INSPIRE DIRECTIVE

In Europe a major recent development has been the entering in force of the INSPIRE Directive in May 2007, establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe to support Community environmental policies, and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.

INSPIRE is based on the infrastructures for spatial information established and operated by the 27 Member States of the European Union. The Directive addresses 34 spatial data themes needed for environmental applications, with key components specified through technical implementing rules. This makes INSPIRE a unique example of a legislative “regional” approach.

Legislation

Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) was published in the official Journal on the 25th April 2007. The INSPIRE Directive entered into force on the 15th May 2007

To ensure that the spatial data infrastructures of the Member States are compatible and usable in a Community and transboundary context, the Directive requires that common Implementing Rules (IR) are adopted in a number of specific areas (Metadata, Data Specifications, Network Services, Data and Service Sharing and Monitoring and Reporting). These IRs are adopted as Commission Decisions or Regulations, and are binding in their entirety. The Commission is assisted in the process of adopting such rules by a regulatory committee composed of representatives of the Member States and chaired by a representative of the Commission (this is known as the Comitology procedure).

Editor's Choice

INSPIRE Conference 2009

The Third INSPIRE Conference took place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 15-19 June 2009.
Presentations are available here for download.

Recordings of the live webcast of the INSPIRE Conference sessions on the 17th June are available.
Click on index to navigate to the individual presentations.

Featured News


05-Nov-2009  Call for Expression of Interest for participation in development of INSPIRE data specifications for Annex II & III Data Themes launched
25-Sep-2009  INSPIRE Network Services - Download Service
25-Sep-2009  INSPIRE Network Services - Transformation Service
16-Sep-2009  INSPIRE Data Specifications
09-Sep-2009  Call for expressions of interest: INSPIRE development
28-Jul-2009  INSPIRE View Service Technical Guidance (Version 2.0) published
22-Jul-2009  INSPIRE: Technical Guidance Discovery Services, version 2 published
10-Jul-2009  Monitoring and Reporting Guidelines document published