The agenda was approved without changes.

The minutes of the previous meeting were approved without changes.

2019.2 Improving data availability

Geoportal workshop 23-24 January 2019

• a summary of the workshop was provided by JRC: objectives, attendance, participants' expectations, results of the survey distributed before the workshop, conclusions and actions
• the security incident has been solved, but as a consequence:
  • the metadata editor and the Validator 2 have been definitively dismissed
  • some actions agreed were delayed:
    • JRC to finalize and share the full report of the Geoportal workshop
    • JRC to reorganize the Helpdesk (FAQ’s, closing issues, etc.)
  • participants' feedback showed that the expectations for the workshop were satisfied, in particular:
    • the Geoportal backend was understood
    • the future developments (Harvesting Console, INSPIRE Analytics, etc.) were considered useful
    • MS liked the idea of an annual in-presence meeting + regular teleconf meetings for sharing best practices
      • BE to share some best practices they have and was encouraged to do that using the available template for best practices

Geoportal update

• After a significant increase in the number of resources (including priority data sets) available on the Geoportal from September 2018 to January 2019, now there is more fluctuation in the numbers.
  
  
• A demo of the new Geoportal Harvesting Console (launched during the meeting) was presented, highlighting the main features:
  • access is ECAS-protected:
    • JRC has asked MS to indicate 2 authorized MS catalogue admins to which access was granted
      
  • after authentication, the catalogue admin can see the harvesting status, the endpoints to harvest and their responsible organizations
  • when a harvest is performed, the catalogue admin can check the issues found, see a comparison against the previous harvest, access the sandbox instance of the Geoportal showing the situation in case the harvest results were published, and publish the results
  • a help guide on how to perform the harvest is available
  • a discussion was held on the possible role of this new mechanism (MS decision on the publication of harvest results) for Monitoring and Reporting
    
    • for MS (e.g. IT) where the technical responsibles (performing harvesting) and the political responsible (giving consent to publishing) are different, access should be granted to more than 2 admins:
      • MS to provide JRC with the details of additional people to be granted access
        
    • the new mechanism should not discourage MS to keep on publishing data sets as-is
  • JRC to add the option to schedule a harvesting at a specific day/time
  • the Harvesting Console includes the previous functionality of the discovery service registry
    
    

• A demo of the new version 1.1 of the Geoportal (released the previous week) was presented
  • new features (front-end): search function on results, copy-to-clipboard function, support for automatic metadata translation (provided by the EC Translation Service), priority data set keywords added in the metadata detail page
  • back-end: more flexibility for WFS Download services
  • a release note page was created to inform about current and future releases of the Geoportal:
    • v. 1.2 by June/July 2019, v. 2.0 by October/November 2019
      
      
• A demo of the Resource Linkage Verification Tool was presented:
  • purposes: check the linkages between MD and View/Download services and eliminate the use of the Geoportal as a testing environment
  • the tool returns a report listing the issues in the verfication process (with detailed explanations available for each of them).
  • the application is under finalization and will be published in the coming weeks
  • a discussion follows, where:
    • it is clarified that this tool is not meant to be used to validate resources (which is the scope of the Reference Validator)
    • since the purpose is to check the links between metadata and services, both MD TG 1.3 and 2.0 can be used
      
• 11 countries expressed interest in participating in the testing:

  • A kick-off meeting will take place at the end of April / beginning of May to:

    • compare implementations and discuss open issues

    • update/extend discussion paper (to be presented to the MIG) based on testing results

  • JRC to schedule the kick-off meeting for resource linking and inform the 11 MS
    
    

Follow-up actions on data usability

• Following the work started during the Geoportal workshop, the importance of ensuring data usability, in addition to availability and beyond the legal requirements of the Directive is highlighted.
• 3 usability issues are prioritized and separately presented/discussed (see below).
• The proposed follow-up action (supported by participants, see sli.do results) consists to draft a short best practice document for each of the 3 issues:
  • an editor (and possibly some contributors) are required for each issue
  • JRC is able to support the cost of 10 days of work for each of the 3 editors
  • JRC to send out a formal call for editors on data usability
  • MS expert to express their interest to lead/contribute to the documents

1. Implementation strategies for Network Services:

• 3 examples are shown of usability issues encountered while trying to access/consume data on the Geoportal:
  • GML data sets of gigantic file sizes, with their own application schema and naming convention, provided through ATOM feeds - not loadable in clients
  • single View/Download Services providing 1500+ data sets related to multiple themes
  • huge data sets (~250 MB) served through WFS Download Services, causing slow/impossible downloads for clients
• A discussion follows, where it is suggested to keep track of user access to View/Download Services from the Geoportal.

2. Protection & authentication

• Although INSPIRE allows MS to limit access to Network Services (Articles 13 & 14), sometimes this limitation poses serious usability issues, e.g.:
  
  • Get Network Service Metadata requests accessible through authentication (e.g. CAPTCHA)
  • View Services not accessible and Download Services accessible through authentication, without clear instructions for users on how to get credentials

3. Licensing

• INSPIRE data sets are released under a huge heterogeneity of licenses.
• An example is shown, where a user wants to use AD data sets (found on the Geoportal) for multiple MS, combine and use them for commercial purposes
  • it is hard to know under which conditions the data sets found can be combined and used.
  • it would be useful to automatically check all the Geoportal data sets available under open data licenses.

2018.1 INSPIRE monitoring and reporting

Testing of country fiche editor

• Activities were slightly delayed due to the work to address the security issue
• Testing was performed from 25/02 to 08/03 with 5 MS, feedback was very positive and many improvements proposals were sent.
• The tool has been available for National reporters since 25/03.

Discussion of indicators (incl. conformant vs. "as is" data) & maturity levels

• The new indicators and their calculation methods were consolidated and are presented:
  • they reflect a basic conformance level (as-is data) as compared to an advanced conformance level (to be certified using the Reference Validator)
  • JRC to define a minimum set of metadata required for the basic conformance level
  • JRC to investigate how the Reference Validator can be linked/integrated in the Geoportal

Input from DE

• Presentation and discussion on different scenarios considering transformability of source data sets and provision of INSPIRE-related data sets before („as is“) and after reaching interoperability milestones („harmonised“).

Code list for spatial coverage

• The code list was developed with sub-group 2018.1 and is already available in the INSPIRE Registry:
  • available codes are european, global, local, national, regional and examples of usage are outlined in the document
  • the code list is under translation in all EU languages and MS are asked to provide feedback on the translation
  • MS to provide feedback on the translation in their national language

Implementation roadmap

• Provided in the guidance document for national reporters

Archiving geospatial information within the CEF eArchiving Building block

• There is a high need to archive geospatial information for many reasons.
• Within the CEF buildings blocks to facilitate delivery of digital public services across borders, the new eArchiving building block is presented
• There are potential links with INSPIRE (common guidelines and tools, adoption of the eArchiving building block, etc.):
  
  • an opportunity is the Geopreservation Conference will be held in Ljubliana, Slovenia on May 6-7, 2019

• This action has not a sub-group associated, it was assigned to a consortium of companies:
  
  • clients tested were both desktop and web, proprietary and open source
  • GML data used for testing was retrieved from the Geoportal (AD and EF) and in some cases modified ad hoc
• Test suites were developed for GML and GeoJSON, looking at client support for different functions (load data, create/edit features, CRS handling, etc.)
• Results are available in GitHub and summarized in a web page, which shows which software supports which function:
  • results are ready for GML, will be completed for GeoJSON - based on results from Action 2017.2
  • desktop GIS provide more support than web GIS, with QGIS performing the best, although some functions are not in general supported (e.g. GML feature editing)
• Follow-up:
  • finalizing tests, prioritizing issues, sharing results
  • contacting software vendors to ask for easy fixes and invite them to the final meeting
  • JRC to contact QGIS community to ask for a fix to the GML load issue shown during the MIG-T meeting
  • JRC to organize the final meeting in June - an option is to held it in Leuven jointly with the OGC meeting, so that OGC is also involved
  • JRC to evaluate other opportunities to present the work, e.g. at FOSS4G 2019

• v. 2.0 of the Re3gistry is under development, in collaboration with the National Land Survey of Finland (NLS):

  • JRC is testing the editing interface and the bulk import modules - testing instance available by the end of April

  • NLS is testing the data cache and data API modules - testing instance available in May

  • target release date is June 2019

Validation

Status of ETS and ETF developments

• Cloud instances of the INSPIRE Reference Validator were setup for increased performances; currently there are:
  • 1 staging instance in the cloud, which includes all the latest ETS and ETF developments
  • 2 production instances: 1 hosted by JRC (to be dismissed soon) and 1 in the cloud, including only the consolidated ETS and based on the ETF latest release
• New ATS/ETS were developed for View Services (WMS, WMTS), SOS and WCS Download Services, and MD TG 2.0:
  
  • code is available on GitHub
• New improvements to the ETF: re-run button, changed color of skipped tests, bug-fixes (e.g. password field hidden).

• all to inform their data providers about the new ETS/ETF developments, test them in the Staging instance and report possible issues in the next 3-4 weeks
• JRC to invite members of sub-group 2017.4 to test the new ETS/ETF developments

Helpdesk assistance

• The central point where any issue/question on the Validator shall be reported is the GitHub Community space.
• Each issue is addressed according to a specific workflow, where the solution is first developed in the Staging instance and the reported is invited to test and approve it.

Future developments

• A changelog and a release planning for the Staging and Production instances are available.
• ETS for CSW will be available for testing in about one month.
• ETF future developments include testing the cloud deployment, setup a workflow for automated testing/integration of new developments, and new functionality (e.g. visual improvement of test reports and provision of additional download formats for test reports).
• If there is interest from MS, JRC can organize a workshop for developers on the Validator (before October)

• JRC to collect interest in holding a workshop for ETS (and potentially ETF) developers

2017.2 Alternative encodings

Status and planning

• The work of the sub-group is almost complete; final documents will be available soon:
  • the main outcome is a generic GeoJSON encoding rule, complemented by a set of model transformation rules specifically developed for AD and EF themes
  • public review of the documents will be open until the end of May, then the documents will be proposed for endorsement to the MIG in June

Geopackage proposal

• A successful encoding of AU and GN data sets (originally GML files with thousands of objects) in the GeoPackage format was performed in Spain.

• Emilio to summarize the procedure and results in a technical document (re-using the same template of the GeoJSON document), also focusing on other themes (TN, HY)
• All to communicate interest and join Emilio in writing the document on Geopackage as an alternative encoding

• Overall, it is clear that different encodings might be useful for different themes and different applications (e.g. GeoJSON for visualization purposes, GeoPackage for network analysis).
• AT will host a GeoPackage hackathon in May (in German)

• AT to report about the GeoPackage hackathon.

WFS 3.0 mapping - download service

• An introduction on WFS 3.0, current status and next steps is presented:
  • release candidate is out, approval process is ongoing and there will be a hackathon in London on June 20-21
• The status of the paper on mapping INSPIRE IR's for Network Services with WFS 3.0 is presented:
  • discussion is limited because few participants have read the document in advance

• All to read the WFS 3.0 document and provide feedback at the next MIG-T meeting

Updates IR-ISDSS

• A meeting was held in ESTAT on 26/03/2019 with JRC, ESTAT, PL and NL:
  • a number of changes to the IR, TG and the INSPIRE Registry were agreed for SU, PD and HH themes.
• Feedback on the revision of the IR on ISDSS was provided before 31/01/2019 by 5 MS (AT, DE, DK, NL, PL):
  • both requests for clarification and additional change proposals were provided

• JRC to reply to the feedback from MS
• JRC to further amend the legal text and pass it to the Legal Service to contonue the revision process

Linking spatial data

• IT and ES presented two valuable examples on the use of spatial linked data and their possible link with INSPIRE.

• JRC to plan possible follow-up activities on this.

Information points

• INSPIRE event 2019, Helsinki, October 22-24:
  • coordinated by the Finnish NLS with support of the JRC, it will mainly target a technical audience and organized around technical challenges
  • website and call for challenges to be launched in the next few weeks
• ELISE EU gazetteer pilot:
  • the work on WP2 (supporting the acquisition of AD and GN data sets from the Geoportal) is progressing well
  • results will be useful to evaluate usability of INSPIRE data sets for a concrete, pan-European need
• INSPIRE-based reporting for Invasive Alien Species (IAS) Directive:
  
  • a case study is presented on how the INSPIRE infrastructure was used by a non-traditional community (in particular, for reporting for the IAS Directive)
• INSPIRE & IACS/LPIS data:
  • IACS/LPIS data have a huge potential to be shared using INSPIRE infrastructure, as already done by some MS; additional work is needed to facilitate integration
• Workshop on making spatial data discoverable through mainstream search engines:
  • the workshop will be held at the JRC in Ispra on July 3-4, 2019
  • call for abstract is open untile May 3, 2019