The bigger picture

Representing nearly all of Europe’s national mapping and cadatral agencies (NMCA), EuroGeographics is the official voice of the spatial data sector in the region. The organisation seeks to work with its members – currently comprising 49 organisations from 42 countries – partners, customers and the European Commission to develop European products and services and promote effective collaboration and knowledge transfer.

EI caught up with Nick Land, Executive Director of EuroGeographics, to find out more about how the organisation sets about achieving its ultimate goal – developing the European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI) is to achieve interoperability of European mapping and other GI data.

EI. Nick, EuroGeographics represents so many organisations from different nations. What are the challenges associated with this?

NL. The main challenge is that our members – the National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies – have a long history of creating and maintaining their datasets according to their specific national requirements and culture. This has led to a situation where there are considerable differences in specifications between the members, particularly when it comes to their topographic datasets, but also cadastral databases.

EI. So what problems does this raise and how is the industry addressing them?

NL. These differences make it very difficult to bring data together – to harmonise it – at the European level without significant expenditure. However, all of our members are currently changing their national specifications and upgrading their databases. This gives us a ‘window of opportunity’ to influence these changes and encourage the adoption of European standards. In so doing, it will become much easier to deliver consistent, ‘interoperable’ European-wide geographic information at less cost and more quickly than we can today.

EI. To what extent is there currently regionwide and global collaboration in finding ways to optimise the use of geospatial information?

NL. EuroGeographics was established to improve cooperation amongst the NMCA across Europe. This has resulted in the production of three pan-European products, which are now made available to the market either directly from EuroGeographics or through a network of Value Added Resellers. Looking more globally, EuroGeographics is a member of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association, which also aims to encourage cooperation and sharing of best practice across the world, and we are also members of the ‘GlobalMap’ project that will create a dataset covering the world.

EI. What ongoing programmes or initiatives are on-going in Europe or individual nations to support these aims?

NL. The European Union is increasingly active in the area of geographic information. The proposed INSPIRE Directive, currently passing through the co-decision process, aims to provide a legal framework within which Europe’s Spatial Data Infrastructure can be developed with a particular focus on supporting environmental policy.

Other programmes such as GMES – Global Monitoring for Environment and Security – and Galileo are also encouraging greater cooperation, involving both the public and private sectors. More generally, the EU Directive on the reuse of Public Sector Information (PSI) is providing a further stimulus for the private sector to exploit public sector information, which includes geographic information.

EI. And how successful have these activities been to date. What are the main challenges and barriers to achieving these goals today?

NL. I believe it is fair to say that the above activities have contributed to much greater levels of cooperation and increased awareness of the need to support not only national goals, but also European goals. Of course there is more to be done and central to this is ensuring there is sufficient investment to overcome the remaining technical and business challenges. On the technical side there is a huge amount of work required to develop European specifications based on a clear understanding of user requirements and putting in place the technical services/infrastructure that will translate national data into those European specifications.

On the business side, there is a need to maintain or put in place sustainable funding models that will allow organisations such as the National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies to invest in and meet the requirements of both their national and European customers.

EI. What do you see as the benefits or potential pitfalls of open source software for the GIS community?

NL. Mapping and cadastral agencies provide to the public very valuable sources of data, which reflect considerable financial investment over the years and are based on a variety of technical sciences. If you consider the diverse disciplines of cartography, image processing, data modelling, land surveying, geodesy and others, these all must be supported by solutions that are both open and based on extensible architectures. This in turn requires long-term technical support and investment by technology suppliers in new tools to secure investment in the data and provide support for growing requirements.

It is also important, particularly in the context of INSPIRE, that technology providers invest in IT and GIS standards that will become an increasingly important component of any solution implemented by our members and partners.

I believe, therefore, whilst open source may be interesting particularly to the research community, its incorporation into production agencies who depend on highly developed and supported solutions may present problems resulting from immature and short term niche solutions.

EI. What incentives are there for those in the geospatial information community to cooperate with the aims of INSPIRE and to invest or adapt as appropriate?

NL. All the Members of EuroGeographics support the aims of INSPIRE and indeed the EuroGeographics strategy is fully aligned with the requirements of INSPIRE. Our members believe that INSPIRE must be based on, underpinned by, the geographic information that they manage at the national level. This will provide the European users – in the public sector, private sector and the citizens of Europe – with the best and most reliable geographic information.

The European market is growing and, therefore, INSPIRE will provide a framework for maximising the use of our members’ data beyond their national borders. In addition, as noted above, many of our members are making changes to their databases and the technology used to manage and distribute the data. INSPIRE provides an opportunity to share and re-use best practice, including for example the adoption of European specifications.

EI. How do you predict this sector will look in 5-10 years’ time? Are you positive about the changes and improvements that might take place in the future?

NL. I am very positive. Last year, EuroGeographics had its best year ever in terms of volume and value of sales, indicating that the market for (pan-European) geographic information, in both the public and private sectors, is growing. This positive trend is also reflected in the increasing recognition of the value of geographic information in support of good governance, economic development and the delivery of better services to the citizens of Europe.

I can see ever-greater demands for high quality geographic information and I am sure we will see much greater levels of cooperation, particularly between the public and private sectors. In 10 years time, Europe could have the most impressive geographic information infrastructure in the world.

For more information, please contact Nick at Nick.land@eurogeographics.org or call +33 164 153 265 DD