Am 29. und 30. Januar trafen sich über 40 INSPIRE-Nutzende und Fachleute zum diesjährigen hale»Anwenderforum in Darmstadt. Neben der Umsetzung von INSPIRE ging es um kommunale Herausforderungen wie XPlanung und darum, wie INSPIRE zukünftig für innovative Anwendungen genutzt werden kann (hier geht es zum vollständigen Programm mit allen Vorträgen).

Einige Teilnehmende hatten bereits INSPIRE and Beyond in 2018 besucht. Die meisten waren aber zum ersten Mal dabei. Und alle hatten ein gemeinsames Ziel: Die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von INSPIRE. Im offenen Forum wurden viele Fragen diskutiert und beantwortet. Dabei wurde aber auch deutlich, dass es noch viele Herausforderungen und keine abschließende Lösung gibt. Und dass alle diese Erfahrung miteinander teilen.

Vier Key Notes eröffneten die Veranstaltung:

• INSPIRE als offene Plattform – Thorsten Reitz (wetransform)
• Innovationsprojekte bei der AdV - Standardisierte Geodaten mit Mehrwert nutzen – Dr. Markus Seifert (LDBV Bayern & AdV)
• Digitale Transformation der Verwaltung der Stadt Freiburg – Michael Schulz (IT-Leiter, Stadt Freiburg)
• XPlanung als Grundlage innovativer Verwaltungsleistungen und Industrieanwendungen – Xinxin Duan (Leitstelle XPlanung / XBau)

In den anschließenden Workshops wurden ausgewählte Themen mit Hilfe von Fachleuten vertieft:

• Werkzeuge zur Konformitätsprüfung von Geodaten (INSPIRE Validation Framework ETF, Linkage Checker, GDI-DE-Testsuite, AdV-Testsuite) und Testsuite-Erzeugung mit dem Profilmanagement-Werkzeug von hale»connect – mit Dejan Deordic (Landesamt für Geoinformation und Landentwicklung in Baden-Württemberg)
• Lösung spezifischer Anwendungsfälle der Teilnehmer mit hale»studio und Herausforderungen bei der Veröffentlichung von Services mit deegree – mit Florian Esser (wetransform)
• Aufbereitung und automatisierte Veröffentlichung kommunaler Geodaten, relevante Formate wie INSPIRE, XPlanung und ISYBAU sowie ein durchgehender Workflow über alle Ebenen (Gemeinde, Landkreise, Land, Dienstleister) – mit Stefan Rommelfangen (DIKO AöR)
• INSPIRE-Netzwerkdienste für Coverage-Themen: Unvereinbarkeit von OGC WCS mit INSPIRE-Coverage-Daten-Spezifikationen, Lösungsstrategien in der Praxis und deren Vor- und Nachteile – mit Johanna Ott & Florian Esser (beide wetransform)

Im weiteren Verlauf sprach Thorsten Reitz über die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen von Alternative Encodings wie GeoJSON, GeoPackage, Linked Data und Visualisierung. Neue Features wie das Profile Management mit hale»connect und dem GeoPackage Reader/Writer mit hale»studio und wurden vorgestellt. Zum Abschluss ging es um den praktischen Nutzen von INSPIRE. Thorsten Reitz stellte drei Innovationsprojekte vor, die erst durch INSPIRE realisiert werden können: Der Waldumbau in Zeiten des Klimawandels, dynamische Flugverbotskarten für Drohnen und das Management von Geo-Gefahren auf Basis kognitiver KI-Verfahren.

Das Feedback der Teilnehmenden war durchweg positiv: „Inhaltsreicher und lösungsorientierter Austausch“, „tolle INSPIRE Community - mit hale habe ich die richtige Entscheidung getroffen“, „der Austausch mit den anderen Teilnehmern bringt viele neue Denkanstöße“, „hinter wetransform steckt ein kompetentes und sympathisches Team!“ und „die 2 Tage haben sich sehr gelohnt!“. Im nächsten Jahr geht es weiter mit dem Anwenderforum in Darmstadt. Ähnliche Veranstaltungen in anderen Ländern in diesem Jahr sind bereits in Planung. Und wer im Mai zur INSPIRE 2020 in Dubrovnik kommt, wird dort auch in den Vorträgen und Workshops mehr von wetransform erfahren.

hale»User Forum 2020

On January 29th and 30th, over 40 INSPIRE users and experts met for this year’s hale»User Forum in Darmstadt. In addition to implementing INSPIRE, the focus was on municipal challenges such as XPlanung and how INSPIRE can be used for innovative applications in the future (click here for the complete program with all presentations)

Some participants had already visited INSPIRE and Beyond in 2018. However, most were there for the first time. And everyone had a common goal: the successful implementation of INSPIRE. Many questions were discussed and answered in the open forum. It also became clear that there are still many challenges and no final solutions. And that everyone shares this experience.

Four key notes opened the event:

• INSPIRE as an open platform – Thorsten Reitz (wetransform)
• Innovation projects at the AdV - Use standardized geodata with added value – Dr. Markus Seifert (LDBV Bayern & AdV)
• Digital transformation of the administration of the city of Freiburg – Michael Schulz (Head of IT of the city of Freiburg)
• XPlanung as the basis of innovative administrative services and industrial applications – Xinxin Duan (Leitstelle XPlanung / XBau)

In the subsequent workshops, selected topics were explored in-depth with the help of experts:

• Tools for checking the conformity of geodata (INSPIRE Validation Framework ETF, Linkage Checker, GDI-DE test suite, AdV test suite) and test suite creation with the profile management tool from hale»connect – with Dejan Deordic (Landesamt für Geoinformation und Landentwicklung in Baden-Württemberg)
• Solutions for specific use cases of the participants with hale»studio and challenges when publishing services with deegree – with Florian Esser (wetransform)
• Preparation and automated publication of municipal geodata, relevant formats such as INSPIRE, XPlanung and ISYBAU as well as a continuous workflow across all levels (municipality, district, country, service provider) – with Stefan Rommelfangen (DIKO AöR)
• INSPIRE network services for coverage topics: incompatibility of OGC WCS with INSPIRE coverage data specifications, practical solution strategies and their advantages and disadvantages – with Johanna Ott & Florian Esser (both wetransform)

Afterwards, Thorsten Reitz spoke about the possibilities and limits of alternative encodings such as GeoJSON, GeoPackage, linked data and visualization. New features such as hale»connect’s profile management and hale»studio’s GeoPackage Reader / Writer were presented. Finally, the practical benefits of INSPIRE were discussed. Thorsten Reitz presented three innovation projects that could only be implemented by INSPIRE: future forest conversion in times of climate change, dynamic no-fly maps for drones and the management of geo-hazards based on cognitive AI.

The feedback from the participants was consistently positive: “Substantial and solution-oriented exchange”, “great INSPIRE community - I made the right decision with hale”, “the exchange with the other participants brings a lot of new food for thought”, “behind wetransform is a competent and friendly team!” and “the two days were very worthwhile!”. The user forum in Darmstadt will continue next year. Similar events in other countries this year are already being planned. And those who will attend INSPIRE 2020 in Dubrovnik in May will also learn more about wetransform in the lectures and workshops there.

Am 29. und 30. Januar trafen sich über 40 INSPIRE-Nutzende und Fachleute zum diesjährigen hale»Anwenderforum in Darmstadt. Neben der Umsetzung von INSPIRE ging es um kommunale Herausforderungen wie XPlanung und darum, wie INSPIRE zukünftig für innovative Anwendungen genutzt werden kann (hier geht es zum vollständigen Programm mit allen Vorträgen).

Einige Teilnehmende hatten bereits INSPIRE and Beyond in 2018 besucht. Die meisten waren aber zum ersten Mal dabei. Und alle hatten ein gemeinsames Ziel: Die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von INSPIRE. Im offenen Forum wurden viele Fragen diskutiert und beantwortet. Dabei wurde aber auch deutlich, dass es noch viele Herausforderungen und keine abschließende Lösung gibt. Und dass alle diese Erfahrung miteinander teilen.

Vier Key Notes eröffneten die Veranstaltung:

• INSPIRE als offene Plattform – Thorsten Reitz (wetransform)
• Innovationsprojekte bei der AdV - Standardisierte Geodaten mit Mehrwert nutzen – Dr. Markus Seifert (LDBV Bayern & AdV)
• Digitale Transformation der Verwaltung der Stadt Freiburg – Michael Schulz (IT-Leiter, Stadt Freiburg)
• XPlanung als Grundlage innovativer Verwaltungsleistungen und Industrieanwendungen – Xinxin Duan (Leitstelle XPlanung / XBau)

In den anschließenden Workshops wurden ausgewählte Themen mit Hilfe von Fachleuten vertieft:

• Werkzeuge zur Konformitätsprüfung von Geodaten (INSPIRE Validation Framework ETF, Linkage Checker, GDI-DE-Testsuite, AdV-Testsuite) und Testsuite-Erzeugung mit dem Profilmanagement-Werkzeug von hale»connect – mit Dejan Deordic (Landesamt für Geoinformation und Landentwicklung in Baden-Württemberg)
• Lösung spezifischer Anwendungsfälle der Teilnehmer mit hale»studio und Herausforderungen bei der Veröffentlichung von Services mit deegree – mit Florian Esser (wetransform)
• Aufbereitung und automatisierte Veröffentlichung kommunaler Geodaten, relevante Formate wie INSPIRE, XPlanung und ISYBAU sowie ein durchgehender Workflow über alle Ebenen (Gemeinde, Landkreise, Land, Dienstleister) – mit Stefan Rommelfangen (DIKO AöR)
• INSPIRE-Netzwerkdienste für Coverage-Themen: Unvereinbarkeit von OGC WCS mit INSPIRE-Coverage-Daten-Spezifikationen, Lösungsstrategien in der Praxis und deren Vor- und Nachteile – mit Johanna Ott & Florian Esser (beide wetransform)

Im weiteren Verlauf sprach Thorsten Reitz über die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen von Alternative Encodings wie GeoJSON, GeoPackage, Linked Data und Visualisierung. Neue Features wie das Profile Management mit hale»connect und dem GeoPackage Reader/Writer mit hale»studio und wurden vorgestellt. Zum Abschluss ging es um den praktischen Nutzen von INSPIRE. Thorsten Reitz stellte drei Innovationsprojekte vor, die erst durch INSPIRE realisiert werden können: Der Waldumbau in Zeiten des Klimawandels, dynamische Flugverbotskarten für Drohnen und das Management von Geo-Gefahren auf Basis kognitiver KI-Verfahren.

Das Feedback der Teilnehmenden war durchweg positiv: „Inhaltsreicher und lösungsorientierter Austausch“, „tolle INSPIRE Community - mit hale habe ich die richtige Entscheidung getroffen“, „der Austausch mit den anderen Teilnehmern bringt viele neue Denkanstöße“, „hinter wetransform steckt ein kompetentes und sympathisches Team!“ und „die 2 Tage haben sich sehr gelohnt!“. Im nächsten Jahr geht es weiter mit dem Anwenderforum in Darmstadt. Ähnliche Veranstaltungen in anderen Ländern in diesem Jahr sind bereits in Planung. Und wer im Mai zur INSPIRE 2020 in Dubrovnik kommt, wird dort auch in den Vorträgen und Workshops mehr von wetransform erfahren.

hale»User Forum 2020

On January 29th and 30th, over 40 INSPIRE users and experts met for this year’s hale»User Forum in Darmstadt. In addition to implementing INSPIRE, the focus was on municipal challenges such as XPlanung and how INSPIRE can be used for innovative applications in the future (click here for the complete program with all presentations)

Some participants had already visited INSPIRE and Beyond in 2018. However, most were there for the first time. And everyone had a common goal: the successful implementation of INSPIRE. Many questions were discussed and answered in the open forum. It also became clear that there are still many challenges and no final solutions. And that everyone shares this experience.

Four key notes opened the event:

• INSPIRE as an open platform – Thorsten Reitz (wetransform)
• Innovation projects at the AdV - Use standardized geodata with added value – Dr. Markus Seifert (LDBV Bayern & AdV)
• Digital transformation of the administration of the city of Freiburg – Michael Schulz (Head of IT of the city of Freiburg)
• XPlanung as the basis of innovative administrative services and industrial applications – Xinxin Duan (Leitstelle XPlanung / XBau)

In the subsequent workshops, selected topics were explored in-depth with the help of experts:

• Tools for checking the conformity of geodata (INSPIRE Validation Framework ETF, Linkage Checker, GDI-DE test suite, AdV test suite) and test suite creation with the profile management tool from hale»connect – with Dejan Deordic (Landesamt für Geoinformation und Landentwicklung in Baden-Württemberg)
• Solutions for specific use cases of the participants with hale»studio and challenges when publishing services with deegree – with Florian Esser (wetransform)
• Preparation and automated publication of municipal geodata, relevant formats such as INSPIRE, XPlanung and ISYBAU as well as a continuous workflow across all levels (municipality, district, country, service provider) – with Stefan Rommelfangen (DIKO AöR)
• INSPIRE network services for coverage topics: incompatibility of OGC WCS with INSPIRE coverage data specifications, practical solution strategies and their advantages and disadvantages – with Johanna Ott & Florian Esser (both wetransform)

Afterwards, Thorsten Reitz spoke about the possibilities and limits of alternative encodings such as GeoJSON, GeoPackage, linked data and visualization. New features such as hale»connect’s profile management and hale»studio’s GeoPackage Reader / Writer were presented. Finally, the practical benefits of INSPIRE were discussed. Thorsten Reitz presented three innovation projects that could only be implemented by INSPIRE: future forest conversion in times of climate change, dynamic no-fly maps for drones and the management of geo-hazards based on cognitive AI.

The feedback from the participants was consistently positive: “Substantial and solution-oriented exchange”, “great INSPIRE community - I made the right decision with hale”, “the exchange with the other participants brings a lot of new food for thought”, “behind wetransform is a competent and friendly team!” and “the two days were very worthwhile!”. The user forum in Darmstadt will continue next year. Similar events in other countries this year are already being planned. And those who will attend INSPIRE 2020 in Dubrovnik in May will also learn more about wetransform in the lectures and workshops there.

Many INSPIRE implementers we talk to question the usefulness of the directive. They see a lot of effort to create and update metadata, to harmonise data and to publish view and download services, but also see that these are hard to use for their own core processes, due to a mismatch between the formats and data models and what typical GIS software can easily consume.

INSPIRE Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) implementation focuses on two aspects:

• Making the data accessible: The SDI on an international, national and regional level is specified. Metadata, view and download services, and data access APIs are implemented.
• Making the data usable: The SDI on an international, national and regional level is specified, and the associated datasets are documented, interoperable and validated according the relevant specifications.

Achieving these would mean that you are fully INSPIRE compliant. New users will find data much more easily, and they will be able to use it since it is documented and harmonised. The question that remains, however, is how can this interoperability provide a return on the investment to the actual implementers?

Interoperable datasets provide the value add of reducing future costs for data exchange data between authorities, and they reduce costs for the deployment of new processes since standard tools can be used.

Both internal and external Return of Investment will increase exponentially when a third aspect is added to the SDI, which is making the data useful. For this, data in the SDI has to be optimized to match used cases applicable for relevant stakeholders, content and delivery methods must be curated and optimized, and datasets must be prioritised. Such use-case optimized specifications can take many forms:

• INSPIRE extensions targeted at enriching data in the SDI in order to better support specific business requirements;
• Analytic APIs targeted at boosting data-driven analysis;
• BI/AI data optimization to reduce AI model training costs and improve the quality of the data that forms the basis of certain business processes.

The current status of the maturity of SDIs as data platforms is shown below:

Maturity of SDIs as Data Platforms

To make INSPIRE data more usable and useful, wetransform along with partner organizations has initiated the GO-PEG project. The project aims to bring high-value, harmonised spatial data sets to the European Data Portal. Such data sets are currently often inaccessible, fragmented, and highly heterogeneous, as they are managed by dozens, or even hundreds of different organisations.

GO-PEG intends to set up a highly automated data harmonisation workbench, from which web services providing access (view and download) to harmonised thematic open dataset(s) from multiple and heterogeneous candidate data sources (including geospatial data provided under INSPIRE, Copernicus data and data provided by crowd-sourced initiatives such as OpenStreetMap) are generated.

The project will benefit stakeholders by providing the following assets:

• Data providers:
  • …get access to tools that simplify data harmonisation towards INSPIRE and other open standards;
  • …exchange information on data quality, harmonisation, licencing, etc. between data providers and IT experts that provide data harmonisation tools;
  • …increase the number of their clients/data users based on novel use-cases scenarios which have arisen out of efficient data harmonisations.
• Experts:
  • …can easily access and use trans-European INSPIRE conformant datasets within the relevant thematic fields.
  • …increase the number of clients/data users based on novel use-cases scenarios which have arisen out of efficient data harmonisations.
• Policy makers:
  • … have a larger and interoperable database to support decision-making on the national and European level.
• INSPIRE Community
  • …fosters optimal standardization and data harmonisation processes.

In the project, organizations will make their data available for access through INSPIRE and the EDP. To provide a unified dataset at the EDP, wetransform and the associated project partners will harmonise the data to INSPIRE data specifications, as well as make it more useful, specifically to boost digital transformation and BI/AI projects.

In effect, we would make data interoperable for free in the project, though it would need to meet at least one of the data licenses used in the EDP (which is Open Data, but one can pick the least permissive if needed).

Priority will be given to high value datasets defined by the Open Data Directive. The services will be harmonised in terms of data content, level of detail, data structure, vocabularies and licence conditions and will have a geographical coverage including at least 5 Member States.

If you have the relevant thematic data (environment data, emergency management data and disaster management data), and you would like to take part in this project (and effectively make your data INSPIRE compliant and interoperable for free), write to us by clicking the button below!

Many INSPIRE implementers we talk to question the usefulness of the directive. They see a lot of effort to create and update metadata, to harmonise data and to publish view and download services, but also see that these are hard to use for their own core processes, due to a mismatch between the formats and data models and what typical GIS software can easily consume.

INSPIRE Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) implementation focuses on two aspects:

• Making the data accessible: The SDI on an international, national and regional level is specified. Metadata, view and download services, and data access APIs are implemented.
• Making the data usable: The SDI on an international, national and regional level is specified, and the associated datasets are documented, interoperable and validated according the relevant specifications.

Achieving these would mean that you are fully INSPIRE compliant. New users will find data much more easily, and they will be able to use it since it is documented and harmonised. The question that remains, however, is how can this interoperability provide a return on the investment to the actual implementers?

Interoperable datasets provide the value add of reducing future costs for data exchange data between authorities, and they reduce costs for the deployment of new processes since standard tools can be used.

Both internal and external Return of Investment will increase exponentially when a third aspect is added to the SDI, which is making the data useful. For this, data in the SDI has to be optimized to match used cases applicable for relevant stakeholders, content and delivery methods must be curated and optimized, and datasets must be prioritised. Such use-case optimized specifications can take many forms:

• INSPIRE extensions targeted at enriching data in the SDI in order to better support specific business requirements;
• Analytic APIs targeted at boosting data-driven analysis;
• BI/AI data optimization to reduce AI model training costs and improve the quality of the data that forms the basis of certain business processes.

The current status of the maturity of SDIs as data platforms is shown below:

Maturity of SDIs as Data Platforms

To make INSPIRE data more usable and useful, wetransform along with partner organizations has initiated the GO-PEG project. The project aims to bring high-value, harmonised spatial data sets to the European Data Portal. Such data sets are currently often inaccessible, fragmented, and highly heterogeneous, as they are managed by dozens, or even hundreds of different organisations.

GO-PEG intends to set up a highly automated data harmonisation workbench, from which web services providing access (view and download) to harmonised thematic open dataset(s) from multiple and heterogeneous candidate data sources (including geospatial data provided under INSPIRE, Copernicus data and data provided by crowd-sourced initiatives such as OpenStreetMap) are generated.

The project will benefit stakeholders by providing the following assets:

• Data providers:
  • …get access to tools that simplify data harmonisation towards INSPIRE and other open standards;
  • …exchange information on data quality, harmonisation, licencing, etc. between data providers and IT experts that provide data harmonisation tools;
  • …increase the number of their clients/data users based on novel use-cases scenarios which have arisen out of efficient data harmonisations.
• Experts:
  • …can easily access and use trans-European INSPIRE conformant datasets within the relevant thematic fields.
  • …increase the number of clients/data users based on novel use-cases scenarios which have arisen out of efficient data harmonisations.
• Policy makers:
  • … have a larger and interoperable database to support decision-making on the national and European level.
• INSPIRE Community
  • …fosters optimal standardization and data harmonisation processes.

In the project, organizations will make their data available for access through INSPIRE and the EDP. To provide a unified dataset at the EDP, wetransform and the associated project partners will harmonise the data to INSPIRE data specifications, as well as make it more useful, specifically to boost digital transformation and BI/AI projects.

In effect, we would make data interoperable for free in the project, though it would need to meet at least one of the data licenses used in the EDP (which is Open Data, but one can pick the least permissive if needed).

Priority will be given to high value datasets defined by the Open Data Directive. The services will be harmonised in terms of data content, level of detail, data structure, vocabularies and licence conditions and will have a geographical coverage including at least 5 Member States.

If you have the relevant thematic data (environment data, emergency management data and disaster management data), and you would like to take part in this project (and effectively make your data INSPIRE compliant and interoperable for free), write to us by clicking the button below!

From 22nd to 24th of October, this year’s only international INSPIRE event took place in Helsinki, Finland. The goal of this event was to showcase actual applications, to open the INSPIRE community to more external people, and to provide training for INSPIRE implementers and solution builders.

INSPIRE Helsinki 2019 Group Photo

Tuesday started with a set of refreshingly short addresses both from the local organising committees and from Michael Lutz from the JRC. Michel explained that the priorities of the incoming European Commission under the designated president Ursula von der Leyen are highly aligned to the INSPIRE effort. Aspects such as a new green deal, digital transformation in all of society, and the impact and regulation of Artificial Intelligence.

After the intro, Bart de Lathouwer, president at the OGC, talked about how easy- to- implement standards based on “mainstream” ICT approaches can democratize access to location data. In the same vein, he put a lot of emphasis on the “spatial is NOT special” mantra. The spatial community was quite a bit ahead of the curve, but right now it has a lot of rather peculiar approaches and standards that do not translate well to achieving interoperability with other business areas. I fully agree that “spatial” has been a walled off niche for too long. Other than that, I mostly found the glimpses Bart gave into what technologies and trends OGC is currently evaluating such as Edge Computing, Maps for CAVs, Geo IT Ethics and the impact of data science to be very interesting.

The second keynote was delivered by Hanna Niemi-Hugaerts, the Director for IoT at the Forum Virium. I found it very impressive to what her organisation and others have done to establish a true developer ecosystem in Helsinki and the surrounding areas. She explained what the roles open data and easy- to- use API played in that success story, but what I was missing was a clearer view about what role INSPIRE has already played or could play in that ecosystem.

After the keynotes, we were all treated with a short intro into to all challenges. Out of these presentations, the “Find the best seaside vacation spot” presentation clearly stood out as an excellent example how to communicate the benefits of an undertaking like INSPIRE to a wide audience. We then all enjoyed a nice dinner, with an “acapella” finale courtesy of the “Three Wise Men”.

Second day, workshop day! Wednesday had three parallel tracks, one focused on challenge entrant presentations, and two full filled with workshops. In the morning, there was an in-depth workshop on GeoServer and hale studio. Quite a few people I met discussed this workshop and the general approach to use hale studio, Geoserver and the app-schema extension to provide INSPIRE compliant data and services, and I realized that due to the multi-stage nature of the process, many people still view it as a complicated process – and mostly blame hale studio for not making it easier 😊.

In the afternoon, there were several workshops that I anticipated highly. The first one was from Peter Baumann, Kathi Schleidt and Jordi Escriu, and detailed how one might be able to implement INSPIRE compliant WCS 2.0 download services. This is definitely a topic for a separate, upcoming post. As the editor of the draft GeoJSON encoding rule for INSPIRE data, I was also anticipating the Esri-led workshop titled “Making INSPIRE Useable with ArcGIS and Alternative encoding”. It was very interesting to see Esri’s work on making spatial data more accessible through the Hub product, and to learn about new experiences that take spatial data as one component. The scope for which the encoding rule was presented, however, led to intense discussions. Maybe this would be another topic I need to write an article on in the next weeks…

Giordano Colombi from AELER Technologies, Christopher Hönn and me then concluded Wednesday with our workshop on “A Framework for building successful Solutions on INSPIRE”. This workshop built on our experiences in supporting AELER and others in building up real solutions on the INSPIRE Infrastructure. While attendance was a bit on the low side, we got a really engaged group and very interesting discussions, particularly on organisational readiness for INSPIRE-based solutions. One aspect we discussed in depth was the lack of clear licensing terms. Even when there are open data licenses, a case like using data for this challenge was usually not a good fit. In preparation for the challenge, we had reached out to 41 data providers, of which only 16 responded in an any way, and in the end, only 5 agreed to allow us to use their data for the challenge.

Thursday morning then started with my keynote presentation. I started with perspectives about what makes a platform successful. Then I transitioned into how the SDI we have now could evolve to become a distributed, open and effective platform that would transform spatial and environmental data from the underutilized resource it is right now to a key component of solving global challenges such as climate change, migration and biodiversity. Towards the end I had to speed up a bit to leave enough space for discussions. As hoped, there were a lot of thoughtful and interesting questions, which were later also picked up by the panel.

However, before the panel discussion it was time for a true highlight – the announcement of the overall winners across the three challenges. All three winning teams showed how INSPIRE data can be used to solve a wide range of problems:

1. First place: Team Minerva Intelligence – Geohazards in Italy
2. Second Place: Team West Coast Surfers – Floods in England
3. Third Place: Team Statistics Finland – Best Seaside vacation spot

I was particularly impressed by Jake’s presentation of the entry from Minerva Intelligence. They showed the potential benefits of building on interoperable data and services most clearly. The team used a wide range of INSPIRE components,from extending the Natural Risk Zones model with “Susceptibility Zones”, added a detailed landslide classification taxonomy built with ACE to a codelist, and finally built their machine learning model on several fully harmonised INSPIRE data sets. Those data sets were harmonised using hale studio and were served as INSPIRE View and Download Services via hale connect. Minerva has been a customer of wetransform since July 2018, and the collaboration has been very productive and friendly.

Jake, Minerva's Geospatial Technology section head, and I

After the challenge finals, the panel discussion and closing remarks came up, with a nice video greeting from DG ENV’s Joeri Robbrecht. I couldn’t help but notice the two wetransform postcards (you know, the limited 2016 and 2017 editions) in the background 😊.

To me, the event felt very focused. I liked the fact that there were only three parallel tracks; now, not there was less of a risk of “missing out” on one of the interesting and helpful workshops or challenge presentations. I also really liked the concept of having INSPIRE challenges, though I think the format needs to be changed to be more attractive. The way it was, the effort-to-benefit ratio was apparently not that appealing to student groups or independent teams. On our end, obtaining the data for the challenge proved to be rather hard.

So, did the event achieve its objectives? I would say, partially. It was a meeting of the core INSPIRE community, with maybe 20 to 30 new faces. I personally judged the “outreach” to get new communities to adopt INSPIRE to be rather low. On the other aspects, it was successful. The workshops were of high quality and most people I talked to were very positive about them.

I very much enjoyed the hospitality of the NLS, the venue, the discussions, and the food. I already look forward to another event in Finland, though for now our team at wetransform focus on the WE User Forum (29th/30th of January 2020,Darmstadt, German language) and the INSPIRE 2020 Dubrovnik conference.

Here are a few other impressions from the event:

From 22nd to 24th of October, this year’s only international INSPIRE event took place in Helsinki, Finland. The goal of this event was to showcase actual applications, to open the INSPIRE community to more external people, and to provide training for INSPIRE implementers and solution builders.

INSPIRE Helsinki 2019 Group Photo

Tuesday started with a set of refreshingly short addresses both from the local organising committees and from Michael Lutz from the JRC. Michel explained that the priorities of the incoming European Commission under the designated president Ursula von der Leyen are highly aligned to the INSPIRE effort. Aspects such as a new green deal, digital transformation in all of society, and the impact and regulation of Artificial Intelligence.

After the intro, Bart de Lathouwer, president at the OGC, talked about how easy- to- implement standards based on “mainstream” ICT approaches can democratize access to location data. In the same vein, he put a lot of emphasis on the “spatial is NOT special” mantra. The spatial community was quite a bit ahead of the curve, but right now it has a lot of rather peculiar approaches and standards that do not translate well to achieving interoperability with other business areas. I fully agree that “spatial” has been a walled off niche for too long. Other than that, I mostly found the glimpses Bart gave into what technologies and trends OGC is currently evaluating such as Edge Computing, Maps for CAVs, Geo IT Ethics and the impact of data science to be very interesting.

The second keynote was delivered by Hanna Niemi-Hugaerts, the Director for IoT at the Forum Virium. I found it very impressive to what her organisation and others have done to establish a true developer ecosystem in Helsinki and the surrounding areas. She explained what the roles open data and easy- to- use API played in that success story, but what I was missing was a clearer view about what role INSPIRE has already played or could play in that ecosystem.

After the keynotes, we were all treated with a short intro into to all challenges. Out of these presentations, the “Find the best seaside vacation spot” presentation clearly stood out as an excellent example how to communicate the benefits of an undertaking like INSPIRE to a wide audience. We then all enjoyed a nice dinner, with an “acapella” finale courtesy of the “Three Wise Men”.

Second day, workshop day! Wednesday had three parallel tracks, one focused on challenge entrant presentations, and two full filled with workshops. In the morning, there was an in-depth workshop on GeoServer and hale studio. Quite a few people I met discussed this workshop and the general approach to use hale studio, Geoserver and the app-schema extension to provide INSPIRE compliant data and services, and I realized that due to the multi-stage nature of the process, many people still view it as a complicated process – and mostly blame hale studio for not making it easier 😊.

In the afternoon, there were several workshops that I anticipated highly. The first one was from Peter Baumann, Kathi Schleidt and Jordi Escriu, and detailed how one might be able to implement INSPIRE compliant WCS 2.0 download services. This is definitely a topic for a separate, upcoming post. As the editor of the draft GeoJSON encoding rule for INSPIRE data, I was also anticipating the Esri-led workshop titled “Making INSPIRE Useable with ArcGIS and Alternative encoding”. It was very interesting to see Esri’s work on making spatial data more accessible through the Hub product, and to learn about new experiences that take spatial data as one component. The scope for which the encoding rule was presented, however, led to intense discussions. Maybe this would be another topic I need to write an article on in the next weeks…

Giordano Colombi from AELER Technologies, Christopher Hönn and me then concluded Wednesday with our workshop on “A Framework for building successful Solutions on INSPIRE”. This workshop built on our experiences in supporting AELER and others in building up real solutions on the INSPIRE Infrastructure. While attendance was a bit on the low side, we got a really engaged group and very interesting discussions, particularly on organisational readiness for INSPIRE-based solutions. One aspect we discussed in depth was the lack of clear licensing terms. Even when there are open data licenses, a case like using data for this challenge was usually not a good fit. In preparation for the challenge, we had reached out to 41 data providers, of which only 16 responded in an any way, and in the end, only 5 agreed to allow us to use their data for the challenge.

Thursday morning then started with my keynote presentation. I started with perspectives about what makes a platform successful. Then I transitioned into how the SDI we have now could evolve to become a distributed, open and effective platform that would transform spatial and environmental data from the underutilized resource it is right now to a key component of solving global challenges such as climate change, migration and biodiversity. Towards the end I had to speed up a bit to leave enough space for discussions. As hoped, there were a lot of thoughtful and interesting questions, which were later also picked up by the panel.

However, before the panel discussion it was time for a true highlight – the announcement of the overall winners across the three challenges. All three winning teams showed how INSPIRE data can be used to solve a wide range of problems:

1. First place: Team Minerva Intelligence – Geohazards in Italy
2. Second Place: Team West Coast Surfers – Floods in England
3. Third Place: Team Statistics Finland – Best Seaside vacation spot

I was particularly impressed by Jake’s presentation of the entry from Minerva Intelligence. They showed the potential benefits of building on interoperable data and services most clearly. The team used a wide range of INSPIRE components,from extending the Natural Risk Zones model with “Susceptibility Zones”, added a detailed landslide classification taxonomy built with ACE to a codelist, and finally built their machine learning model on several fully harmonised INSPIRE data sets. Those data sets were harmonised using hale studio and were served as INSPIRE View and Download Services via hale connect. Minerva has been a customer of wetransform since July 2018, and the collaboration has been very productive and friendly.

Jake, Minerva's Geospatial Technology section head, and I

After the challenge finals, the panel discussion and closing remarks came up, with a nice video greeting from DG ENV’s Joeri Robbrecht. I couldn’t help but notice the two wetransform postcards (you know, the limited 2016 and 2017 editions) in the background 😊.

To me, the event felt very focused. I liked the fact that there were only three parallel tracks; now, not there was less of a risk of “missing out” on one of the interesting and helpful workshops or challenge presentations. I also really liked the concept of having INSPIRE challenges, though I think the format needs to be changed to be more attractive. The way it was, the effort-to-benefit ratio was apparently not that appealing to student groups or independent teams. On our end, obtaining the data for the challenge proved to be rather hard.

So, did the event achieve its objectives? I would say, partially. It was a meeting of the core INSPIRE community, with maybe 20 to 30 new faces. I personally judged the “outreach” to get new communities to adopt INSPIRE to be rather low. On the other aspects, it was successful. The workshops were of high quality and most people I talked to were very positive about them.

I very much enjoyed the hospitality of the NLS, the venue, the discussions, and the food. I already look forward to another event in Finland, though for now our team at wetransform focus on the WE User Forum (29th/30th of January 2020,Darmstadt, German language) and the INSPIRE 2020 Dubrovnik conference.

Here are a few other impressions from the event:

English Version Below

INSPIRE gewinnt Fahrt: Immer mehr Datensätze werden harmonisiert. Andere Standards wie XPlanung werden integriert. Gleichzeitig rücken die Termine näher. Jetzt kommt es darauf an, dass alle Prozesse reibungslos funktionieren, die Qualität stimmt und man aus den Erfahrungen anderer lernt.

Am 29. und 30. Januar findet in Darmstadt das nächste hale»Anwenderforum statt. Sprechen Sie mit Experten und Anwendern, sammeln Sie Ideen und erfahren Sie mehr über die neuesten Trends und praktische Anwendungen:

• Best Practices für die Transformation von Daten in den Anhängen II und III
• Gemeinsame Umsetzung von INSPIRE und XPlanung, NAS, ISYBAU u.a. Standards
• Innovationsprojekte bei der AdV: Standardisierte Geodaten mit Mehrwert nutzen
• Roadmap und neue Funktionen von hale»studio und hale»connect
• Gestaltung innovativer Anwendungen auf Basis von INSPIRE und XPlanung
• Und schließlich geben wir einen Ausblick auf die Zukunft von INSPIRE, SDIs und wie Anbieter ihre interoperablen Daten besser vermarkten können

Das vollständige Programm und alle weiteren Informationen zum Anwenderforum finden Sie hier.

Jetzt zum reduzierten Preis registrieren: Anmeldungen bis zum 15.12.2020 kosten nur 250 Euro. Die reguläre Pauschale beträgt 290 Euro (jeweils zzgl. MWSt.)

Wir freuen uns auf Sie!

hale»User Forum 2020

INSPIRE is gaining momentum. Increasingly more datasets are being transformed. Xplanung and other standards are being integrated as well. Simultaneously, the deadlines are approaching. It is now critical that all processes be running smoothly, all results be of high quality and you learn from the experiences of others.

Come and attend the hale user forum on the 29th and 30th of January in Darmstadt! Talk to experts and users, gather ideas and suggestions and learn more about the latest trends and practical applications:

• Best practices for Annex II and Annex III data transformations
• Implementing INSPIRE and XPlanung, NAS, ISYBAU and other standards together
• Innovation projects of AdV: Generating value-add by using standardized geodata
• Roadmap and new features of hale»studio and hale»connect
• Creating innovative applications for INPSIRE and XPanung
• Finally, we want to give a glimpse into the future of INSPIRE, SDIs and how providers can market their interoperable data more successfully

You can find the full program and all other information about the user meeting here.

Register now and get a rebate: Only 250 euros for applying until December 15th, 2019. Regular participation is 290 Euros. (all prices excl. VAT.)

We look forward to seeing you!

English Version Below

INSPIRE gewinnt Fahrt: Immer mehr Datensätze werden harmonisiert. Andere Standards wie XPlanung werden integriert. Gleichzeitig rücken die Termine näher. Jetzt kommt es darauf an, dass alle Prozesse reibungslos funktionieren, die Qualität stimmt und man aus den Erfahrungen anderer lernt.

Am 29. und 30. Januar findet in Darmstadt das nächste hale»Anwenderforum statt. Sprechen Sie mit Experten und Anwendern, sammeln Sie Ideen und erfahren Sie mehr über die neuesten Trends und praktische Anwendungen:

• Best Practices für die Transformation von Daten in den Anhängen II und III
• Gemeinsame Umsetzung von INSPIRE und XPlanung, NAS, ISYBAU u.a. Standards
• Innovationsprojekte bei der AdV: Standardisierte Geodaten mit Mehrwert nutzen
• Roadmap und neue Funktionen von hale»studio und hale»connect
• Gestaltung innovativer Anwendungen auf Basis von INSPIRE und XPlanung
• Und schließlich geben wir einen Ausblick auf die Zukunft von INSPIRE, SDIs und wie Anbieter ihre interoperablen Daten besser vermarkten können

Das vollständige Programm und alle weiteren Informationen zum Anwenderforum finden Sie hier.

Jetzt zum reduzierten Preis registrieren: Anmeldungen bis zum 15.12.2020 kosten nur 250 Euro. Die reguläre Pauschale beträgt 290 Euro (jeweils zzgl. MWSt.)

Wir freuen uns auf Sie!

hale»User Forum 2020

INSPIRE is gaining momentum. Increasingly more datasets are being transformed. Xplanung and other standards are being integrated as well. Simultaneously, the deadlines are approaching. It is now critical that all processes be running smoothly, all results be of high quality and you learn from the experiences of others.

Come and attend the hale user forum on the 29th and 30th of January in Darmstadt! Talk to experts and users, gather ideas and suggestions and learn more about the latest trends and practical applications:

• Best practices for Annex II and Annex III data transformations
• Implementing INSPIRE and XPlanung, NAS, ISYBAU and other standards together
• Innovation projects of AdV: Generating value-add by using standardized geodata
• Roadmap and new features of hale»studio and hale»connect
• Creating innovative applications for INPSIRE and XPanung
• Finally, we want to give a glimpse into the future of INSPIRE, SDIs and how providers can market their interoperable data more successfully

You can find the full program and all other information about the user meeting here.

Register now and get a rebate: Only 250 euros for applying until December 15th, 2019. Regular participation is 290 Euros. (all prices excl. VAT.)

We look forward to seeing you!

Here’s what’s new in hale»connect this month:

New Resource List

The latest update to hale»connect features a new dataset resource list. Simply log-in to hale»connect and visit the Data tab to view the new resource list, which features improved search, sort and filtering tools like the Global/Organisation button, column sorting and badges. Resources now display with distinct hierarchical styling for root and child dataset rows.

The new status column provides an overview of the system status and validation state of a hale»connect resource. Click on any of the icons to navigate directly to the resource overview page, the metadata, the download services, or the view services. The status column includes progress spinners to indicate processes that are currently running.

The column widget at the top right enables users to configure the column layout of the resource list.

Organisation Added to User Listing

The organisations that a user belongs to have been added to the users section found in Settings. An ellipsis appears in the column for users who belong to more than one organisation. Hover over the ellipsis icon for a list of all of the user’s organisations.

Priority Dataset and Spatial Scope Keywords Added to Metadata Generation

hale»connect now enables users to tag their metadata with Priority dataset and Spatial Scope keywords from the INSPIRE Registry. New dataset creation on hale»connect allows users to select the keywords required in the metadata editor. Priority dataset keywords enable datasets to be searched in the INSPIRE Thematic Viewer and are mandatory for priority datasets.

Subscribe to the Events of an Organisation

Organisation profile pages now offer the option to subscribe to an organisation’s events. Subscription to the new toggle switch “Events” ensures that users receive email notification for failed automated workflows, such as online transformation configurations.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more changes! If you have any questions, feel free to write to us at info@wetransform.to.

Here’s what’s new in hale»connect this month:

New Resource List

The latest update to hale»connect features a new dataset resource list. Simply log-in to hale»connect and visit the Data tab to view the new resource list, which features improved search, sort and filtering tools like the Global/Organisation button, column sorting and badges. Resources now display with distinct hierarchical styling for root and child dataset rows.

The new status column provides an overview of the system status and validation state of a hale»connect resource. Click on any of the icons to navigate directly to the resource overview page, the metadata, the download services, or the view services. The status column includes progress spinners to indicate processes that are currently running.

The column widget at the top right enables users to configure the column layout of the resource list.

Organisation Added to User Listing

The organisations that a user belongs to have been added to the users section found in Settings. An ellipsis appears in the column for users who belong to more than one organisation. Hover over the ellipsis icon for a list of all of the user’s organisations.

Priority Dataset and Spatial Scope Keywords Added to Metadata Generation

hale»connect now enables users to tag their metadata with Priority dataset and Spatial Scope keywords from the INSPIRE Registry. New dataset creation on hale»connect allows users to select the keywords required in the metadata editor. Priority dataset keywords enable datasets to be searched in the INSPIRE Thematic Viewer and are mandatory for priority datasets.

Subscribe to the Events of an Organisation

Organisation profile pages now offer the option to subscribe to an organisation’s events. Subscription to the new toggle switch “Events” ensures that users receive email notification for failed automated workflows, such as online transformation configurations.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more changes! If you have any questions, feel free to write to us at info@wetransform.to.