Bilateral meetings with MIG-T members (upon request)
Minutes
The minutes summarise the main conclusions and actions from the meeting. Actions are indicated by using check boxes and are tracked in the dedicated "Actions" section below.
The meeting was chaired by the JRC and attended by experts from BE, BG, CY, CZ, DE, DK, EE, EL, ES, FI, FR, HR, HU, IE, IS, IT, LT, LU, LV, MT, NL, NO, PL, PT, RO, SE, SI, SK, the European Commission (ENV, JRC, AGRI, ESTAT), and the European Environment Agency (EEA).
Welcome and approval of the agenda
The agenda of the meeting was approved without any additions or modifications.
Actions from the previous meeting (for discussion and agreement)
The minutes from the previous MIG-T meeting were revisited with no comments from MIG-T members on the way in which the actions were addressed.
Implementing Act on High Value Datasets under the Open Data Directive (a technical perspective) (I/D)
The JRC representatives presented a technical non-binding perspective on the provision of High-Value Datasets (HVDs) in the scope of the Open Data Directive Implementing Act. This included an overview of objectives, a summary of the policy context and explanation on the links to INSPIRE, particularly regarding the specific thematic categories in scope: Geospatial, Earth observation and environment, and Mobility. The requirements regarding metadata, licensing, encoding formats, granularity and accessibility were also covered.
The revamped INSPIRE Geoportal user interface already provides a means for browsing the different HVDs. This is ready to be launched once the Implementing Act on the HVDs is adopted (expected in early 2023 at the latest).
After the proposed discussion, Member State representatives showed high interest in the upcoming Implementing Act laying on HVDs complementing the Open Data Directive.
While recognising the value of this new legal instrument, they also expressed concerns on several aspects, including: the links with INSPIRE requirements (in terms of scope, technical requirements on data provision, data models, identification of HVDs), change of business models in data provisions, monitoring (including classification of HVDs using keywords), funding, and transposition at the national level.
JRC to organise follow-up meetings with Member State representatives on the technical implementation of High-Value Datasets and INSPIRE monitoring and reporting.
MIWP Action 1.1 Towards a Digital Ecosystem for the Environment and Sustainability (I/D/E)
Status update on other Good Practices (including possible future Good Practices)
The team leading the GeoPackage good practice candidate (EEA, DE, DK and IT, including consultants participating on behalf of JRC) presented on the aim of this work, the process performed to achieve the final goals, the main characteristics of the GeoPackage encoding and the evidences of implementation in the INSPIRE domain. This included several examples showing several prominent use cases: from the EEA (Environmental Noise Directive e-reporting), DK (Addresses), FI (Addresses), and IT (Geology). Conclusions were preceded by the lessons learnt gained during the good practice development process.
The team working on the Data-Service Linking Simplification good practice candidate (NL, FR, IT, DK and the JRC) presented this outcomes of the work. Reasoning and context justifying this work were summarised, together with the final objectives to be achieved: i) possibly avoiding the need of producing and maintaining ISO 19139 service metadata records by adopting an alternative path based on accomplishing a set of requirements mainly scoped to the ISO 19139 data set metadata records and the network services providing online access to them; and ii) allowing the provision of standard network services (e.g. standard Capabilities documents without extensions), reducing the additional INSPIRE requirements on software tools available in the market. This path is aimed to simplify the Data-Service linking approach in the revamped INSPIRE Geoportal, when fully implemented. The presentation included several examples showing evidences of its implementation: NL, FR, IT, as well as the revamped INSPIRE Geoportal.
A Slido poll was held after these two presentations (see poll results), resulting in a unanimous endorsement of both candidates as INSPIRE good practices, just pending of the final legal scrutiny steps in order to complete the good practice process.
The JRC informed that a new good practice candidate page will be created based on the past work on GeoJSON achieved in the scope of MIG-T Action 2017.2 (see GeoJSON Encoding Good Practice webinar). The work will be reactivated to collect examples and evidences of implementation, which may lead to its future endorsement.
JRC to organise the draft GeoJSON specifications in a dedicated GitHub repository.
MIG-T members to provide evidence for the use of the GeoJSON spec for encoding of INSPIRE data in order to comply to the INSPIRE good practice process.
MIWP Action 2.3.1. Governance of INSPIRE artefacts (D/E)
Some context and background information on the Action was provided, in particular the governance process for proposing and endorsing change proposal to schemas and TGs is presented as a reminder.
Next, the three change proposals were separately presented and the MIG-T (also representing the MIG) voted on their acceptance. All Member States and EFTA countries were in favour of the endorsement (see the poll results). The three endorsed changes will become effective as of the next release (v.2023.1) scheduled on 31 January 2023.
The JRC summarised the objectives and work done for the migration from the legacy system to the new revamped INSPIRE Geoportal based on GeoNetwork.
The results obtained from the beta-testing process are overall positive which is evident from the comparison of the indicators obtained with the new system and the current geoportal. However, there is room for improvement, particularly to solve some anomalies detected for the indicators measuring services accessibility in the case of large catalogues.
The INSPIRE Geoportal revamp, including backend, frontend (user interface) and publication system, is ongoing. However, some vulnerabilities needs to be resolved before publishing the new system on-line. The cloud server also needs to be upgraded to prevent current performance issues.
The INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting in 2022 will be implemented trough the revamped backend based on GeoNetwork.
Future project improvements should be community-driven. Potential synergies will be explored in the next months for establishing needs and identify funding opportunities between stakeholders.
The GeoNetwork and INSPIRE community event held on was attended by approximately 35 MIG/MIG-T members and was well-received by the community. Interesting discussions took place, especially regarding the topics referred in the previous point.
JRC to send credentials for accessing the revamped GeoNetwork backend to all MS/EFTA countries.
JRC to upgrade the cloud server for increasing the capacity and performance of the system in case of concurrent harvests.
JRC to push for solving vulnerabilities of the system.
JRC to publish an event page in the INSPIRE Knowledge base, summarizing the 'GeoNetwork and INSPIRE' event, including presentations and link to the event recording (YouTube channel).
INSPIRE Validation Dashboard (I)
The JRC presented a dashboard built using ElasticSearch and Kibana and setup with the objective to improve the understanding of how and when the INSPIRE Reference Validator is used, e.g. which are the resources that are most validated, which are the resources for which most passed/failed tests happen, in which part(s) of the day/year the Validator is most used, etc.
Some countries showed interest in the dashboard. Since the application runs on the JRC internal network, it cannot be shared publicly. The JRC will consider integrating the dashboard (in the form of screenshots) in the new INSPIRE Knowledge base.
Geonovum tender on OGC API - Features: NL presents the scope and expectations of the tender, which is open to submissions regarding any software solution. Deadline for applications is .
GAIA-X for INSPIRE Study
The JRC shared the results of the study conducted by Fraunhofer IOSB for the analysis of the benefits, challenges and opportunities for INSPIRE stemming from the development of the GAIA-X federated data ecosystems.