GMES to reflect better needs of
citizens, municipalities, regions
– To think at first if current GMES data could be
really used on regional or local level or if they are
mainly for EC reporting (CLC, Urban Atlas)
– To make GMES data accessible trough services
based on INSPIRE principles, not in proprietary
format

16. WAY 4 INSPIRE
• The right way for INSPIRE is INSPIRE 4 People
• Thank you
• charvat@ccss.cz