Infrastructures are the facilities and systems that provide essential services for the functioning of an organization, city, region, country and therefore society as a whole. Often the term refers to physical facilities which society uses to work effectively such as transport, energy, water, communication networks, but also industrial production facilities, and social facilities such as schools, hospitals and residential areas, or even defence and safety facilities. Some infrastructures are considered ‘critical’ because their destruction or disruption by natural or man-made disasters could compromise significantly the functioning of economy and society and their security.
Detailed inventories of infrastructures in Europe are essential for various purposes and applications. These inventories should be as complete as possible, covering ideally all infrastructure typologies and describe both their characteristics and precise location. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are the most adequate tools to construct and manage geographical databases of infrastructures. Such geo-databases are indispensable to assess risk to infrastructures and draft plans for their protection. In addition, these databases could be used for urban and regional planning and for modelling of land use, transport, energy and economy.
The ultimate objective of this work was to produce a geographical database of infrastructures in Europe that is ready to use thus enabling analyses for various purposes and applications at the JRC. Moreover, this work is a contribution to the knowledge base of the Land Use-based Integrated Sustainability Assessment (LUISA) modelling platform, which is used to assess territorial impacts of EU policies and investments. The database was aimed to cover as many sectors as possible, a wide geographical extent (EU28 + EFTA) at high spatial resolution.
The work did not aim at producing new data but rather seeking, assembling and preparing data from existing, disparate data sources. In a first stage, the availability of infrastructure geographical layers within and outside JRC was checked. Data from various open and proprietary sources were collected to build a geo-database storing both the location and key attributes of each infrastructure in vector and raster formats. The assets addressed include transport infrastructures (e.g. roads, railways, ports, and inland waterways), energy (production and transport), industry (heavy industries and water and waste treatment), social (public health and education facilities) and world heritage sites, totalling 37 types or subtypes of infrastructures. A set of factsheets was constructed to describe and map the geographical distribution of infrastructures in Europe (chapter 3 of this report).
The geo-database will be maintained and updated whenever appropriate by the JRC and it can be accessed upon request.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen
