Brownfields Information Brocker

This paper discusses a possible solution for developing a virtual place for advertisement, investment and the harvesting, collecting and sharing of information concerning brownfields - now abundantly availabe land that was previously used for industrial, commercial or other uses. The novelty of the proposed solution is an automated brownfield related information integration (brownfields data integrator or brownfields broker) from various sources and its further distribution for other purposes (reuse of collected information) in a machine readable format and that meets European requirements regarding the integration of spatial information (INSPIRE directive and its related activities). This virtual place will provide services for brownfields related automated data harvesting, data update by local governments and citizens, as well as mechanisms for the reuse of this data through Application Protocol Interfaces and other „machine to machine “interfaces. The brownfield broker should also help to improve the ratio between developments made on brownfields and greenfields, which are currently imbalanced and statistically unknown in the European Union (EU). The beneficiaries from the brownfields data integrator will be very broad: owners, entrepreneurs (potential investors), municipalities (will be able to upload and then re-use relevant reliable, classified, updated information about brownfields and to advertise it through the application), planners, realtors (will be able to publicise the data using their web portals), financial institutions (for providing distance financial services), volunteers, scientists and the general public (for their personal interest, data creation, use, publishing and informing)

Open Data, VGI and Citizen Observatories INSPIRE Hackathon

In 2016, the INSPIRE Conference hosted the first INSPIRE hackathon on volunteered geographic information and citizen observatories, also known as the INSPIRE Hackathon. The organisers, mostly representatives of European research and innovation projects, continued this activity with the next INSPIRE Conference in 2017. The INSPIRE Hackathon is a collaborative event for developers, researchers, designers and others interested in open data, volunteered geographic information and citizen observatories. The main driving force for the INSPIRE Hackathon is provided by experts from existing EU projects, and its primary objective is to share knowledge and experience between the participants and demonstrate to wider audiences the power of data and information supported by modern technologies and common standards, originating from INSPIRE, Copernicus, GEOSS and other initiatives. This paper describes the history and background of the INSPIRE Hackathon, the various INSPIRE-related hackathons already organised, supporting projects, the results of INSPIRE Hackathon 2017 and the authors’ vision of future activities

Data interoperability for spatial planning: a tentative common description of European datasets concerning land use

Nel quadro della direttiva INSPIRE, il progetto Plan4all mira a stabilire una rete europea di organizzazioni pubbliche e private che si occupano di pianificazione del territorio e dello sviluppo regionale, al fine di costruire un consenso circa l'interoperabilità dei dati a sostegno attività di pianificazione. Una delle attività principali del progetto è stata la definizione di un "modello di dati" per il tema INSPIRE "uso del territorio" (land use). Lavorare su un modello di dati ha comportato una serie di considerazioni che possono essere di interesse per una visione comune sulla pianificazione in Europa. Il risultato è un primo tentativo, condiviso da un certo numero di partner che lavorano nel campo della pianificazione e provenienti da diversi paesi europei, di descrivere i set di dati in materia di piani territoriali in modo tale che siano il più esaurienti possibile, ma anche che il modello sia sufficientemente generico da essere adattabile a diversi contesti.In the framework of the INSPIRE Directive, the Plan4all project aims at establishing a European network of public and private organisations dealing with spatial planning and regional development, in order to build up a consensus about interoperability of data supporting planning activities. One of the key activities of the project has been the definition of a “data model” for INSPIRE theme “Land Use”. Working on such a data model has entailed a number of considerations that can be of interest for a common vision about planning in Europe. The result is a first attempt, shared by a number of partners working in the planning field and coming from different European countries, to describe the data sets relating to spatial plans, in such a way to be as comprehensive as possible, but also as generic as to be adaptable to different contexts

Strategic Research Agenda for Utilisation of Earth Observation in Agriculture

The EO4Agri Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) is a set of recommendations for future research activities in the area of Earth observation for agriculture. The EO4AGRI project provides support to all agri-food sectors based on new uses of COPERNICUS data. At first, part of the deliverable collected user needs from previous work are summarised including gaps in data, delivery platforms and knowledge management. Another input was an analysis of the current political framework and its influence on future agriculture. The implementation of the European Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals will require future collaboration of the public and private sectors. The main part of the SRA is a list of recommendations for future activities in the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), Horizon Europe (Annex 4 and Annex 6) and the Digital Europe programmes. It is not a revision of these programmes, but additional recommendations or tasks which are important to consider in updating the future programmes

Enabling Efficient Discovery of and Access to Spatial Data Services

Spatial data represent valuable information and a basis for decision making processes in society. The number of specialisms that use spatial data for such purposes is increasing. Increasing is also the number of services enabling to search, access, process, analyse or visualise spatial data. Standardisation activities of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) support standardised sharing of services through the Web. However, many services declared as OGC compliant do not respond or they are not available. The paper introduces an innovative solution for efficient discovery of and access to spatial data services compliant with OGC specifications. The research was performed in the context of the EnviroGRIDS geoportal. Several thousands of harvested services were quality checked and the summary of the testing including the identified problems are presented

Final Strategic Research Agenda (SRA): Common Basis for policy making for the introduction of innovative approaches to data exchange in the agrifood industry

AgriXchange network for data exchange in agriculture -hankkeen julkaisuvokKV

The Role of Remote Sensing in Agriculture and Future Vision

The sustainability of agriculture became one of the key priorities for policy frameworks at global and European levels. The global initiative of the United Nations that defined the Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal. Use of remote sensing to achieve sustainable practices in the entire agriculture value chain can significantly contribute to fulfil the set goals by the policy frameworks. This paper analyses the stakeholders involved in agriculture including the agri-food, public, financial and food security sectors, and their needs. In situ and virtual workshops with relevant stakeholders including an online survey served as a primary source of input for the user requirements analysis and as a platform for feedback and discussion. As a result, a set of key documents including a white paper, a policy roadmap and a strategic research agenda were published. Recommendations for future utilisation of remote sensing in agriculture are described in this paper