5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E Contribution to the European Forest Information and Communication System (EFICS) By EFI, GMD GmbH, TU Dresden and UNEP/WCMC

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E Options for the development of the European Forestry Information and Communication System (Source: EFICS Study Final Report, 1997)

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E On-going activities JRC activities: I-TFIS: Prototype of Internet Tropical Forest Information System, FISE: Prototype of Forest Information Search Engine The GI-GIS project  The Open GIS-Consortium, OGC  Intelligent Mapping and Visual Data Exploration in the WWW (Internet Descartes)  CommonGIS  Activities as of combining forest statistics and EO information  European Environment Information and Observation NETwork (EIONET) of EEA  Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS)

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E General goals of the project  To elaborate a platform independent, effective resource discovery system for retrieving standardised metadata information  To develop a system for retrieving data from distributed databases, processing and presenting the extracted data using tools which allow the user groups to easily tailor-make products based on forest statistical data and/or EO data  A working prototype - EFIS

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E EFIS system will:  be platform independent  allow the user to search relevant sources via a resource discovery system using internationally accepted metadata standards (Resource discovery)  allow to define the geographical area of interest and desired forest attributes (User defined search)  allow to extract desired data based on the concept of distributed databases (Actual data retrieval)  give the user the possibility to process retrieved data e.g. statistical data, geo referenced information also allowing to combine different types of data sets (Data processing)  allow to produce high quality output products (Tailor made, high quality products).

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E Logical steps toward the goal Defining the ultimate goal: EFICS Building the EFICS prototype:EFIS How far is the prototype from the goal ? Recommendations for future development

5-Feb-01 E U R O P E A N F O R E S T I N S T I T U T E EFIS will be a benchmark towards better information on forests in Europe