Standards, standardisation & INSPIRE Status, issues, opportunities INSPIRE Coordination Team 6 th MIG meeting, 13-14 June 2017 Joint Research Centre The European Commission's science and knowledge service http://ec.europa.eu/jrc
Overview Standards in INSPIRE Collaboration with standardisation organisations Lessons learnt Discussion points
Implementing Rules (IRs), Technical Guidelines (TGs) and tools What Member States must implement (abstract specification) legally binding Directive Commission Regulation INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC Implementing Rules not legally binding How Member States might implement it (implementation specification) Technical Guidelines Tools implementing INSPIRE requirements e.g. e.g. TGs for the Implementation of Download Services INSPIRE- SOS INSPIRE validator TGs Data Specification on Addresses Extended schemas
References to international standards Conceptual influence and some explicit references to standards (mainly ISO/TC 211 & some domain-specific) Directive Commission Regulation INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC Implementing Rules Many references to standards (OGC, ISO/TC 211, W3C and domainspecific) Technical Guidelines e.g. TGs for the Implementation of Download Services TGs Data Specification on Addresses Tools implementing INSPIRE requirements e.g. INSPIRE- SOS INSPIRE validator Extended schemas
Standards used in INSPIRE AAA standards W3C DWBP CS-W WMS, WMTS Atom, WFS, SOS, WCS ISO 19115, 19119, 19139 ISO 19115, 19119, 19139 ISO 19100, OGC, domain 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?