GI2000 / EGII - Preparatory meeting
Technical meeting on cross-border GI applications
16-17 November 1998

Introduction

Cross border GI applications become more and more important inside the European Union (EU). The flooding in Europe in the past 5 years, Rhine river pollution, water catchment management, land planning, transport, environmental monitoring are all application which need cross-border GI.

Many EU policies require readily available cross-border GI for planning and monitoring purposes, i.e. for the environment, spatial planning and transport policies, all of which have a strong impact on the European territory.

Some other disciplines and market niches are also emerging which require cross-border GI, such as geo-marketing, utility networks management, etc.

The GI market is fragmented, often described as being more "local" rather than European and with a very heterogeneous structure. This makes assessment of the market very difficult for GI and especially cross-border GI. In this context, GI2000 focuses mainly on the pan-European GI market, but also pays attention to all cross-border GI applications.

The European Commission invited several experts to participate in a meeting to:

• exchange experiences of cross-border GI projects,
• identify commonalties,
• give participants the opportunity to express what they expect from EGII to facilitate cross-border projects.

The experiences

The invited experts were all working in different disciplines and in different countries. They presented their experiences and the problems they face to realise their cross-border projects. The experiences presented cover the following disciplines:

• marine applications
• hydrologic modelling
• flooding management
• cross-border land use planning
• transport applications
• geo-marketing applications
• cross-border nature park management.

Marine applications

The sea has many functions: shipping, fisheries, offshore oil and gas exploitation, sand and gravel exploitation, pipelines and cable infrastructure, discharge of wastes, recreation, land reclamation, military activities, incineration of wastes and scientific research. All these activities require data and geographic information, for planning, management and monitoring purposes. An information market already exists, to serve government, the scientific sector and private industry, in many applications such as policy development, management of the seas and coastal zones, exploitation of resources, scientific and applied research, design, construction, management and maintenance of infrastructure.

The main problems faced in cross-border applications are:

• different positioning systems,
• different scales,
• non surveyed data (need for metadata services),
• different legends and classification schemes,
• duplicated efforts because standardised base data does not exist,
• many organisations "sit" on their data, making access difficult.

Propositions for EGII - Creation of base data for most of the marine application:

creation of a uniform digital seabed surface map of European waters,

creation of a uniform digital bathymetry map of European waters.

Hydrologic modelling

The University of Liège developed hydrologic qualitative and quantitative modelling of water catchment areas. These cover today the whole of Belgium, Luxembourg and the North of France. The researchers faced many problems implementing the models. The main problem was (and still is!) data ownership and complex licensing agreements created when value is added to data. The European Environment Agency already formalised the data access policy, but negotiation is needed with all other agencies. Some new European environmental directives will create new needs for harmonised, cross-border data, e.g. the framework directive on integrated water catchment management.

Any business development with hydrological data can only be based on value added applications, and on data validation and quality improvement. Hydrological base data is (should be considered) mainly a public good.

Flooding management

The case presented was that of the Oder River flood in July 1997, affecting Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. Most of the damage was located in Poland, where the water spilled over the dam and broke dykes. The German army and the Red Cross helped in Poland, but they faced major communication problems, including no common language. In addition to communication problems, no up-to-data maps or the affected regions were available, even from the German army. In cross-border issues, they had first to reach agreement on common standards.

Reaction to disaster, as opposed to pre-disaster planning, is unfortunately the normal way of working for most governments. It is easier to find budget to invest in preventing a new disaster after one has already occurred! The armies of both countries took this opportunity to start collaboration.

Cross-border land use planning

The Pôle Européen de Développement (PED) is an area of 150 km² crossing 3 countries: France, Belgium and Luxembourg. The three countries decided to define a cross-border planning project, the aim of which is also to make data available to everybody, through an easy user interface.

Main problems faced included:

• 3 countries = 3 different systems,
• need to learn 3 different GIS systems and to develop bi-directional interfaces,
• 3 co-ordinates and projection systems,
• in data exchange between systems, there are often losses of data,
• data merging: different formats, scales and legends,
• need to create a common thesaurus to find equivalence between administrative denominations,
• creation of a metadata service.

The PED enabled the exchange of experience. Belgium is now trying to duplicate the French and Luxembourg experience to digitise the cadastre. Luxembourg decided to develop a complete national cadastre and set up detailed specifications to do it. Belgium should use the same specifications. In France, to be able to fund the digitisation, they created a syndicate of users, including utility companies (12 partners). Everybody brings data into the system, following defined specifications. Everybody contributes to the funding of the system.

Through MADAME Project in DG XIII/E's INFO2000 Programme, expects to realise the same type of organisation in Belgium.

Transport applications

The EC's DG VII (Transport) needs data, tools and models to plan and monitor trans-European transport policy. They promote and fund projects that aim at creating observatories and making data available on transport (see http://www.lt.com/NTO).

The cross-border problems are generalised, not only at the country boundaries, but also between two provinces in the same country or even between two municipalities.

ERTICO is a trade association for telematics in transport. They contributed to the definition of CEN TC 278 standards and they are now working on ISO/TC 204.

The mapping needs for transport are:

• access to data, data availability,
• data exchange format, standards,
• interoperability,
• geographical projection, geodetic reference,
• digital base data,
• thematic data availability.

The transport applications, at pan-European level are:

• fleet management applications that need coarse datasets, already available for free on the US market,
• route guidance, for which positional accuracy has to be much better,
• telematics applications to provide information from a centre to the vehicle, e.g. the use of GPS in a car (when you push a button, the signal goes to a call centre that knows on line where your car is located).

Main problems faced by the transport industry:

• they need more data exchange formats available, ISO/TC204, WG3 is working on that issue.
• the TC 278 (intelligent transport standard) is not compatible with TC 287 (Geographic Information standard).
• the lack of interoperability of digital map data in route guidance systems is the primary reason for the market not developing as quickly as originally predicted.
• the system suppliers do not put their own formats forward for acceptance as an international standards.

the market is shared between two main private actors, some other private data suppliers and the National Land Surveyors.

the private actors were obliged in many cases to become themselves mapping agencies.

the situation varies quite significantly across Europe, e.g. in the Netherlands and Sweden, the collaboration between NMAs and the private sector is much better (in Sweden, the NMA proposes to maintain the database and to be paid by the private sector for that). Data maintenance will be soon the challenge, because it will be more and more expensive.

Thematic data are:

• Administrative boundaries,
• Street names and addresses ranges,
• Legal restrictions (one-way, no turn),
• Physical restrictions,
• Signs,
• Data acquisition methods,
• Co-ordination.

It was proposed that the public sector should provide the main, underlying data. Routing applications need other attributes, which should be acquired by the private sector. There is a clear need for collaboration between public and private sectors. Two private companies can not sustain the database maintenance alone. It is important to pool resources and work together.

Regarding the existence of monopoly market actors, the situation varies across Europe, e.g. Ordnance Survey in the UK has a monopoly of base data and also provides value added applications and services, potentially impeding the emergence of strong(er) private sector actors, except for limited, special niche application areas. In Germany, the major companies, public and private, make join ventures and combine their efforts to collect traffic information. GI is the raw material for applications. Commercial companies think that customers can buy the product, and they are looking for free access, up-to-date pan-European data. The question is posed as to why the government (public sector) can not provide such data?

Geo-marketing applications

• to locate information,
• the interest of disciplinary networks,
• establishing trust with the customers is very important,
• negotiating, creating partnership,
• quality control, to fill the gap between the operational needs and data required by the market,
• to build documentation, to educate potential market, to use metadata,
• contract versus working together, and maintaining trust with partners.

• use any standards, any format,
• data structure and file structure are different.

Most data owners try to create their own "one-stop-shops", e.g. Eurostat, ILO, UNESCO, WMO, IMF, UNDO, WHO, etc. R-cade aims to create links between different data providers: statistical, topographic and environmental. Other data brokers combine EUROSTAT data with National products.

List of participants