1st GIGAS Stakeholder Workshop: Towards harmonisation of SDI initiatives

The workshop will take place on 28-29/01/2009 at the Centre Albert Borschette in Brussels. For further details please have a look at the page Practical Arrangements.

Towards harmonisation of SDI initiatives
The three initiatives GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES share commonalities, including their focus on environmental policy support, use of geomatic and geographic information, their Europe- or worldwide dimension, their reliance on international standards and the advanced Spatial Data Infrastructures that are needed for their implementation. At the same time however, each initiative follows its own timeline and approach for technical development, thereby risking to evolve into separate, incompatible services and not profiting from the benefits of a common approach.

In mid 2008, the GIGAS project (GEOSS, INSPIRE, GMES, an Action in Support) was launched with the specific aim to assess and address interoperability gaps and opportunities for establishing bridges between the initiatives. The consortium responsible for the project consists of technical representatives of the three initiatives, (GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES), representatives of three main standardisation bodies (ISO, OGC and CEN) and representatives of SME stakeholders and research institutes.

GIGAS makes use of a formal and structured approach to study topics that are common to the three initiatives and aims at creating a representative stakeholder forum to assess, criticize and support the recommendations the forum comes up with.

Scope of the Workshop:
This Workshop provides a platform to discuss the most critical gaps that are currently impeding true interoperability between initiatives like GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES. It principle aim is to offer the possibility to the stakeholders to express their needs, reservations and to influence the GIGAS recommendation process. The GIGAS process of technology watch and comparative analysis for the three initiatives will be introduced and the first results (initial set of draft recommendations) will be presented.

The workshop should yield a clearer view on the needs of the stakeholder community, an evaluation of the preliminary results of GIGAS and a refocusing of its scope and target. As initial output of the consensus builing process, a consolidated set of recommendations that the participants of the workshop can take up and spread into the respective communities. This will help to perform a concerted adoption of activities to influence and shape the evolution of GEOSS, INSPIRE, and GMES towards convergence.

The relevant stakeholders in this consensus building process are people who are involved in convergence and harmonization work in the context of GEOSS, INSPIRE, and GMES as well as people who are in the positions where recommendations are to be adopted (decision makers within the three initiatives, standardization organizations, and research programs).

Participants:
Key stakeholders of GEOSS, INSPIRE, and GMES that are interested in strategies for influencing and shaping the evolution of European SDI initiatives (European focus) towards convergence. If you are interested in participating, please indicate your interest by e-mail to Freddy Fierens (freddy.fierens@jrc.it) before 16/01/2009.

Workshop Organizers:
This Workshop is organized and supported by the GIGAS project consortium. For further information on the GIGAS project, please refer to the website: http://www.thegigasforum.eu

Workshop contact:
Freddy Fierens
e-mail: freddy.fierens@jrc.it

European Commission, Joint Research Centre,
Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit

 

[Logo] FP7GIGAS is a Support Action funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project runs from June 2008 to May 2010.