ESPON Seminar 2122 Nov' 2002

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ESPON Seminar 21-22 Nov. 2002
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Structure of the Presentation

• GISCO project
• GISCO mandates
• Current GISCO database
• New System Architecture
• INSPIRE initiative
• NUTS Regulation

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• Origin CORINE project
• 1990 Task force on spatial statistics
• 1992 GISCO as a permanent Eurostat project
• Eurostat has recognised the importance of a GIS
  to integrate data from different statistical
  databases

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• Mandate
• Within Eurostat
• Within the Commission
• Within the European statistical system
• International co-operation

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GISCO Mandate Activities

• manage the GISCO reference database including its
  structure, architecture, data transfer, etc.
• ensure quality control of the contents
• act as a reference centre for Eurostat and the EC
• chair the meetings of the COGI
• express and support users needs in terms of
  software and hardware
• pursue the harmonisation of EU and broader
  international activities in GI

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• Hierarchical structure of themes, layers and
  datasets
• Coverages storing vector data
• Grids for raster data (land cover, DEM)
• Attribute tables in INFO format
• File based structure
• Metadata as HTML pages and as Access database
• Equal Area Projection system on a sphere
• Distribution on CD-ROM

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Infrastructure for Spatial Information in
Europe The INSPIRE Vision is to make
harmonised and high quality geographic data and
information readily available for formulating,
implementing, monitoring and evaluating Community
policy and for the citizen to access information
about the environment, whether local, regional,
national or international
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• Data should be collected once and maintained at
  the level where this can be done most effectively
• It should be possible to combine seamlessly
  spatial information from different sources across
  Europe and share it between many users and
  application
• It should be possible for information collected
  at one level to be shared between all the
  different levels, detailed for detailed
  investigations, general for strategic purposes

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INSPIRE Common principles

• geographic information needed for good governance
  at all levels should be abundant under conditions
  that do not refrain its extensive use
• it should be easy to discover which geographic
  information is available, fits the needs for a
  particular use and under which conditions it can
  be acquired and used
• geographic data should become easy to understand
  and interpret because it can be visualised within
  the appropriate context selected in a
  user-friendly way

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INSPIRE timeline

• Position papers until September 2002
• Expert group meeting end of october 2002
• INSPIRE concept paper end of year
• Draft of legislation beginning 2003

Information at http//www.ec-gis.org/inspire
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• Proposal adopted by the Commission on 14
  February 2001
• Discussion in the Council and Parliament since
  March 2001
• Decision of Parliament October 2001
• Second reading in 2002
• Common position of the Council in October 2002
• Discussion in Parliament end of 2002 (?)

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• Assure comparability and impartiality of regional
  statistics
• fix (more or less) the current state of the NUTS
  in the MS
• set-up objective criteria for the definition of
  regions
• define clear rules for future amendments
• stability of the classification over time

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• Comitology procedure
• Changes only every 3 years
• in addition 2 years transition period
• Aim reduction of the dispersion of region sizes

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ESPON Seminar 21-22 Nov. 2002