One Europe: One Location Framework Sallie White Business Operations Manager Good morning, my name is Sallie White and I have been the Business Operations Manager at EuroGeographics since August 2009. Thank you for inviting EuroGeographics to speak at this conference. I hope over the next 20 minutes or so I can share with you the projects and activities EuroGeographics is engaged in with its members and partner organisations in building the location framework for Europe.

Improving accessibility One Location Framework for Europe Overview EuroGeographics in 2011 Product development Improving accessibility One Location Framework for Europe ESDIN deliverables and …the future To give you an overview of what I am going to talk about…… I will firstly give a very brief introduction to EuroGeographics (I’m delighted to see many of our members here today – so I do hope they will forgive me for telling them what they of course already know!) I will explain how we are developing our products to meet the needs of our customer and users and how we are improving access to them. Both the product development and improved access has been influenced and supported by work in the ESDIN project. As this project draws to a close I will share with you the project deliverables and describe how EuroGeographics and the wider community will build on these in the future in the creation of the European Location Framework.

EuroGeographics in 2011 REPRESENTATION PRODUCTS & SERVICES KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS EuroGeographics is the voice of national mapping, cadastral and land registry organisations in Europe. There are 3 strands to our activities, engagement and representation, facilitation of knowledge exchange and the creation of interoperable products and services. EuroGeographics was formed just over 10 years ago and during this time it has seen considerable change, but no more so than in 2010. In 2010 EuroGeographics moved from its offices in Paris to new offices located in Brussels. EuroGeographics members also voted at the 2010 General Assembly to change the constitution of EuroGeographics from being a French Association to an International Not for Profit Association under Belgium Law. Having received Royal Assent at the start of January the process is now well under way to transform EuroGeographics into an INPO. The change in constitution and the move to Brussels, enables EuroGeographics to better meet the needs of its members and stakeholders. It places EuroGeographics at the heart of Europe where we are able to build strong effective relationships and engage in key policy decisions with the European Parliament, European Commission and other European organisations. It ideally positions EuroGeographics members and partners to form the European Location Framework.

Interoperable Products EuroGeographics explains and promotes the need for each member to have a one national authoritative set of reference data, avoiding duplication of effort and wasted resources. EuroGeographics works with its members to aggregate their national sources data to create trustworthy and reliable European datasets, which are made available to many different users and customers, from the European Commission, to the Central European Bank and St Ettian University in France. We currently have 4 different products: EuroBoundaryMap is a seamless geodatabase at the scale 1:100 000 covering 40 countries. It contains geometry, names and codes of administrative and statistical units continuously updated by our members. It offers a linkage to the updated statistical LAU- and NUTS-codes for all local administrative units of the EU27. This product is probably created from input from all of you. EuroGlobalMap is a topographic dataset at the scale of 1:1 Million and it covers 32 countries. EuroRegionalMap is a multi-functional topographic reference dataset at the scale 1:250 000 covering 30 countries. EuroDEM is a mosaic of EuroGeographics members' national elevation data it is a digital representation of the ground surface topography of Europe.

Product Development EuroGeographics and its members understand that the operating market in which we all work has changed considerably. Expectations have grown in the data and information industry, customers demands have increased, they want enhanced content, highly accurate data, greater coverage, data must be up to date and delivered efficiently and immediately…..having listened too our customers needs and been successful in winning a tender from Eurostat to deliver European data to them for the next 4 years we have embarked on strategy for developing and enhancing our products and services during the next 4 years. Coverage of our products will be extended, for example we have commitment from members to deliver national data for our pan-European products and are working on solutions to infill current gaps in our products. Key countries we will be targeting include Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece We will enhance the consistency between our products, the boundaries in EBM will be used to create the boundaries for ERM EGM will be generalised from ERM, making it an more efficient process and providing higher quality small scale data Content will be enhanced to enrich our products and add to their usability, we will be adding points of interest such as schools and hospital to ERM and……

ERM and ECRINs ERM ECRINs And ERM is also being enhanced with the ECRIN water network, which will improve the water feature density of the dataset, so it can be used more effectively by one of our largest customers the EEA. 6

One Location Framework As you can see EuroGeographics, its members, stakeholders and partners are putting considerable time, effort, money and recourses into creating authoritative quality data, which underpins the Location Framework for Europe and we believe it is incredibly important especially in the current economic climate where funds and recourses are limited that we stop the duplication of effort and resources and the creation of duplicate datasets. We will continue to work with the GMES bureau and the EEA in the amalgamation of reference data for example for the emergency response service. We also understand to further reduce duplication we need to make the data our members and EuroGeographics creates more accessible, so users are aware of it, are able to access it easily have simple terms of usages…..EuroGeographics has therefore initiated a Sales improvement progamme, which includes a review of all it Pricing and licensing and has already implemented a simple and forward thinking data policy

Data Policy – Objectives Maximising use Accessibility Enabling development Contributing to sustainability Supporting innovation The EuroGeographics Data Policy establishes the policy that governs the provision of EuroGeographics data. The objectives of the EuroGeographics Data Policy are: Maximising the use and sharing of geodetic, topographic, cadastral and other information about features on, above or below the earth’s surface Providing full and open access to information aggregated at European Level from NMCAs services and data collected for and provided through national spatial data infrastructures, subject to relevant security restrictions and national data policies; Strengthening environmental, security and other location related policies and services to improve the life of citizens and stimulate markets in Europe, in particular the downstream sector, with a view to enabling growth and job creation; Contributing to the sustainability of relevant EC policies and services requiring geo-spatial reference data and information, in the interest of effective governance; supporting the European academic and research communities.

Data Policy – Principles Anybody can access EuroGeographics data Viewing free of charge Direct supply and Increased access models The objectives of the Data Policy are supported by a number of principles: Anybody can access (which means view or licence) all EuroGeographics data; in particular, public, commercial and scientific users and European or non-European users; Viewing EuroGeographics data is free of charge; EuroGeographics data will be made available to the users via direct supply and increasingly WFS access. Online access is subject to a user registration process and to the acceptation of generic terms and conditions; Additional access modes and the use (internal or external and subject to a licence agreement) of EuroGeographics data will be tailored to specific user needs, and therefore subject to tailored conditions in compliance with the INSPIRE Directive. These objectives and principles create a modern Data Policy that aims at maximising the beneficial use of EuroGeographics and NMCA data for the widest range of applications and to stimulate the uptake of information based on location specific data and services for end users. By achieving these objectives we can respond directly to the increasing demand for Earth observation data in the market place and support the implementation of location reliant policies, such as environmental policies. It also provided us with the guiding principles for creating appropriate and harmonised pricing models and licence agreements and provides a basis for the EuroGeographics Web View Service.

EuroGeoInfo We hope the web viewing service will be launched shortly via our newly created EuroGeoInfo website, the homepage can be seen here.

EuroGeoInfo The website provides a portal, or shop window, not only to EuroGeographics products and services,

EuroGeoInfo but also to our members’ products

EuroGeoInfo and services, through an interactive map…

EuroGeoInfo And it highlights the key roles they are playing in the creation and implementation of National Spatial Data Frameworks. EuroGeoInfo and the EuroGeographics Web Mapping Service, will provide easy access and free viewing of our products and services, allowing us to meet our customers demands and providing the ‘free’ element the market place has come to expect.

Pricing and Licensing Principles And as I mentioned the progressive data policy also enabled us to create a set of principles for the new pricing and licensing framework. The aim of reviewing and replacing the existing agreement is to optimise the use and marketability of EuroGeographics products and services and to produce simple, consistent easily understood pricing and licensing models which will address the inconsistencies in current pricing models and the discrepancies in the licences agreements between EuroGeographics, its partners, distributors, VARs and end users.

ESDIN Many of the activities and much of the work I have explained that EuroGeographics and its members are undertaking has been fundamentally underpinned by the EDIN project. The ESDIN project is made up of a consortium of 20 parties, it is an eContentplus project and was part funded making it a 3.1 million euro project. ESDIN — European Spatial Data Infrastructure with a Best Practice Network. It is a bridge between the theory and the practice — from the INSPIRE Directive towards implementation and usage of interoperable geographical data by Spatially enabled Societies A platform for discussion of experts Best Practices Networking within the SDI creating communities and initiatives, internal and external A challenge to enable the access to the geospatially referenced data for a INSPIRE Annex1 themes at a European or local level An answer for the requests of the users — decision makers in the European structures, civil protection, risk management, environment, enterprise, transport, housing, healthcare, regional development and more. The ESDIN project was broken down into a number of work packages which focused on different elements of the project. The project is now drawing to an end, and has produced a number of very significant deliverables, which means the work and progress made will not stop when the project ends but move the community forward in the creation of a European Location Framework.

Why should you be interested in ESDIN? INSPIRE compliance Adopt best practice for Data Management Quality assured data Trustworthy data Readily “blended” data Opens new markets So why should you be interested in the deliverables of the ESDIN project? Though the tools and services ESDIN has created it allows those who implement them to be INSPIRE compliant. Transformation is the key to INSPIRE interoperability and harmonisation. ESDIN has studied transformation processes, created matching tables and proposed best practice which helps the implementers and users to adopt best practice for Data Management. ESDIN has created quality monitoring tools and quality controlled automated processes which allows for the creation of quality assured trustworthy data, and enables consistent responsive data delivery. Reducing production costs for the producer and giving the user confidence the in the data that is delivered to them. The creation of edge matching tools and the development of European specifications for small to large scale data means data can be more readily “blended” and National data will be easier to merge to make European wide data. Trust worthy data and the work completed on pricing and licensing models, will also open up new markets, increasing accessibility to data and promoting the need for quality authoritative reference data.

ELF/INSPIRE Demonstrator These amalgamation of these deliverables can be shown in the ELF demonstrator.

European Location Framework As I suggested although the funding for the ESDIN project may have now come to an end the significant deliverables and outcomes means this is not an end to the work. ESDIN fundamentally support the INSPIRE ideas and provides extensions to enable implementation and by using the ESDIN tools and following best practice there will be more efficient processes, which deliver consistent releasable data and services. Therefore: The test sites demonstrating 22 services over 5 INSPIRE themes are available for at least 6 months (within consortium and EG membership) and we are looking to make these available through the ELF/INSPIRE demonstration site The contributory software is available on Open Source BSD license The prototypes for quality evaluation, edge-matching, generalisation tools and access control are accessible to all and A Task Force is being selected to develop the European Location Framework to make the data and services more publically available I have really only touched on the ESDIN project and for further information and to find out who you can be involved in the development of the European Location Framework I really encourage you to attend the ESDIN closing workshop on March 29th

Conclusions So to summarise Through the considerable effort time and resources the ESDIN project has delivered significant outcomes that support the INSPIRE principals and enable implementation The ESDIN work has supported the work of EuroGeographics and its member and EuroGeographics will be using the lessons learnt and tools created to enhance its products and increase usability and accessibility to them through the Sales improvement programme The ESDIN project and the work of EuroGeographics can only be achieved when we work together and the creation of the European Location Framework community will take this industry forward in the future There is still a significant amount of work to do and we can only move forward by working together…….because together we are stronger….. Thank you

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