Document published on the INSPIRE Network Services Architecture

Date: 5/11/2008

Sources: INSPIRE

A document, INSPIRE Network Services Architecture, Version 3, has been published on the INSPIRE website by the Network Services Drafting Team.

INSPIRE, which stands for INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in the European community, is an EC Directive concerning the sharing and harmonisation of spatial datasets across Europe. The INSPIRE Directive has considerable implications for the HA, because they will be required to create metadata (descriptions of the spatial data), and to provide access to data that they have collected or created in standard form. The Directive came into force on 15th May 2007 and Member States are required to bring in legislation and procedures to fully comply with the Directive by 15th May 2009.

The purpose of the Network Services Architecture Report is to help the process of developing the Implementing Rules (IR) for each of the INSPIRE Network Services and also to enable Member States to better understand the requirements. The document is not normative but informative and expands on the architecture as defined in the INSPIRE Technical Architecture Overview, with additional technical information.

The report explains the five INSPIRE Service Types which Member States are asked to establish and operate the following services as set out in the Directive:

o        DISCOVER – The goal of discovery services is to support discovery of data, evaluation and use of spatial data and services through metadata, which consist of indexed and searchable descriptions of the spatial data

o        VIEW – “view services making it possible, as a minimum, to display, navigate, zoom in/out, pan or overlay viewable spatial data sets and to display legend information and any relevant content of metadata” - article 11(1) (b)

o        DOWNLOAD – a network of “download services, enabling copies of spatial data sets, or parts of such sets, to be downloaded and, where practicable, accessed directly” - article 11(1) (c)

o        TRANSFORM – a network of “transformation services, enabling spatial data sets to be transformed with a view to achieving interoperability” - article 11(1) (d); this kind of transformation service is seen as a spatial data processing service, capable of transforming the input dataset from one Coordinate Reference System (CRS) into another

o        INVOKE – a network of “services allowing spatial data services to be invoked” - article 11(1) (e); the ‘Invoke Spatial Data Service’ allows the user to define both the expected data inputs and outputs from the service and also define a workflow or service chain combining multiple services

The report also contains a section on the required architecture, which explores the issues of: e-government integration; Rights Management (RM); multilingual aspects; and quality of service requirements. The Directive focuses on interoperability for these services, which means the possibility for services to interact, without repetitive manual intervention. The INSPIRE Network Services Definitions define the interfaces by which the different parties of the European Spatial Data Infrastructure will communicate. The detailed definition for the implementation of each of the INSPIRE Network Services will be documented separately.

Further information on INSPIRE can be found here.

HA recommended to view the report for further information

Keywords: Architecture, Geographic information, Standard