MIWP actions status reports

• 2016.4 Theme-specific issues / Thematic Clusters
• 2016.5 Priority data sets / Thematic Viewer
• 2017.1 Master Guidance
• 2017.2 Alternative Encodings
• 2017.3 Better client support for INSPIRE data
• 2017.4 Validation & conformity testing
• 2018.1 Monitoring & reporting 2019
• 2019.2 Improving availability of INSPIRE data
• Registry and register federation
• Geoportal

Update on SDW activities

• Action 3 (WFS 3.0)
• Action 4 (making spatial data discoverable through mainstream search engines)
• Action 5 (linking spatial data and persistent ids)

News from standardisation bodies

• New JRC-OGC collaboration agreement

The minutes of the previous meeting were approved without any proposals for changes.

2016.4 Theme-specific issues / Thematic Clusters

• The activity of the new INSPIRE Community Forum (http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/forum) has been restarted - all facilitators are ready to facilitate any relevant discussions, promote good practices tackle implementation / technical  issues will be present in the INSPIRE 
• the two newly set up cross-cutting discussion groups (SW & tools and INSPIRE & ENV. policy) are to be populated with the content and good and relevant links to other sources of information.
• All facilitators are attending the INSPIRE Helsinki event to promote the use of the INSPIRE Community Forum.  

• Minutes of the last meeting (June 13) are under finalization. Some comments/questions were raised and will be addressed by EEA in the minutes.

• EEA to share the minutes of 2016.5 meeting of June 13.
  

• Mapping between priority datasets and INSPIRE data themes is in progress.

• No work has been done on this.

• CT to decide whether 2017.1 action should be continued or whether to propose to the MIG to close it.

• The work with the contractors is progressing in order to close the remaining issues.

• At this point of the work, it is crucial to receive examples of implementation from MS, either on GitHub or on the Community Forum.
• All MS are encouraged to provide examples of implementatation of GeoJSON encoding for INSPIRE data.
  
• This topic will be discussed at the next MIG-T meeting in Prague, where MS are invited to present their examples.
• There is an increased interest in a GeoPackage encoding from a number of sides (governments, software vendors, companies, etc.).

• MIG-T to discuss and decide how to address the GeoPackage encoding at the MIG-T meeting in Prague.

• A 2-day meeting was held at the JRC with software vendors (July 8-9, 2019) to analyse the current support to INSPIRE data in GML and GeoJSON.
• For each software client and each unsupported functionality, the difficulty of the implementation was assessed and a roadmap was drafted.
• A first result is a patch to a notable QGIS issue (preventing full access to GML attributes) which is currently under development.
• ESRI declared interest in client support for GeoJSON; a call with JRC is scheduled for next week.

• JRC to share the minutes of the meeting with software vendors held on July 8-9, 2019.
  

• The work on 2017.3 was presented on August 28 at FOSS4G 2019 in Bucharest and received interest from the open source community.

• ETS on Discovery Services were added to the staging instance of the Validator; administrators of MS national catalogues were invited to test it and provide feedback (some already received) in the community space helpdesk.
• JRC has started a process to change the Validator UI with 2 purposes:
  
  • simplify the action of finding/selecting conformance classes and running tests
  • conform to the guidelines of the European Commission on graphics
• The workshop on the INSPIRE Validator (October 1-2, 2019, first day for users and second day for developers) is sold out, with about 20 participants for each day.
• The Validator was unavailable for some hours due to a massive usage of the API from Slovakia. JRC asked Slovakia to interrupt the use of the API and is looking for a solution on how to best restrict the access to the API. The topic will be also discussed at the MIG-T meeting in Prague.
• A presentation on the status and next steps of the Validator was given on August 28 at FOSS4G 2019 in Bucharest and was well-attended by people familiar with INSPIRE and the Validator.

• The Implementing Decision on INSPIRE Reporting was adopted. DG ENV will send an official message to MS to inform them.
• MS should now use the spatial scope keywords to tag their data sets, which allows the calculation of indicators through the Geoportal.

• EEA and DG ENV to clarify about publication of the country fiches from MS.
  

• During the summer the number of downloadable datasets in the Geoportal has almost doubled (currently it is about 25k), mainly thanks to France as well as to an increased flexibility in the harvesting process. IE is the only country currently not providing any downloadable data set yet.
  
• Only 7 countries have used the spatial scope keyword to tag data sets.
• The simplification approach was considered helpful and the work with some MS is ongoing. A demo will be shown at the MIG-T meeting in Prague to stimulate a wider discussion on the feasibility/adoption of the approach.
• JRC collected instructions from 23 MS on how to identify open data (as defined in the context of this work). Approaches are very different between the MS.
  • Next step will be the implementation of a filter to automatically show open data in the Geoportal. A first version will be only shared with MS (i.e. not publicly) before the MIG-T meeting in Prague, in order to discuss it at the meeting.
  • In Slovakia there is an ongoing discussion on the license to adopt; this work can stimulate the decision of using an open license.
• The Geoportal will be soon updated so that MS can provide MD according to the TG 2.0.
• Angelo Quaglia is leaving JRC at the end of September. JRC is working to redistribute resources, ensuring continuity of the system and minimizing issues, but some delays might be possible.

• No news to report.

• A Feature Type viewer is under finalization, which will allow to:

  • browse data sets on the Geoportal according to their feature types

  • for each service, distinguish INSPIRE feature types, extended INSPIRE feature types and non INSPIRE feature types

• The viewer might be ready for the MIG-T meeting in Prague.

• Comments to the document were received from DK. These will be discussed at the MIG-T meeting in Prague.
• A new ISO standard following from the OGC API - Features is also under development (see here).
• FOSS4G 2019 in Bucharest has shown that there is already a high activity on implementing the new standard, which shows the need for the INSPIRE community to adapt to it (the video recording of a relevant FOSS4G presentation on the family of OGC API standards is available here).
• A procurement was launched by JRC on data provision through the OGC API. The companies that expressed an interest are now invited to submit offers by the end of September. They are required to partner with public sector data providers.

• A workshop was held at the JRC on July 3-4, 2019 with about 20 attendees. The website includes all the presentations (the last one is a short and useful summary of the workshop).

• JRC and Marcin to share the workshop report before the MIG-T meeting in Prague.

• No news to report.

• at the MIG-T meeting in Prague, MIG-T to decide whether the action should be closed or whether a proposal should be made to include the action in the MIWP.
  

• After some negotiation, JCR has signed the collaboration agreement with OGC, which allows participation in the OGC meetings.
• A discussion between JRC and OGC was held about future collaborations, e.g. organising shared events and testbeds.
• OGC is seeking public comment on draft charter for the new Environmental Data Retrieval API Standards WG (see here). The topic is relevant to INSPIRE, although it seems limited to big data in the meteorological domain.
• Next week the OGC TC meeting is taking place, but no one from MIG-T is attending.

Face-to-face meeting in Prague

• The agenda covers the main points discussed above.
  
  • in addition, a discussion paper will be prepared by JRC (together with DE) on “as-is” vs. INSPIRE-compliant data sets.
• The meeting will be focused on MS inputs about their experiences. Some presentations are already scheduled in the agenda, but more proposals are welcome.
• Since there is limited funding available, JRC will prioritise people providing concrete inputs to the agenda.
• A discussion is also planned on how to re-organise MIG-T meetings, since communication is mostly happening in one-way and there is little discussion/feedback from MS.

INSPIRE Helsinki 2019 - Challenges & status

• 12 teams registered to the challenges so far, but only 5 seem to be active.
  
  • Deadline for challenge registration was postponed to September 22, deadline for submission was postponed to October 6.
    
  • It is crucial to make some more promotion of the challenges, since this is the core part of the event.
• 20 tickets are still available.

Call for tender

• Another call for tender funded by the ELISE action (under ISA2) was launched about the future evolution of SDIs into data ecosystems for environmental data. The companies that expressed an interest are now invited to submit offers by the end of September.
  • The call asks to analyse a number of case studies, looking at SDI aspects such as interoperability, barriers and enablers for setting up and running these ecosystems.
  • The study is expected to be launched before the end of the year.