DG XIII/E meeting
with National Mapping Agencies
26 November 1996
Meeting Report (Final)
Table of contents
Aim of the meeting:
The objective of this meeting was to inform the National Mapping Agencies
(NMA) on the status of GI2000 and to get their latest feedback.
Mr Huber, chairman of the meeting, welcomed the participants. He apologised
for Mr R.F. de Bruïne who was not able to participate. He introduced
the INFO2000 programme, base of the
European Commission strategy to promote Multimedia Information Content in
Europe:
The Multimedia industry is characterised by three components:
- telecommunication,
- computer hardware and software,
- the content industry.
The content industry is composed of print, electronic and audio-visual
publishers.
In this context, INFO2000 focuses its efforts on the content industry, promoting
the new projects bringing publishing "from scribe to screen".
To reach these objectives, INFO2000
will launch call for proposals and support actions:
- Create new markets by raising awareness
- Exploit Europe's public sector information
- Catalyse high quality European multimedia content
- Trade multimedia Intellectual Property Rights (IPR),
- market monitoring,
- spreading the use of multimedia standards,
- training, pilot courses,
- promoting best practice.
Martin Littlejohn presented the GI2000 policy
and related actions. In the frame of INFO2000 call for proposals, 13
proposals will be funded in the GI sector. Four of them are especially important
as they support GI2000. They deal with metadata services, base data specification
and interoperability between different types of GIS software.
Yves Reginster presented an overview of the comments already received by
the Commission on the GI2000 document. This
was followed by a short presentation of GEOWEB Europe and TOPGIS, two projects
supported under INFO2000 and which are important because they meet the objectives
of GI2000.
François Salgé presented the two INFO2000 projects in which
CERCO and MEGRIN are involved: ESMI and PETIT. ESMI aims to set up a metadata
service on the web; PETIT aims to define specifications for a pan-European
base dataset at scale 1/250.000, and to determine the potential market for
such a product.
Mr. Jarmo RATIA, President of CERCO presented the position of the NMAs on
the GI2000 document, and the role they propose to play. This position paper
is annexed.
Generally, everybody supported the CERCO's view presented by Mr RATIA. Specific
points were discussed:
The reference system
Everybody agreed on the necessity for a common reference system for pan-European
data. EUREF and UTM seem to meet the needs.
EUREF, developed for GPS and mapping activities, and UELN (United European
Levelling System) has been established virtually in all of Europe.
The situation in Germany was presented by Prof. Seeger of IfAG: Cartographic
competence is shared between the Länder and the Federal authorities.
IfAG, the Federal organisation, has the responsibility to harmonise data
and transform them to a common reference system. This task is governed by
a contract between the Länder and the Federal Government. Prof. Seeger
does not believe it is necessary to abandon a national system to adopt EUREF;
there is just a need for a transformation to be applied to data transferred
to European level. This approach would clearly be cheaper than the
re-establishing the data.
Other countries proposed to start the harmonisation process at the geodetic
network level, and to promote the harmonisation of the reference system at
national level.
The role of CERCO and MEGRIN
The NMAs emphasise that they should play an important role in implementing
GI2000, mainly via CERCO and MEGRIN.
- NMAs should manage a European reference system;
- CERCO members are the only organisations actually financing pan-European
datasets;
- NMAs have the legal responsibility to build topographical data; they have
to adopt practical solutions in order to fulfil the needs expressed by users;
among them the Commission, one of the biggest users of pan European GI datasets.
- NMAs stated that it is fundamental to mandate only one organisation to produce
harmonised European data.
- They also stated that MEGRIN should assume the harmonisation and compilation
tasks at European level in the same way that IfAG does it at the German Federal
level.
CERCO asked the Commission to use the services of CERCO and EUROGI for the
dissemination of information.
The European Commission has a major role to play, firstly as a major GI user,
secondly to ensure co-ordination tasks.
The Commission should support:
- co-ordination of pan European data production involving, inter alia, Eurostat;
- EUROGI;
- GI2000;
The Commission should undertake awareness actions.
In the context of GI2000, it is important to integrate and define the role
of other organisations such as the European Environment Agency, Eurostat,
and the corresponding national institutions. They are all major GI data users
and producers. Coordination within the European institutions is important.
GI2000 should encompass all European countries, since they are producing
the same kind of data and have to deal with similar problems.
The relationship between private and public actors is different from country
to country; in some countries, the market is shared between the different
actors, leaving room for everybody. From CERCO's point of view, the lack
of co-operation between public and private actors is more of a misunderstanding.
Several NMAs use private actor's skills and sub-contract a substantial workload
to the private sector.
The Commission reminded that the private sector does not share the same opinion
on this question. The business relationship cannot be limited to a
sub-contracting relation. Today, not much room is left for the private sector
regarding GI content production. On the other hand, the intention has never
been to eliminate the public service. However , the border line between public
service and commercial market needs to be more clearly defined and synergies
be developed.
The NMAs emphasised their legally enshrined responsibility for the creation
and maintenance of National Topographic data. The private sector does not
have such a mandate. In addition, if there were a real market for pan-European
datasets, the private sector would already have invested in it. The `public
mission'-part is still very important and must be maintained. This issue
should be discussed in the context of the debate which will take place on
Green paper on the access to public data.
Some NMAs proposed that the activities of the private sector should focus
on thematic data production, on top of topographic data created, managed
and updated by NMAs. NMAs have already launched several initiatives to define
and specify European data.
The private sector is also a GI user; accordingly, the NMAs have addressed
those needs for a long time
For NMAs, there are two kinds of markets: the professional and "mass
market". A lot of professional users need more awareness and competence
to make intelligent use of GI, there is a place for the Commission to promote
GI awareness and the development of competence in GI. The mass market is
too often forgotten in documents.
NMAs stated that:
- there is a lack of understanding between the Commission and NMAs regarding
the public and private actors;
- the Commission wants to increase the opportunities for the private sector
only, and to enable the market to develop
- It is important to define the base data that should be controlled by NMAs.
- It should be the responsibility of public sector to produce a complete pan
European Base dataset, because the market can not finance it alone;
- they are required by their governments to recover an increasing portion of
their costs.
The Commission explained that there is a need for new skills in order to
develop the multimedia field. The NMAs believe that these skills should be
acquired by cartographers. It is dangerous to leave this domain to pure
multimedia specialists, having no competence in mapping.
Nevertheless, NMAs realise that the relationship with the private sector
could be improved.
It was proposed to organise a meeting bringing actors of the private and
public sectors together to discuss the issues outlined above.
IPR issues, copyright
To protect their investments, NMAs request strong IPR rules The added value
on top of base data should also offer profit to the basic data producer.
Base data production
All NMAs agreed on the production of pan European base data issued from existing
databases, by means of a data transformation process as opposed to creating
this data from scratch.
VMAP [1] is considered a potentially cost effective
approach, giving access to a very important investment made in the context
of a NATO initiative.
NMAs stated that maintenance of base data is every bit as important as its
initial creation and perhaps even more expensive.Data updating is a very
important issue which must be taken into account both from the technical
and the financial point of view. NMAs estimated that data updating cost
approximately 10% of data acquisition cost.
The building of a European dataset must be a fast process should it be
successful.
The NMAs stated that the pricing policy for their data is a political decision.
Quality issues
NMAs considered quality issues as very important. They believe that only
they are able to guarantee this quality.
Information
Further discussions on the topics treated will continue in Paris on April
2nd 1997 at the MARI meeting. EUROGI has created an Internet discussion forum,
publicly available; everybody is invited to participate:
http://www.eurogi.org/.
Specific points
- The Italian NMA depends both from a military and a civilian organisation;
this causes some problems related to data dissemination and participation
in European initiatives. Italy will change its organisation to enable a
participation in MEGRIN. They stressed the important lack of resources and
requested a European support to convince the Italian Government to improve
the situation.
- The delegates of East and Central Europe stressed the importance of Land
Registration as a basis of economical development. Those issues should be
included in the debate.
- François Salgé, President of CEN TC-287, asked the Commission,
especially Eurostat, as GI users, for comments on the standards.
- The Netherlands presented their position on a paper annexed.
The GI2000 document
In order to promote GI2000 on a national political level, EUROGI will provide
the names of politicians involved with GI at national level to the Commission.
- The EGIS project involves private and public partners. A first task is to
extend GISCO dataset to Central Europe countries. The first initiative foresees
the creation of a dataset on administrative boundaries, harmonised and integrated
with EU boundaries classification. A preparatory meeting is foreseen in February
97. It will involve organisations such as CERCO and MEGRIN.
- In September 97, in Bratislava, a meeting on GI, involving statistical offices
and civilian mapping agencies, will take place.
- Martin Littlejohn presented the financial possibilities for this kind of
project:
- action 2 of 4th framework Programme (FWP)
- PHARE - TACIS programme.
- On 12 Dec. 96, a call for proposals on telematic applications will be launched.
- On 17 Dec. 96, a call on multimedia educational software will be launched.
Slovenia proposes to slowdown the EGIS project process, in order to take
the time for proper definition before starting the work. There is a need
for prior discussion on standards; IPR issues, reference system, generalisation
rules, and organisational set-up.
The situation is different between different countries:
- countries where no land registration exists;
- countries with NMAs, having some data available;
- countries where an administrative boundaries database already exists, with
the necessary quality.
For all countries, the process should be step wise, apart from the fact that
everybody needs money to finance it in the first place.
Mr RATIA presented the Baltic Sea Drainage Area Initiative. The first meeting
was in October 1996. The initiative involved 14 states, in order to create
a map database at scale 1/1000000 on the Baltic Sea Drainage Area. The Finland
mapping agency is the project's co-ordinator.
Several NMAs have never been involved in these studies. This should be corrected.
NMAs asked under which mandate this global co-operation was organised. The
Commission answered that it is a completely informal co-operation.
MARI - PARIS
A session dealing with public and private actors issues is planned for 2
April 1997.
JEC97
In Vienna, on 18th April 97, EUROGI and the Commission will jointly organise
a session dealing with European issues in GI.
1. There is a consensus on the need to create pan-European base data for
the pursuit of European integration. NMAs have a major role to play in performing
this task. It has been estimated that the Member States have invested 3-5
billion ECU in the creation of national base data. European base data should
be built using this existing data. It was suggested that it might cost in
the order of 5-10% of this amount to Europeanise the data to be invested
by the Member States and the Community, in accordance with the principle
of subsidiarity. It has been estimated that annual updating costs for topographic
data are in the order of 10% of the cost of originally establishing it and
must therefore not be overlooked in a European context.
2. A consensus was also reached regarding the use of a standard reference
system for European data. This standard has been under development for a
long time and has met with some initial scepticism which now appears to have
been overcome. The work has been co-ordinated and largely driven from the
Institut für Angewandte Geodäsie - IfAG- in Frankfurt. Development
and use of this reference system is being promoted strongly by Germany,
particularly as a result of unification. What is now required is a political
signal from the EU that this is the standard that is to be used all over
the EU, at least for the creation of pan-European data. This can be provided
in the context of GI2000.
3. Base data has to a large extent to be established by the public sector
because the private sector and market forces alone cannot ensure coverage
of the whole European territory. The NMAs agreed however, that further
improvement in the co-operation and partnership with the private sector is
necessary to add value to the base data. In turn this will help to develop
the market for GI.
4. The Central and Eastern European Countries, who were also represented
at the meeting, are in the process of re-developing their base of geographic
information after the fall of the communism. Most of them are virtually starting
from scratch and are interested in doing it in a way that will allow seamless
integration of their data with that of the rest of the EU. This will simplify
their integration into many aspects of EU business once they become full
members. For this they are looking to the EU for leadership and to join the
GI2000 process.
Footnotes
[1] VMAP is a topographic vector dataset produced
for the NATO. This dataset covers actually most of Europe and will soon cover
the entire World. The map scale is 1/250.000.
|