Theme1
Sub-Projects – Theme 1 – Environment
What has been done so far?
The sub-project „Cross-SIS“ started on 30th May 2005 with an inaugurating meeting in Pamplona/ Navarra devoted to the introduction of project partners representing five European regions (Navarra, North Rhine-Westphalia, Gelderland, Overijssel, Lower Austria), specification of the activity plan and presentation of work packages in phase I. The first phase focused on best practices in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) in regional and cross-border context that had to be identified and assessed by the project partners. A method to evaluate cross-border and regional Spatial Information Systems (SIS) and SDI was developed by the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University Münster (North Rhine-Westphalia) and used for the selection of most interesting examples. Afterwards these best practices were presented and discussed by the partners during a joint meeting that took place on 18-19 October in Arnhem (Gelderland). Based on the discussions and evaluation results two working groups for statistics and planning were established, which had the task to analyse the technical, administrative and legal problems related to cross-border SIS services in phase II of the project, and then elaborate practical problem solutions and explore possibilities of data standardisation and homogenisation. Considering growing importance of spatial data for decision making processes at regional / local, national and European level the harmonisation of spatial data and application of cross-border SIS services could be a key element for cross-border management in various areas (water management, tourism, environmental protection etc.) and play a supportive role in elaborating joint strategies and policies.
In phase III two pilot projects were developed that focus on statistics and planning In order to demonstrate the practicability of cross-border SIS services. As in the participating regions different standards and technologies are used while applying spatial data at first the project partners had to agree on joint technical requirements as well as some functional, organisational and content-related aspects. All urgent questions were clarified either via internet with partners responsible for the pilots or during project meetings that took place on 14-15 December 2005 in Bonn, on 13-14 February 2006 in Vienna and on 19-20 June 2006 in Münster.
As main output in phase III, two pilot projects have been finalised that set up cross-border SIS services in statistics and planning. Accordingly, two Web-GIS-clients have been developed that present integrated statistical and planning data from participating regions as interactive maps. The added value of the pilots is the presentation of statistical and planning data in a cross-border context, free of charge via the internet. In addition, each region can at any time and at any place check and up-date the available data due to the applied decentralised preparation and up-dating processes. Further advantages are a friendly interface and an easy-to-use approach for both beginners and experts (see: http://www.gis3.nrw.de/crosssis and http://www.tim-online.nrw.de/gdi-europe).
As the pilot projects were developed in accordance with the INSPIRE-directive of the European Union they could serve as a platform for other European regions that would like to present their data. Accordingly, in order to get some feedback on the project and exchange ideas on future prospects for such initiatives phase IV of the project focused on dissemination of information within the RFO-network and the GIS+GDI community. The Cross-SIS project and its results were presented on various occasions during GIS workshops (e.g. EC GI & GIS Workshop on 21-23 June 2006 in Innsbruck, Global SDI on 6-10 November 2006 in Santiago de Chile) and RFO events (Thematic Forums, Annual Conferences). Furthermore, at the initiative of the project partners, a Cross-SIS seminar “Inside INSPIRE; the cross-sis experience” was organised on 20th September 2006 in Brussels, during which common problems and possibilities of cross-border SIS applications were discussed based on the example of the two pilots.
In order to evaluate and further improve the Cross-SIS project, in particular the pilots, and to enhance the user-friendliness of the Web-GIS-clients some additional activities are implemented in the first half-year of 2007 following what had been intended to be the official final meeting of the projects partners in December 2006.
