The establishment of Natura 2000 and the new trans-boundary EU approach for protected sites management has enforced the link between nature conservation and geo-information. This has generated the need for interoperable, accessible and harmonised datasets for the EU. The link is also addressed by the INSPIRE Directive which pursues an EU Spatial Data Infrastructure to support environmental policies.
The NATURE-SDIplus Network aims, through state-of-the-art methodologies and best practice examples, to improve harmonisation of national datasets and make them more accessible and exploitable. Therefore, it contributes to the INSPIRE implementation with specific reference to a cluster of data themes on nature conservation (Protected Sites, Biogeographical regions, Habitats and biotopes, Species distribution).
The main objective of the NATURE-SDIplus Network is to: involve new stakeholders; share data and best practices; improve and stimulate exploitation and the re-use of information on nature conservation.
Policy Context
The project strictly deals with European initiatives and policies.
In particular NATURE-SDIplus deals with INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC) and aims at supporting its implementation through the organisation of activities of networking addressed both at driving potential INSPIRE stakeholders to the application of INSPIRE principles and at validating and testing the INSPIRE implementing rules.Â
The project addresses also themes linked to the Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information, because the adopted solutions play a meaningful role in such a direction.
Moreover, Nature-SDIplus complies with i2010 particularly for aspects related to the setting of a European information society. Â
As far as the scientific aspects are concerned, the project themes strictly relate to the Directives "Birds" (Directive 79/409/EEC) and "Habitats" (Directive 92/43/EEC) and to international conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, Convention on Biological Diversity, Rio de Janeiro, 1992 - www.cbd.int), the Ramsar Convention on wetlands (1971, Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat. Ramsar (Iran), 2 February 1971), the Barcelona convention, the Helsinki convention, the OSPAR and the World Heritage.
In particular, the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) has to be taken into account because of its challenge to establish the Natura 2000 network of protected areas, which implies the need to share in a standardised way data on habitats and species and nature conservation in general. Â Moreover, the Article 6 of Habitats Directive introduces several management instruments for Natura 2000 protected sites (Assessment of Implications, Conservation Measures, Favourable Ecological Status and Biodiversity....) which require the availability of interoperable and accessible datasets, as possible practical applications for NATURE-SDIplus results.Â
Other standards and management rules available in the field of nature conservation (e.g. IUCN classification of protected areas) has been also taken into consideration because of the willingness by the NATURE-SDIplus Consortium to apply standards recognised at the EU and international level contributing also to their implementation.Â
When the geospatial community acts in an open environment, where it has to cope with resources developed in other domains not necessarily using the same specifications and standards, the result is that the adoption of a unique standard is not feasible. Thus, in addressing multicultural and multilingual issues, this project harmonises with existing standards on this topic, such as the ISO 19146 Cross Domain Vocabularies, ISO 19132 Location-based service Reference models, EN ISO 19104 terminology Geographic information and the ISO/TC 211 multilingual terminology maintenance group. The project also liaises with those involved in similar existing activities including OGC and W3C. NATURE-SDIplus collaborates with CEN/TC 287 in further activities aimed at developing a common nomenclature for the thematic domain of nature.
Description of target users and groups
Many human activities are related to nature conservation and then different user categories deal directly or indirectly with the related data sets in this field.
The figure below shows the different categories of stakeholders that have been considered within NATURE-SDIplus, as users or potential ones.
When it comes to the strictly technical issues, we can see that all the European and National / Regional Agencies for environment are interested in the harmonisation work and the related results, starting from a shared base cartography that allows to geo-relate the events.Â
Moreover, as far as the definition of community standards and guidelines defined by governmental and standardisation bodies at EU level is concerned, European bodies need strong support, above all for enforcement and validation of standards, while National GI Agencies need a European base cartography, above all in order to comply with European Directives in the field (e.g. INSPIRE Directive).
Description of the way to implement the initiative
NATURE-SDIplus aims at establishing a Best Practice Network dealing with the INSPIRE Directive and focused on the nature conservation issues.
The establishment of Natura 2000 and the new trans-boundary EU approach for protected sites management has enforced the link between nature conservation and geo-information. This has generated the need for interoperable, accessible and harmonised datasets for the EU. The link is also addressed by the INSPIRE Directive which pursues an EU Spatial Data Infrastructure to support environmental policies.
The NATURE-SDIplus Network aims, through state-of-the-art methodologies and best practice examples, to improve harmonisation of national datasets and make them more accessible and exploitable. Therefore, it contributes to the INSPIRE implementation with specific reference to a cluster of data themes on nature conservation (as per the INSPIRE Annexes):
- Protected sites (Annex I);
- Biogeographical regions, Habitats and biotopes, Species distribution (Annex III).
The main objective of the NATURE-SDIplus Network is to: involve new stakeholders; share data and best practices; improve and stimulate exploitation and the re-use of information on nature conservation.
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Objectives
The NATURE-SDIplus project's main objective is to establish a Best Practice Network on geographical information for nature conservation to stimulate the members and involve the target users to improve the harmonisation of their datasets on nature conservation to better exploit and access them.
NATURE-SDIplus proposes, as a first attempt toward the harmonisation process, the evaluation of the common metadata profile as defined by the INSPIRE Drafting Team which is focusing on discovery mandatory elements (a set of metadata elements to provide a comprehensive and relevant description of community resources) based on the ISO 19115/119 standards and a common data model compliant with INSPIRE specifications.
The accessibility of the metadata profile by the target users beyond the end of the project is assured by publishing the profile as a CEN document. In this way the information is accessible for all members of the EU and EFTA. The data accessibility is supported by a set of web services available and accessible by the NATURE-SDIplus Geo-portal having also the aim to attract and encourage the involvement of the NATURE-SDIplus Network members and stakeholders in this process.
The project Consortium interacts with INSPIRE Drafting Teams both to tune the adopted solutions according to INSPIRE specifications and to support the Implementation of the Directive at network level.
Data availability (following IPR conditions) is being assured by the data providers and the national co-ordinator of data providers belonging to the NATURE-SDIplus Consortium, whilst other data have been sought during the project by exploiting the potentiality of the network in terms of new members and the recruitment of new data providers.
Collection of Good Practices has been initiated which will be organized into a database according to a structured template, and also will be available for training purpose. Good Practice Workshops are organized in the framework of the project by inviting selected stakeholders to present and share their experience.
Technology solution
One of the main aims of the project and of the INSPIRE initiative is to share the available data without centralizing them in a common location (database), but providing a shared service permitting the user to have access to the exposed data by going to recover them directly from the data provider servers. This is possible through the setup of customized tools which permit the user to discover the exposed data by each data provider; to check, visualize and access them in a common interface based on consolidated standards (OGC clients).
The Metadata profile, data model and Web services are developed by taking into consideration CEN, ISO and OGC standards as well as INSPIRE Implementing Rules (whenever available) based on them and the preparatory documents that are used for developing them.
The core resource is the data collected in distributed datasets. According to the INSPIRE principle, all the shared data are accessible via spatial data services. Data and services are described by metadata permitting to humans and software applications to discover and exploit the shared resources.
The project foresees the design and development of the NATURE-SDIplus geoportal permitting recovery of metadata, data and services either from the single data providers or from already existing geoportal (good practices). A set of good practices collecting and distributing thematic data will be identified and selected as reference regional/national data centre. If possible, a national data coordinator has been defined for each country, taking care of the collection and the provision of services in order to be the reference national geoportal to expose information versus NATURE-SDIplus portal.
The NATURE-SDIplus geoportal will integrate information recovered by each single data provider but also by the national geoportal, with the aim to test the effective interoperability either of the data and the systems (system of systems).
Technology choice: Standards-based technologyMain results, benefits and impacts
NATURE-SDIplus will analyse the usability and accessibility of data. The results of this analysis will be used to develop a European metadata profile based on ISO 19115/119 standards and data model in CEN/TC 287 Geographic information.
The metadata profile will be for evaluation and use and will start from the INSPIRE metadata profile for discovery and will be compliant with the INSPIRE Directive, and data model. It will be done in coordination with CEN/TC 287 Geographic information.
Representative data-sets will be provided by the partners from many EU Member States.
NATURE-SDIplus will define a common multilingual and multicultural approach for a simpler, and standard, access to spatial data.
A demonstration infrastructure based on an architecture compliant with the INSPIRE principle and supported by web services, will provide data accessibility for the different stakeholders and a dedicated geoportal (NATURE-SDIplus Geoportal) will be the main door to access the datasets and services available. This geoportal will then afford a means to actively engage the stakeholders.
Through networking activities a Nature-SDIplus Community will be established. This Community will address the relevant themes on a consensus building approach. This Community will also demonstrate the effectiveness of the Nature-GIS thematic SDIC that is already registered with INSPIRE.Â
NATURE-SDIplus will, through training and dissemination, ensure that widespread awareness is achieved.
Track record of sharing
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Six workshops and conferences have been held:
1. Nature-SDIplus Conference - INSPIRE in NATURE CONSERVATION: European Experiences, Montpellier, 7th October 2009
2. NATURE-SDIplus Hungarian Workshop, Budapest, 11th November 2009
3. NATURE-SDIplus Bulgarian Workshop, Sofia, 1st - 2nd December 2009
4. Nature-SDIplus & VESTA-GIS Training Workshop, Chania (GR), 27th April 2010
5. Nature-SDIplus Workshop - INSPIRE 2010, Krakow, 22nd June 2010
6. VESTA-GIS Final Conference & NATURE-SDIplus Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 29th September 2010
Three newsletters have been produced (4/2009, 1/2010, 09/2010).
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Lessons learnt
This field will be completed when the lessons learnt have been identified and understood by the project responsible.
Scope: Cross-border, International, Local (city or municipality), National, Pan-European, Regional (sub-national)