Geographic
Information in Europe
European Day at GIS Planet 98
Lisbon 10 September 1998
EUROGI 4th Geodata for All Workshop
The Identification of Specific European Needs for GI and GIS
The workshop was opened and introduced by Christian Chenez, Secretary
General of EUROGI, who briefly reviewed the previous "Geodata For All"
workshops held by EUROGI. The aim of the present workshop was to address
the question of whether there exist specific European needs in relation
to GI and, if so, what where these needs.
To stimulate the discussion, Robert Peckham of the EC's Joint Research
Centre provided some opening remarks based on comments arising during the
recent DG III/JRC on-line forum regarding a proposed EC R&D strategy
for GIS/GI in Europe.
Dr. Peckham started with a short anecdote describing how, in a very recent
and ongoing project to harmonise the European map of snow loads for structural
engineering codes, problems were encountered in obtaining point
latitude/longitude data in a harmonised format from the different participants
representing different countries. This was just one example of the type of
obstacle to data interoperability that occurs in collaborative, cross-country,
multidisciplinary GIS projects. Thus, one way to identify specific European
needs in the workshop might be first to identify the obstacles to
interoperability which are encountered, then to classify or structure these
into different types, and finally to decide who should be addressing the
different types or identify who is already addressing them.
Some of the points raised in the e-mail review of the DG III strategy document
which could be seen as types of obstacles to interoperability included:
- language - leading on to semantics (e.g. meanings of words, terms, etc.);
- definitions of general words and terms used in different sectors of GI;
- definitions of geographic features (e.g. track, road, highway, motorway in
the transport field);
- a similar problem in many other fields (e.g. geology, soils - different legends
exist in different countries);
- character sets (accents, umlauts, etc. which continue to give rise to
interoperabilty problems in daily European GIS work - although IT vendors
claim to have resolved these issues!);
- different approaches to establishing and representing administrative boundaries
and cadastral systems;
- different methods for measuring, sampling and collecting data (e.g. in the
environmental field).
Formation, enlargement and proper functioning of the European Union implies
a growing flow of GI between a growing number of countries, even more languages
and more permutations and combinations of the same kinds of problems.
Finally, Dr. Peckham proposed that the workshop should ask the question as
to whether these obstacles and needs were "specifically European" or just
"international". In either case, it was important that they should be addressed
as they were becoming urgent for those involved in European and pan-European
GIS work.
Antonio Fernandez Perez de Talens then chaired the session, results
of which will be reported by EUROGI (and mirrored by us) in October. Watch
this space!
Return to GI2000 Meetings index
Date Updated: 21.9.1998
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