Spatially enabling Northern Ireland

Dr Suzanne McLaughlinDFP Land & Property Services

GIS Ireland Conference 11th October 2012

http://www.gistrategyni.gov.uk/

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NI GI Strategy Vision

We will improve services and thereby develop the

economy, the environment, and the society of

Northern Ireland by placing information about

location at everyone’s fingertips and supporting the

development of sufficient skills and knowledge to

exploit this information.

The current state….

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)

The aim of the INSPIRE Directive is to create a European Spatial Data Infrastructure that will improve the sharing of spatial information between public authorities and improve accessibility to the public. This will allow the EC and Member States to design and deliver better environmental policies that will result in improved environmental outcomes. INSPIRE will improve the quality of spatial information and enable information from different sources to be more easily combined.

INSPIRE

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The EU INSPIRE Regulations require member states to:

• Comply with 34 data specifications • Provide catalogues for discovery services that allow

users to identify what information is available & evaluate it (metadata)

• Provide online services such as view & download • Provide transformation services – co-ordinate &

schema • Have licensing arrangements that allow information to

be shared, accessed and used

• Set up e-commerce arrangements where charging is applicable

• Introduce monitoring mechanisms

LPS Role

• Co-ordinating INSPIRE in Northern Ireland• Guidance from DEFRA & Europe• Promotion of good practice• Providing technical infrastructure to allow

Northern Ireland to meet INSPIRE requirements

• Management of INSPIRE portal• Licensing and rights management

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INSPIRE ThemesAnnex I Annex II Annex III

Geographical names Elevation Statistical units Buildings

Administrative units Land cover Mineral resources Sea regions

Addresses Ortho-imagery Natural risk zones Land use

Cadastral parcels Geology Soils Energy Resources

Transport networks Species distribution Habitats & biotopes

Hydrography Environmental monitoring facilities

Human health & safety

Protected sites Population dist. & demography Utility & government services

Coordinate reference systems

Meteorological features Atmospheric conditions

Geographical grid systems

Agricultural and aquaculture facilities

Bio-geographical regions

Oceanographic features Production & industrial facilities

Area management restriction / regulation zones & reporting units

53 datasets from 11 organisations

Spatial NI™

UK & EU linkages

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INSPIREcompliant

view servicesavailable for Annex I & II

datasets

November2011

May2011

Initial viewservices

available for Annex I & II

Datasets

December2010

Metadataavailable for Annex I & II

Datasets

January2015

NewlyCollected

Annex II & IIIDatasets

compliant toINSPIRE

specifications

June2012

Download services for Annex I & II

Datasets

NewlyCollected Annex I datasets

compliant toINSPIRE

specifications

December2013

Metadataavailable for

Annex IIIdatasets

Viewservices

available for Annex IIIdatasets

Download services for

Annex IIIdatasets

June2017

Publish Annex I

INSPIREcompliant

data

May2019

Publish Annex II & III

INSPIREcompliant

data

INSPIRE timeline

Objectives of Spatial NI to meet the requirements of the INSPIRE Directive to unlock spatial data in organisations and government to make

government spatial data available to citizens and the private sector

to assist in policy making in Northern Ireland government – better data = better decision making

to eliminate duplicated effort in capturing and maintaining spatial data

to increase demand for public sector spatial data to facilitate the sharing of spatial data across government to provide a platform for the development of GI applications

within and beyond Northern Ireland

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Structure

Existing Licences

Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement

LPS Digital 2

Individual VAR

New Licences

Non-commercial INSPIRE

Preview

Emergency

Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement

Roles

• Guest• NIMA• Emergency• Commercial

Demo…

Technical benefits

• Ability to share data through use of common technical standards

• Flexibility of delivery of data formats• Simpler and faster to find and access data• Reduces need to store large volumes of data onsite • Increased integration through transformation• Improved information management – data currency and

flowlines• Simplified licensing driving increased use

Policy benefits….

• Providing data for identifying potential innovation & growth areas

• Increased range of data available for analysis • Increased quality of data available – through feedback

on datasets• Interoperable cross-border data available for decision

making in border regions• Free GI tools to aid policy decisions

What overall benefits do we expect?

• More access to government information – through discovery services• Potentially wider reuse of NI data through UK and European portals• Promoting reuse of government data • Reducing duplication of data – collect once use many times• Assist in driving better quality data by initially having to expose bad quality

data and then transform to INSPIRE standards – data and metadata• Better quality data – better decisions• Reduced cost to LPS of delivering data – reduced cost of organisations

having to hold all LPS data• Increased currency of data – always coming from the one most recent

source of the data• Consistent cross border datasets of huge significance to NI in policy

decision making • Provision of GI functionality at no cost to user • Delivering more for less

Links

• https://www.spatialni.gov.uk• http://www.gistrategyni.gov.uk/• http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/• http://data.gov.uk/