• Introduction
• Technical analysis
• Issues and recommendations
• European SIF

Infrastructure components

Summary

“While spatial data is usually in a digital, processable form, the description of the data (metadata for use) often is not or only partially. As a result, out-of-band communication is required in spatial data infrastructures to make (full) use of the available data. Most often it will require reading documents.

For a sustainable, infrastructure approach, more than documents is needed. I.e. operational components are needed that facilitate the common use of data-related resources, including but not limited to

• online access to current conceptual schemas in reusable form; for example, INSPIRE data specifications build upon the ISO schemas and need access to the latest versions of the schemas; similarly other data specifications may build upon INSPIRE data specifications and thus these need to be integrated into those models;
• online access to encoding schemas, e.g. XML schemas and Schematron schemas;
• online access to controlled vocabularies / code lists in reusable form;
• online access to glossaries in reusable form;
• online access to coordinate reference systems and coordinate conversions in reusable form;
• online access to portrayal rules in reusable form; etc.

The dependencies between these components need to be known and managed, too.

Whenever possible, such components should be shared between the initiatives to avoid duplication of efforts and incoherence.

Similarly, whenever an adequate component already exists, it should be used and not duplicated for INSPIRE, GMES or GEOSS usage. ”

Classification

Category	Data harmonisation and semantic interoperability
Identifier	ISSUE-DI-004
Type of recommended activity	Establishment of operational components Active collaboration between initiatives
Organisations addressed	INSPIRE: Consolidation Team, Drafting Team Data Specifications, IOC Task Force GEOSS: ADC GMES: GMES Bureau, GMES Committee (foreseen under COM(2009)223), ESA

Additional information

Context	See "Summary"
Rationale	See "Summary"
Dependencies	Ontologies will require access to online registries/dictionaries - ISSUE-DI-004 Infrastructure components REC-CAT-005 Access to other types of resources The description of such components should be part of the common foundation (see REC-DI-001). This issue is related to establishing the governance rules, implementing the components and maintaining them for continuous operational use in the infrastructure(s). This recommendation/issue is directly linked to ISSUE-DI-005 (strategy for evolution).
Further background information	Technology Watch Report - Data Interoperability [PDF] Comparative analysis report (version 2) [PDF] Comparative Analysis Report (version 2) - Annex Recommendations [PDF]
Main discussion points	See above
Roadmap	To be defined