INSPIRE data is beautiful.
Data enables us to see connections and anticipate developments that used to be hidden. The climate crisis, natural disasters, the spread of disease, and many other things endangering life on earth can be fought through the intelligent use of data.
Most data sets today have been collected and structured to suit a specific purpose for a specific organisation. This approach usually works well for the organisation in question, but makes it difficult for other organisations to find, access, process, and utilise that valuable data.
Enter INSPIRE, an open standard for geospatial data that tears down barriers between organisations. It enables these organisations to publish their data sets in a way that is accessible and useful to others. Standardised code lists and taxonomies allow the data to be combined with that from other sources. This opens the door to re-use tools and processes.
People can focus on creating the solutions inspired by standardised data, without wasting time and effort searching for it.
Adhering to open standards such as INSPIRE enables:
The INSPIRE directive already enables innovation impacting our world today.
Since 2009, thousands of people across more than 12.000 organisations have worked hard to make spatial and environmental data more accessible.
Right now, decisions and tools made based on that interoperable, high-value data are protecting forests in Germany, preventing landslides in Italy, and supporting the European Green Deal.
In addition to its benefit to the world at large, the high-value data sets resulting from INSPIRE also enable organisations to become more data-driven.
Standardised, interoperable spatial data is what will empower the development of an ecosystem of INSPIRE-based apps and professional tools, through which data can be used to its full potential.
The INSPIRE specifications already allow more users than ever, even those without a geographic information system (GIS), to easily access high-value data sets they would have never had access to in the past. By making the data more accessible, innovation is enabled.
In mainstream IT, graph-like visualisations are rapidly gaining traction. INSPIRE’s rich, linked data models are extremely suitable for such applications.
INSPIRE provides standardised code lists and taxonomies. This enables the data to be combined with that from other sources and allows tools and processes to be re-used.
The global move towards new and better APIs and services (e.g., OGC API) is powering future innovation by improving interoperability. This means that publishing and accessing high quality, interoperable data sets, such as enabled by INSPIRE, will only continue to grow in importance.
As the climate changes faster than technology, a lot of time is lost gathering and cleaning the data used to train helpful AI. INSPIRE’s comprehensive, harmonised approach improves the data ecosystem, which allows more effort to be expended on actual feature building.