1. LC Standards in the INSPIRE Initiative
Lena Hallin-Pihlatie Finnish Environment Institute SYKE Facilitator of the Land Cover and Land Use INSPIRE Thematic Cluster

2. Outline The INSPIRE Directive – a European perspective
How to standardise Land Cover information according to INSPIRE?
How is the use of ISO Land Cover Meta Languague supported?
Examples and feedback from the community

3. The INSPIRE Directive
Legally binding framework Directive aiming to build a Spatial Data Infrastructure in Europe from 2007 onwards
Based on standards (ISO, OGC)
Re-use of standards for services (eg. WMS, WFS), metadata, basic models and for data encoding, ISO Land Cover Meta Languague (LCML)
Defines its own standards, for example
Data models in 34 themes: eg. Land Cover and Land Use
Applications schemas (xsd)
Code list
Obligation on MS data providers to harmonise datasets by 10/2020

4. INSPIRE Land Cover - overview

5. Land Cover Vector: Dataset & Unit
LandCoverDataset feature type
The nomenclature used has to be provided by the LandCoverNomenclature data type
LandCoverUnit feature type
The land cover objects are provided by the LandCoverObservation data type

6. Land Cover Vector: Observation
LandCoverObservation
provide the class using code list value LandCoverClass

7. Land Cover Nomenclature
Requirement to provide the following information on for each Land Cover dataset
1) the URI to the Land Cover code list used (nomenclatureCodeList)
2) the description of the classification by using the embeddedDescription attribute OR the externalDescription attribute
embeddedDescription uses ISO :2012 LCML
externalDescription uses the DocumentCitatation data type

8. LC standardisation in LC
Alternatives regarding the Land Cover classes
One way to harmonise LC data is to create and re-use common code list values and definitions (1)
Another way is to use the ISO :2012 LCML standard to describe the code list values and the classification used and to embed this description in the data itself (2)

9. Land Cover Class code list
The Land Cover Class code list is empty
It should be extended to cover all values used by each LC data provider

10. Pure Land Cover Components
Pure Land Cover Component (PLCC) code list proposal by the EAGLE group
Proposed in 2013, informative, not mandatory in INSPIRE
Need for an update
Source: INSPIRE Data Specification for the spatial data theme Land Cover, Annex H (2013)

11. CLC extension of the Land Cover Class codelist
Corine Land Cover code list maintained by EEA:

12. ELF extenstion of Land Cover Class codelist
ClassValue.html (.rdf)
Artifical surfaces and constructions
DEF : All Surfaces where landscape has been changed by or is under influence of human construction activities by replacing natural surface with artificial abiotic 2D/3D constructions or artificial materials. Artificial parts of urban and suburban areas, where mankind has settled with permanent settlement infrastructures, also the settlement parts of rural areas. Sealed areas (buildings, other constructions and sealed flat surfaces) and non-sealed areas (no building, artificial and unsealed).
SN : No subtypes are defined. Details about buildings, infrastructure and constructions are handled by the “Building” and “Transport” themes.
Source: Åsa Sehlstedt / ELF project

13. Description of the ELF Land Cover code list in LCML
Described the values in the ELF LC code list according to ISO Land Cover Meta Language (LCML)
Artifical Surfaces and constructions class described by LCML (Figure)
Source: Åsa Sehlstedt

14. Land Cover Nomenclature application schema

15. Feedback collected
It is unclear how to include the LCML description in the data (GML)
The extension base of the embeddedDescription is of ”type any”
The extension base instead should point at the ISO LCML schema (namespace) enabling for example validation
An official xsd is missing for ISO LCML

16. To sum up
There is not a common fixed classification (code list) defined to be used in the Land Cover theme, as the one defined is empty and can be extended.
There is a clear need for a Land Cover meta language to describe the characteristics of the land cover classes in a common, agreed way.
The Land Cover Nomenlature application schema allows you to encode your LC classification using the ISO Land Cover Meta Language (LCML) standard through the EmbeddedDescription attribute. However, it is unclear how to use it and to do the encoding as an official ISO LCML schema (xsd) is missing.

17. Thank you!