May 2009
European SDIs
at different levels
Kevin Mooney
Secretary General, EuroSDR,
Dept. of Spatial Information Sciences,
The Dublin Institute of Technology
Is EuroSDR, a European Spa-
tial Data Research Network,
involved in the Infrastructure for
Spatial Information in Europe
(INSPIRE) initiative?
We are certainly involved. EuroSDR is a
network which contains representatives
from many mapping agencies in Europe
and universities.
Much of the data in INSPIRE is generated
by mapping agencies. EuroSDR has
become a spatial data interest community
which is part of the INSPIRE structure.
Our role is to contribute to the development
of implementing rules of INSPIRE.
We nominated a number of our members
to join the working groups and drafting
teams that are preparing the implementing
rules. To that extent we are very much
evolved.
What is your experience in
general about the concept of
SDI?
Spatial data infrastructures (SDI)
in Europe are developing at different
levels and in phases.
Some countries are very
advanced in building their
national spatial data infrastructures
(NSDI). All the countries
are waiting for the INSPIRE SDI
to become operational. In my own
country Ireland, some development
work has been done but they largely
follow INSPIRE rules while some
countries have quite sophisticated
SDIs. One of the biggest problems with
spatial data is that we have over 40
countries in Europe and have to
address issues like harmonisation of
data, interoperability, software
and systems and the
adoption of standards.
We
believe that
INSPIRE
will help the
harmonisation
and interoperability issues. It will also
help the countries to position themselves
for new services the public will expect in
the future. It is something everybody is
happy to be involved in.
You were talking about inter-
operability. I presume you are
going by ISO/TC211 and OGC
specifications.
While we are a liaison member of ISO and
member of CEN, a European standard
organisation, we have an MoU with OGC.
We approach standards in two ways. We
have a working group which is chaired by
Prof Wolfgang Kresse of Germany and he
is a member of the relevant technical
committee of ISO. He brings the views of
EuroSDR to these committees and he
reports back. The second way is more
direct, such as in the case of CityGML. We
have held a number of workshops on
GML because many mapping agencies
are moving their databases from cartographic
databases to landscape models.
These are based on GML. CityGML is an
initiative that came from a special interest
group in Germany. They developed it to a
certain level and we asked them to
become part of a EuroSDR project to
inform the EuroSDR network about the
potential of CityGML and also to hear
from the EuroSDR network on what we
feel we need in the urban modelling standards.
This project works closely with
OGC.
Talking about NSDI, people
talk about communities and
one of the communities NSDI
should serve is the general public.
Can initiatives like INSPIRE help in
that process?
I believe so. There is a second initiative in
Europe called GMES - Global Monitoring
for Environment and Security. INSPIRE
and GMES are closely related and will
help to break down barriers to the
exchange of information. Licensing and
finance are only two
of these.
Many are technical
and we address the
research areas in this
regard. Our research
agenda and commissions extend from
data acquisition, right through specifications
and network services. As an example
imagine an online tourist application. For
example, I want to go on a walking trail
between Belgium, Netherlands and Germany
and I want to do this over a number
of days. I am of a particular age and I want
to know how difficult it is. I also want to
know all places I can stop on my way. All
this information can be made available by
the application of data coming from the
different mapping agencies if the technical
issues can be solved.
Is there a situation where
there is a resistance to shar-
ing of data?
At EuroSDR level, no. There is a real willingness
among European players to share
experience and to get solutions that suit
everybody. We generate data for EuroSDR
projects. There is a willingness to share
that data for the profit of research organisations.
Sharing of commercial data is not
an area where EuroSDR has a view.
So, is this more a commercial
issue?
Regarding any data used in EuroSDR
project provided to us by a commercial
company, we feel we will not be able to
give that data out without the company’s
permission. Within INSPIRE, there is a
principle that data should be available free.
But mapping agencies believe there is a
cost involved in generating the data so
data cannot necessarily be given free. I
don’t know how this will eventually be
resolved but this is not something that
EuroSDR has a strong view on. EuroSDR
is more concerned with spatial data
research rather than policy issues.
People have been talking
about SDI for many years.
Do you think initiatives like Google
Earth are jumping the gun and mak-
ing SDIs redundant?
I don’t think they are making SDIs redundant.
We in fact welcome these initiatives.
They will raise the awareness of spatial
information to a large degree and it will
almost become a natural thing to look for
spatial information on Google Earth or MS
Virtual Earth. But you still have applications
where large scale, 3D, quality
assured data is needed. And for these
applications, SDIs are needed for business,
transport, environmental protection,
tourism and so on. All these services will
require data that are not really available
through the global systems.
There seems always to be a
shortage of trained manpow-
er in this part of the world. Did you
face problem?
There are many universities in Europe.
There seems to be a trend all over Europe
and in Ireland, where young people coming
out of secondary schools are moving
away from science and engineering
streams into business areas as they see,
in the past at least, that this is where millionaires
came from. And so we find it difficult
to get sufficient students for undergraduate
courses. In postgraduate courses,
we have many students coming from
different disciplines into geoinformatics
and geomatics from Europe and other
parts of the world.
Another area that’s going to be important
is to update the skills of qualified people
and expose them to new areas. For the
last eight years, EuroSDR has been running
e-learning distance courses.
These courses are designed to transfer
the results of our research to the production
domain. We attract many participants
for these courses from the mapping agencies
of Europe and other international
organisations. We have four short term
courses every year. Participants receive
course material and assignments to carry
out. This has led to a continuing network
of the students who did the courses and
the teachers. This is a big advantage of
the e-learning courses.
How are your research proj-
ects and courses charted
out?
We have about 18 member countries with
two delegates each, one from a mapping
agency or production organisation and
one from a research university. We then
decide our research needs for spatial data
production for the next five years. We take
inputs and the requirements of mapping
agencies into account and prepare a
research plan, which we review and
update every three years. Then, we decide
on the number of commissions as part of
this research plan and invite experts to join
EuroSDR as commission chairmen. Their
job is to propose projects that will address
the research plan. The projects then begin.
The commission chairmen will try and
identify leaders and work along with them.
The first thing a project leader will do is to
invite participants from around the world.
At the same time, he will devise a set of
steps for the project and decide on the
deliverables and milestones. Then, we
gather the data. Very often, mapping
agencies volunteer to give data or commercial
agencies fly with LiDAR or digital
cameras for example. That data is then
collected by the project centre and distributed
to the project participants.
Participants then follow the instructions of
the projects – using their own software,
algorithms or systems to work with the
data. If we feel it important to organise
one or two-day workshops to discuss the
experiences of the project and results of
the project, we do. In the second phase of
the project, after two years when all the
data has been processed, we publish the
results and we also try and develop an elearning
course on the project. Our projects
are essentially application oriented.
Some times, the research might simply be
a series of workshops addressing very
specific issues, particularly in relation to
SDIs.
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