Joint Research Centre

The European Commission's science

and knowledge service

http://ec.europa.eu/jrc

Standards, standardisation & INSPIRE – Status, issues, opportunities

INSPIRE Coordination Team

6th MIG meeting, 13-14 June 2017

Overview

• Standards in INSPIRE

• Collaboration with standardisation organisations

• Lessons learnt

• Discussion points

Implementing Rules (IRs), Technical Guidelines (TGs) and tools

Directive

Implementing Rules

Commission Regulation

Technical Guidelines

“What Member States must implement”

(abstract specification)

“How Member States might implement it”

(implementation specification)

TGs for the Implementation of Download Services

TGs – Data Specification on

Addresses

INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC

legally binding

not legally binding

e.g.

Tools implementing

INSPIRE requirements

INSPIRE-SOS

INSPIRE validator

Extended schemas e.g.

References to international standards

Directive

Implementing Rules

Commission Regulation

Technical Guidelines

TGs for the Implementation of Download Services

TGs – Data Specification on

Addresses

INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC

e.g.

Tools implementing

INSPIRE requirements

INSPIRE-SOS

INSPIRE validator

Extended schemas e.g.

Conceptual influence and some explicit references

to standards (mainly ISO/TC 211

& some domain-specific)

Many references to standards

(OGC, ISO/TC 211, W3C and domain-

specific)

Atom, WFS, SOS, WCS

ISO 19115, 19119, 19139

W3C DWBP

Standards used in INSPIRE

CS-W WMS, WMTS

ISO 19115, 19119, 19139

ISO 19100, OGC, domain

standards

AAA standards

Collaboration with SDOs - OGC

• EEA is OGC member since 2008 Initially participating in technical working groups (waterML, EML) Promotion of OGC standards towards Eionet (around 2010) More of an observer function in the past years

• Collaboration agreement JRC-OGC official recognition of our technical leadership of developing and

coordinating the EU SDI (INSPIRE) rights to participate in meetings and voting rights

• Regular interactions with the OGC community JRC presents INSPIRE status at all European OGC meetings JRC and MS INSPIRE experts are participating in standards and domain

WGs, interoperability experiments and testbeds

• Some interest from OGC to publish INSPIRE TGs as OGC profiles (e.g. for the view and download service TGs)

• Some change requests submitted by JRC (on behalf of the INSPIRE community) to OGC on bugs / incompatibilities

Collaboration with SDOs – ISO/TC 211 (CEN/TC 287) • JRC has a class A liaison with ISO/TC 211

can participate in meetings, but without voting rights

• JRC is hosting the ISO/TC 211 UML model repository

• Some interaction (e.g. submission of comments during revisions, active participation) with relevant ISO working groups, e.g. on Conceptual schema, common types (ISO 19103) Registers, code lists (ISO 19135) Metadata (ISO 19115, 19119) Conceptual model for addresses – development of an INSPIRE

profile (ISO 19160-1)

• CEN/TC 287 (no longer very active) class A liaison: can participate but without voting rights Active participation in drafting CEN/TR 15449-1 - Geographic

information - Spatial data infrastructures – (Parts 1-5)

Collaboration with SDOs – W3C

• JRC (as a Commission service) has an “invited expert” liaison with W3C

• Active participation in the joint W3C/OGC Spatial Data on the Web (SDW) Working Group

• Submission of comments to specific groups

W3C Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group

W3C Data Exchange Working Group

• Future relevant activities:

Joint W3C/OGC Committee (JWOC) – yet to be chartered

Lessons learnt

• Close collaboration is essential – duplication / incompatibilities must be avoided The INSPIRE work on profiling existing standards (i.e. being more

specific where standards leave a great degree of freedom) has been appreciated by the tool developers, implementers and standards community

Active engagement and participation of experts working on both sides is essential in order to influence standards – it is not enough to submit an idea

From EEA side, human resources to particpate sustainably in technical working groups as well as financial resources to co-develop apllication pilots were not there

There are pros and cons relying on standards and working with these organisations or developing INSPIRE standards. Specifications set by standard setting bodies do not only follow the needs of INSPIRE, in particular if INSPIRE experts are not actively involved in the standardisation work

Lessons learnt

• Need for bridging the gap between software implementations and standards Following standards closely is useful for Technical

Guidelines, but for legal acts, it is important to abstract from the specificities of a particular technical solution

Standards become meaningful when implemented by a critical mass of software products (ideally free and open source) – This is not always the case – see e.g. the support for GML

3.2.1 in GIS clients, which is still being addressed

ISO standards are only available against payment – this can be an obstacle for implementers (but also MIG work), when there are many references to ISO standards

Lessons learnt

• Adaptability to change Taking the web as an example, most developments

during the past years are by definition lightweight, fast and simple (and not trying to capture all possible use cases with one shot)

This is not the always the case with the majority of GI standards

The recent collaboration between OGC and W3C on Best Practices for Spatial Data on the Web is good example in this direction

Interdependence requires close collaboration and dynamic adaptations, some change requests / bug fixes take too long – http://ogc.standardstracker.org/show_request.cgi?id=435 is

still unresolved since 2010 despite several requests!

Discussion points

• Collaboration – is it efficient or can we do better? (including collaboration between all bodies)

• Streamlining of standards - do we have too many? Are we duplicating efforts or creating unnecessary complexities / competition?

• Do we (as EU) exercise sufficient influence in these bodies? If not, how can we do better?

• Future of INSPIRE (after 2020) – should we rely more or less on standards?

• Pooling resources – can we think of joint project (e.g. funding of interoperability experiments / testbeds) or more effective working methods?