​​​​​​​The opportunities of sharing cross-border
geospatial datasets
Publication Date/Time
2023-02-27T12:40:06+00:00
Country
Europe
Why and how can open geospatial datasets benefit our society,
environment and economy
GEOSPATIAL DATASETS AS OPEN DATA

Geospatial datasets is information that contains specifications on
properties that are linked to an exact point on Earth. Examples of
geospatial datasets include satellite imagery, as well as census
datasets tied to specific geographic areas (Open Data Maturity
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/open-data-maturity/2022],
2022).

Facilitating the discovery and access to open geospatial data sources
is an essential goal for data.europa.eu. We will guide you through the
importance of publishing geospatial datasets under an open license in
view of the recently adopted high-value datasets implementing
regulation
[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2023.019.01.0043.01.ENG],
and with examples on how such data can have an impact on our daily
lives.

ZOOMING INTO THE HIGH-VALUE DATASETS IMPLEMENTING REGULATION

The European Commission adopted the high-value datasets implementing
regulation on 21 December 2022 and published it on 20 January 2023.
The legislation lays down a list of specific datasets (Annex 1)
providing important benefits for society, the environment, and the
economy. This list is based on six thematic categories already
explained in our previous data story
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories/high-value-datasets-overview-through-visualisation]:


 	* geospatial, 
 	* Earth observation and environment, 
 	* meteorological, 
 	* statistics, 
 	* company and company ownership, 
 	* mobility. 

More specifically, the implementing regulation sets out requirements
on the formats in which these datasets have to be published and reused
(articles 3 and 4).  Public sector administrations in EU countries
must comply with these requirements and make their datasets available
in the formats specified by June 2024. In addition, according to
article 5, they are expected to submit a report to the European
Commission in 2026 detailing the actions they have taken to put the
implementing regulation into effect. 

When it comes to publication, public administrations need to publish
the high-value datasets in machine-readable formats via Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs) and, where indicated, also as a bulk
download. Together with the APIs, publishers are required to provide
terms of use and the quality-of-service criteria on performance,
capacity and availability. Moreover, terms should be available in a
human- and machine-readable format within the EU or internationally.
Furthermore, public bodies are required to designate a point of
contact for questions and issues related to the API and to denote
high-value datasets as such in their metadata, i.e., in their
description.

When it comes to fostering data reuse, the regulation also applies to
high-value datasets created before its adoption. These datasets should
be made available for reuse under the conditions of creative commons
licenses (e.g., the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) or
the Creative Commons BY 4.0), or any equivalent open licence, allowing
to dedicated rights of a work to the public good.
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/1.datastory3-01%20%281%29.png]
GEOSPATIAL HIGH-VALUE DATASETS ON DATA.EUROPA.EU

Among the six thematic categories of datasets listed in Annex 1, there
are three areas connected with geospatial datasets already in the
scope of the INSPIRE directive
[http://eurlex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:108:SOM:EN:HTML],
improving the availability and accessibility of relevant geodata since
2007:

 	* The _‘geospatial’ c_ategory clusters seven datasets themes:
administrative units, geographical names, addresses, buildings,
cadastral parcels, reference parcels, as well as agricultural parcels.

 	* The _‘Earth observation and environment’ _category refers to
Earth observations, including space-based or remotely sensed datasets,
as well as ground-based or in situ datasets, environmental and climate
datasets. 
 	* The ‘_mobility’_ category contains the datasets theme
_‘Transport networks’__ _(as defined in Annex I to the INSPIRE
directive), which may include geographical positions and links with
cross-border networks.

At data.europa.eu, we acknowledge the importance of geospatial
datasets as high-value datasets and continuously work to boost both
the reuse and supply of these datasets across Europe. Over the past
two years, data.europa.eu team has organised three webinars on the
topics of 1) geospatial data
[https://data.europa.eu/en/geospatial-data-and-api-delivery], 2)
harvesting of this data, and 3) related trends, and has released
several publications on the matter. The latest one, ‘Geospatial
trends 2022’
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/course/Geospatial_Trends_2022.pdf],
was published in December 2022, following the dedicated webinar
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyt1MNm9l00]. The report highlights
the opportunities available to data.europa.eu from two emerging trends
in the geospatial community. The first one is high-value datasets as
an opportunity to support the work so far done by the INSPIRE
directive and give further impetus to its modernisation. The second
refers to the importance of geospatial references for the development
of smart city solutions. Some examples would be geospatial base
datasets (e.g., background maps), traffic datasets (car counts, person
counts, traffic lights, parking spaces, bike sharing, etc.), public
transportation datasets (real-time schedules, delays, and
disturbances, etc.), environmental conditions, lighting, utility
network datasets, or 3D models.

Besides these resources, data.europa.eu is the point of
discoverability for more than 4 000 geospatial datasets
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?locale=en&minScoring=0&query=geospatial&page=1]
such as examples of high-value geospatial datasets key to smart city
projects. As a reference, a smart city is a place where traditional
networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital
solutions for the benefit of its inhabitants and businesses (European
Commission
[https://commission.europa.eu/eu-regional-and-urban-development/topics/cities-and-urban-development/city-initiatives/smart-cities_en]).


_Examples on geospatial datasets for hospitals and administrative
units and categorised as ‘geospatial’ in the high-value datasets
implementing regulation _

 	* Locations of hospitals:
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/a7318bb7-52ad-4645-8aa7-be823b5e687b?locale=en]
This dataset, by GovData
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?catalog=govdata&showcatalogdetails=true&locale=en]
Germany, contains the locations of all hospitals in the municipality
of Münster (Germany) in various machine-readable formats. This
includes the names, the geocoordinates, the addresses and a link to
the homepage

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/1.datastory3-02%20%281%29.png]


 	* Nls-FI INSPIRE Administrative Units
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/e5c5a43a-b4ab-4357-8ec9-359cd91dfbe7?locale=en]:
This dataset, by Open Data Finland
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?catalog=open-data-finland&showcatalogdetails=true&locale=en],
depicts administrative units covering the land area and maritime units
covering the sea area of Finland.

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/1.datastory3-03%20%281%29.png]
_Examples on geospatial datasets for smart cities’ services and
categorised as ‘mobility’ in the high-value datasets implementing
regulation _

 	* Inspire Transport Network Road
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/a76704df-fdd4-4e09-92ac-a7ad1a77b328?locale=en]:
This dataset, by data.norge.no
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?catalog=data-norge-no&showcatalogdetails=true&locale=en]
(Norway), reports road, rail, air and water transport networks and
related infrastructures, including the links between these different
networks.
 	* Charging stations for electric vehicles:
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/charging-stations-for-electric-vehicles-2021?locale=en]
This dataset, by la plateforme de données luxembourgeoise
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?catalog=la-plateforme-de-donnees-luxembourgeoise&showcatalogdetails=true&locale=en],
shows the location of charging stations for electric vehicles in
Luxembourg and within a radius of 40 km from its borders.

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/1.datastory3-04%20%281%29.png]
REUSE CASES BASED ON HIGH-VALUE GEOSPATIAL DATASET

Several public and private organisations across Europe already use
datasets that brings added value to society, economy, and environment.
Some examples were collected in the data.europa.eu first report of the
Use Case Observatory
[https://data.europa.eu/en/stories-use-case-observatory], and showed
the importance of these high-value datasets to create these innovative
services and products:

 	* 3D City Model [https://dataforsyningen.dk/labs/2265] contains
high-value datasets on buildings, part of the _‘geospatial’
_category. The Danish Agency for Data Supply and Infrastructure and
the municipality of Aarhus have developed a prototype of the entire
municipality of Aarhus to investigate what is possible with a modern
object-based 3D city model. The city model pilot in Aarhus uses geo
datasets from Geo Denmark as its main source and these datasets is
openly available. Datasets from Denmark Footprints is used for the
energy consumption of buildings and datasets from Pointcloud is used
to get the height of a buildings.
 	* EVapp [https://www.evapp.org/] has datasets that fall into the_
‘geospatial’ _category of high-value datasets due to the address
locations. This Belgian app uses OpenStreetMap to help locate victims
of cardiac arrests and first aiders in proximity. It maps the
locations of all automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in Belgium,
provided by the government and local cities.
 	* Digital Forest Dryads [https://digital-dryads.eu/] contains
high-value satellite imagery datasets in the category of _‘Earth
observation and environment’_. It uses open satellite imagery to
protect forests from illegal deforestation in Romania and other EU
countries. These datasets comes, among others, from the European
Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space and
from the Copernicus programme. To learn more on the topic of forests
and  orthoimagery, you can read our data story ‘High-value datasets
– forest fires in the EU’
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories/high-value-datasets-forest-fires-eu].
The Romanian app won the first prize in EU Datathon 2020
[https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eudatathon/2020-edition] for the category
‘European Green Deal’.

 

THE FUTURE OF GEOSPATIAL HIGH-VALUE DATASETS ON DATA.EUROPA.EU

With the publishing of the high-value datasets implementing regulation
and the INSPIRE directive, geospatial datasets will become even more
central for Europe and for data.europa.eu. The portal will improve
this area by continuing to foster the publishing of dynamic datasets
and geodata via APIs, as well as by further investigating ways to
support finding and accessing high-value datasets. 

In a similar way, the increasing availability of datasets resulting
from new smart city services is an important trend for data.europa.eu.
The portal could foster the discoverability of smart city resources
via data.europa.eu, as well as the continuous monitoring of reuse
cases based on geospatial datasets positively impacting our society,
environment, and economy.

Extending the features of data.europa.eu to allow our community to
benefit from and support new ways of sharing geospatial datasets has
also been taken into consideration. Some of these improvement ideas
directly came from our community, who participated in the data.europa
academy webinar ‘Geospatial Trends’
[https://data.europa.eu/en/geospatial-data-and-api-delivery]. 

For more information on these suggestions and insights into geospatial
data trends, you can read the related report-out, ‘Geospatial Trends
2022’
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/report/Geospatial_Trends_2022.pdf].
A 2023 version of the webinar and report are foreseen for the second
half of the year.

For more information on high-value datasets, don’t miss out the data
story series
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories?keywords=%22High-value+datasets+-%22&country=All&year=&sort_by=created&sort_order=DESC&items_per_page=10&keywords=%22High-value+datasets+%E2%80%93+%22&merged-select=created&items_per_page=10]
dedicated to these datasets. 
