1. Bringing spatial data and metadata from long term ecosystem research domain to the INSPIRE world
Tomas Kliment
Junior Researcher
Italian National Research Council
Institute of Marine Sciences in Venice

2. Outlines EnvEurope project short overview
Action 1 – Data collection and Management
Dataset metadata in EnvEurope and its bridging to the INSPIRE
Spatial data in EnvEurope and overlaps to the INSPIRE spatial data themes
EnvEurope data exchange system design and pilot implementation
Status quo & steps for the near future

3. EnvEurope project short overview
Proposes a framework for environmental high quality monitoring through long-term ecosystem research (LTER) sites in Europe
Shares ecological scientific knowledge
Harmonizes parameters and methods based on existing data series for future sets
Defines a set of key environmental quality indicators able to characterise ecosystems across Europe
Establishes common information management system
Supports environmental policy at EU level (SEIS, INSPIRE, GMES)

4. EnvEurope project short overview
Domain & Spatial extent – 3 ecosystem, 11 countries and 67 LTER sites

5. Action 1 – Data collection and Management
Data exchange system design and pilot implementation
An integrated environmental information management system
State of the art within the LTER Europe domain
Data management & Metadata
User requirements definition
Broad-scale domain stakeholders
EU environmental policy makers
Metadata models development
Metadata about the LTER site
Dataset metadata
Data models development

6. Action 1 – Data collection and Management
Metadata collection for existing datasets
Datasets collection
Short-term solution to collect existing data in current models
Long-term solution to collect data in new data models for easier data exchange using web services
SDI components development
Data models, metadata, network services for data discovery, evaluation, view, download and processing,
Geoportal with discovery, view, download clients
Contribution to the technical components of SEIS

7. Dataset metadata in EnvEurope
EnvEurope metadata specification
Ecological Metadata Language (EML) as a reference metadata specification
Elements definition based on the user requirements
21 elements defined for data discovery & evaluation

8. Bridge to INSPIRE – metadata crosswalk
Crosswalk EML2INSPIRE (ISO) has been developed
4 steps crosswalk methodology has been used
Almost entire eml-dataset module is mapped to ISO19115
US-LTER sample MD used to check up the transformation
Altova MapForce environment used to created mapping

9. Bridge to INSPIRE – metadata crosswalk
1. step – Harmonization of source&target specification
Aims to get familiarized with both standards (EML, INSPIRE - ISO) in order to understand the definition of individual elements before the mapping. In particular element identification, names, semantic definition, obligation, multiplicity, hierarchical organization, constraints and data types.

10. Bridge to INSPIRE – metadata crosswalk
2. step – Semantic mapping
Aims to determine the semantic correspondence between the standards to be mapped. This step implies matching between each source and semantically equivalent target element. Therefore a clear and precise definition of each element made previously is very important.

11. Bridge to INSPIRE – metadata crosswalk
3. step – Additional rules
Aims to accompany semantic matching table with metadata conversions specification. This contains additional transformation functions required to convert source to target metadata. This implies content conversion rules (simple types, code-lists, complex types), element to element mapping considering obligation, multiplicity and element occurrence and hierarchical and structural organization.

12. Bridge to INSPIRE – metadata crosswalk
4. step – Implementation & its result
Aims to implement all the rules defined before into the most appropriate technical solution based on metadata application schema implementation (XML schemas - eml.xsd & gmd.xsd)

13. Spatial data in EnvEurope
ESRI Geodatabase
PostGIS, SHP
XLS,TXT,
XML (SOS)

14. Spatial data at CNR-ISE
Biotic data
Abiotic data

15. EnvEurope & INSPIRE – discovered data themes overlaps
Key INSPIRE theme
Environmental Monitoring Facilities (EMF)
EMF
EMF site = EnvEurope site
EMF station
EMF sensor
Media monitored
water, air, marine …
Environmental monitoring network – LTER Europe

16. EnvEurope data exchange system design
EnvEurope&LTER
group of users
European legislation and
intitatives group of users
ExchangeData
InsertMetadata
ProvideData
ProvideService

17. Metadata component of data exchange system
Drupal CMS
deegree CSW

18. Status quo & steps for the near future
Metadata crosswalk to INSPIRE is ready
Data overlaps with INSPIRE themes are defined
ISE data mapping to EMF INSPIRE model has been initialized
Data exchange system user requirements are defined
Implementation of metadata component has been started

19. Status quo & steps for the near future
Crosswalk shall be extended to map all possible EML elements to ISO 19115
Sample data mapping shall be implemented in order to get knowledge for data model development
Metadata tool has to be finished ASAP and provided to representative stakeholders in order to collect metadata about existing dataset
Geoportal implementation shall be initialized
Network services for data discovery, evaluation and consumption (view, download, processing) shall be implemented

20. Thank you very much for your attention!
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