In accordance to the network objectives and milestones, the network activities in the last project year focussed on the organisation of the European SDI Best Practice Awards 2009 event on November 26-27, 2009 in Turin, Italy, the promotion of SDI Best Practices and planning of the sustainable network continuation.

In this context, the consortium partners and experts, the Advisory Board and the Award Jury worked together to finalise an SDI assessment scheme. This assessment framework was used to analyse and evaluate more than 200 sub-national SDIs and to select twelve highly commended SDIs as European Best Practices. A database containing more than 100 categorised SDI good practices was completed and published online.

Final eSDI-Net+ Consortium Meeting in Krakow, June 2010

The consortium expresses its gratitude to the European Commission, the Advisory Board and the experts as well as to all associated partners for their enormous effort, their advice and active support in reaching the project goals during its runtime as well as to the organisers of the local workshops, the teams developing the methodology and defining and implementing the SDI evaluation process with its culmination point at the Turin Award. Special thanks go to our stakeholders and the SDIs who contributed to the successful accomplishment of the SDI analysis and selection process and helped to disseminate the project results at the local level.

The eSDI-Net+ Final Report is available for download.

All the contact data of the network partners and the SDIs being part of the database will be added to the mailing list of EUROGI.

The network will be presented and time will be allocated to its development two times a year during EUROGI General Board and Members Meetings.

The website will be maintained by EUROGI and will be integrated in EUROGI's new website that will be developed soon this year.

EUROGI allocates one specific person from its Executive Committee that is responsible for supporting the developments and promoting the awareness of the network.

EUROGI will allocate a lump sum for the next 2 years for expenses on activities for the sustainability of the network. In return a modest participation fee will be raised.

EUROGI plans to continue updating the database of SDIs according to the resources needed and the decisions already taken by the experts involved in the evaluation framework.

EUROGI will involve the SDIs and the partners of the network in the workshops of EC-funded projects that EUROGI participates in.

The flyer with more details is available for download in pdf.

Technological development and increasing awareness of geodata and its use has caused an explosion of digital content. However, this was not accompanied by dissemination and accessibility measures. Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs), allowing extensive reuse of geoinformation, may offer a solution. SDIs face organisational, technological, legal, cultural and linguistic challenges. The enrichment of geodata by semantically well-defined metadata and widespread implementation of SDIs, as foreseen by INSPIRE, could help to overcome these difficulties. The European thematic network eSDI-Net+, co-funded by the EC, aims at bringing together existing SDI key players and target users to facilitate exchange of experiences and best practices at sub-national level. Therefore the project developed a SDI assessment methodology and framework. It identified about 200 working, accessible and intelligible SDI solutions and selected 12 best practices. The next step is to transfer these experiences back to local communities and to disseminate them among the global GI community worldwide.

Learning from others - Capacity Building for GIS and SDI in South East Europe
Plenary Session 2: GIS Technologies and Related Disciplines
Ulrich Boes, Presentation No.9

Spatial Data Infrastructures: The Sub-national Dimension in the European Context
Keynote speech 4
Joachim Rix, Presentation No. 21

Introduction to Workshop, Presentation of eSDI-Net+ Project, Report about Thessaloniki SDI Workshop February 2009
Workshop "Spatial Data Infrastructures: enabling sharing of data in South-East Europe" - Part 1
Ulrich Boes, Presentation No. 22

Introduction into SDIs and SDI standards
Workshop "Spatial Data Infrastructures: enabling sharing of data in South-East Europe" - Part 1
Ulrich Boes, Presentation No. 23

SDIs from very local to cross-border scale were presented at this workshop. In accordance to this year's theme of the conference "INSPIRE as a Framework for Cooperation", the workshop drew attention to promising SDI solutions in Europe and motivated the SDIs to exchange experiences and to learn from each other. This was the main message of the network coordinator Joachim Rix reflecting the experiences of the project.

The three presented SDIs IDERioja (Spain), ForthValleyGIS (Scotland) and X-Border GDI (Netherlands) are examples of the Best Practices elected by an international jury and presented at the international conference in Turin, Italy in November 2009. Speakers presented their solutions, focusing on the key factors of their success. Alan Moore, the Chief executive of the ForthValleyGIS, emphasized, that not only technical issues, but even more organisational and institutional elements are crucial factors to build an SDI. "Infrastructure engineering is very much driven by business needs to build an SDI. In fact we are a SDI company, offering services to our users." (Alan Moore, ForthValleyGIS) The users receive the specific information they ask for, instead of being overloaded. Besides this, the estimated cost savings using these services are about 30-40% in comparison to doing the data preparation by the users themselves.

Besides the provision of viewing services and free of charge data provision, the speakers emphasized the necessity of the information exchange with the user community and other SDIs. "Cooperation, transparency and communication are the key", stated Sven Robertz from the X-Border GDI. Solutions considering the cultural and lingual differences like the multilingual thesaurus offered by the X-Border GDI are of great help in this context. The example of the Spanish SDI IDERioja presented by Ana García de Vicuña showed the historical development of this SDI during the last decade, becoming the mature SDI that IDERioja is today.

During the INSPIRE Conference the experiences made in the eSDI-Net+ project are also introduced in the presentations "Operational SDIs: The Sub-National Dimension in the European Context" by Joachim Rix and ""SDI Assessment - Looking towards the European Interoperability Framework" by Sergio Farruggia. The final consortium meeting took place in the week of the INSPIRE Conference 2010.

Further information on the outstanding SDI best practices can be seen at http://www.esdinetplus.eu/best_practice/outstanding.html.

More details about the conference are available at the INSPIRE conference website http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2010/.

The conference was organised by the European project eSDI-Net+ and hosted by Regione Piemonte. It attracted an international audience of about 130 professionals engaged in SDI and related GI activities at the European, national, regional and local levels.

Speakers presented their solutions, focusing on the key factors of their success. Besides the provision of viewing services, information exchange with the user community and free of charge data provision, the speakers emphasized the necessity to start small and grow up fast. "Don't think that you can provide the final solution on one day; start to build up a small corner. The users will validate it by its application and give you their feedback. So you can start on working on the next step." (Steve Brandwood, UK)

The main message for the Award Jury was that "each Spatial Data Infrastructure is a special case." The diversity of experiences made was a fundamental challenge for the Jury. Facing the difficulty of comparing "apple and pears, oranges and potatoes" Jury, consisting of 6 GI experts, decided to highly commend all twelve SDIs.

The SDI Best Practice Award is part of the eSDI-Net+ project, a thematic network co-funded by the eContentplus Programme of the European Commission. It aims to bring together key European SDI stakeholders to share knowledge and to provide a platform for communication and knowledge exchange at all levels, from local to global. The Network identifies working, accessible and intelligible solutions, as it communicates the purpose and aims of INSPIRE; it also encourages local collaboration in setting up innovative solutions.

Previous to the Award, all SDIs in Europe were invited to submit their best practice and be part of the fast growing network of SDIs. After an initial evaluation of the applications, a number of promising SDIs has been selected for detailed interviews to provide further information. Each interviewed SDI was evaluated by the national representatives of the eSDI-Net+ project, focusing on the key aspects such as:

1. Technological, innovative level and originality of the project
2. Implementation and/or readiness for INSPIRE principles
3. Level of fostering cooperation between different users (proof of visibility and/or user feedback)
4. Possibility of extension or transfer to other countries and regions

Further information on the Awards can be seen at http://www.esdinetplus.eu/news/news.html.

Contact
eSDI-Net+ Project
Technische Universität Darmstadt, FB GRIS,
Darmstadt, Germany

Dr. Joachim Rix
Phone +49 6151 155 221

Swetlana Fast
Phone +49 6151 155 405

Fax +49 6151 155 444
Email: coordinator@esdinetplus.eu
www.esdinetplus.eu

The common framework for the two workshops 3.4 and 4.4 was based on SDI INSPIRE related best practices addressed by five co-funded EC projects, one of them concerning a European wide case analysis (eSDI-Net+) and the four others concerning eContentplus thematic implementations (GIS4EU, EURADIN, NATURE-SDIplus, and OneGeology-Europe). The Workshops created the opportunity for all five projects to present their lessons learnt and their best practices identified, to show their overlapping interest and synergies.

Both workshops were intended to transfer knowledge about the methodologies applied for such projects, best practices, technical aspects and organisational constraints, as well as to provide the attendees with tools for enhancing SDI implementation approaches on other domains.

Both workshops started with an introduction on the target and the perspectives of the eContentplus programme of the European Commission, which sets the path for all projects. Within this program the eSDI-Net+ project as a thematic network follows the approach to bring together the stakeholders of the SDI community to strengthen the development and build up further awareness. eSDI-Net+ component focuses on the identification and analysis of best practices mostly from sub national level, bringing a European wide picture of the current situation and defining an evaluation framework for further implementation. The workshop attendees had the opportunity to share experiences and perspectives, discuss the results obtained and interact about the evaluation process, being expected to acquire the basic knowledge for further engagement through follow up initiatives.

More information is available at http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/workshops.html.

Das InGeoForum und die INI-GraphicsNet Stiftung laden im Rahmen des eSDI-Net+ Projektes der Europäischen Kommission zu dem Workshop ein "Lokale GDIs im europäischen Kontext - Eine nationale Perspektive"

Der Workshop richtet sich an Geodateninfrastrukturen (GDIs) aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum sowie an alle am Thema Geoinformationen (GI) und INSPIRE Interessierten.

Ziel der von den eSDI-Net+ Projektpartnern organisierten Workshops ist es, den Dialog über das Thema GI von der lokalen auf die europäische Ebene auszuweiten und zu vertiefen.

Weitere Informationen

Following to the Identification and Analysis of Best Practices, outstanding European SDI initiatives and solutions will be awarded in 2009. Aiming to give all relevant initiatives the chance for participating, as well as provide inputs for the definition of the key references and criteria, the SDI's throughout Europe are welcome to pre-register for this process.

SDIs that wish to pre-register are kindly invited to submit their application.

GET INVOLVED!

Invited by the Director Coronel Rodrigo Barriga of the Instituto Geografico Militar (IGM) of Chile, EUROGIS President and eSDI-Net+ GI Content Expert Mauro Salvemini delivered a presentation at the workshop of January 16, 2008 dedicated to Spatial Data Infrastructure and Geodynamics.

Based on the presentation and follow up work the article titled How to evaluate an monitor SDI - The case study of ESDI-Netplus project has been published (in Spanish and English).

The eSDI-Net+ project and the underlying methodology have been highlighted as a reference for the identification and analysis of SDI Best Practices.

See Newsletter Cover and References

See Article by Mauro Salvemini (Pages 13-17) (Spanish and English)