INSPIRE in the City of Prague
Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) came into effect on 15 May 2007. The directive was implemented in the Czech legislative system in the form of an amendment to Act No. 123/1998 Coll. and by Decree No. 103/2010 Coll. Infrastructure for spatial information is understood to mean spatial data and services based on spatial data, metadata, technical requirements, agreements on sharing access to spatial data and services and their use, coordination processes and procedures, monitoring, using spatial data and services based on spatial data. The City of Prague is regarded as a mandatory provider.
The transposition of the INSPIRE directive into the legal order of the Czech Republic was performed by an amendment to Act No. 123/1998 Coll., promulgated as Act No. 380/2009 Coll.
Act No. 380/2009 Coll. on the right to information about the environment – anchoring the establishment of the INSPIRE National Geoportal, mandatory entities with a duty to provide spatial data and metadata in accordance with the requirements of the INSPIRE Directive, the definition of thematic groups of data included in the framework of the directive, services, metadata, rules for making data available and other conditions. Technical standards for detailed INSPIRE specifications are progressively issued by the European Commission and transposed into the Czech legal environment. A current overview of the transposition process is available at the INSPIRE CZ website: https://geoportal.gov.cz/web/guest/about-inspire. The implementation rules, concerning metadata, specifications of data, network services, data sharing, monitoring and reporting, are particularly important.
Prague City Hall / Prague IPD is, in the context of INSPIRE, a mandatory entity in relation to selected thematic data sets related, in particular, to Annex III to the INSPIRE Directive.
Tasks of the City of Prague under the INSPIRE Directive
The City of Prague is regarded as a mandatory provider that is under a duty to make available its data, keep and maintain metadata for the data and services operated and hand the metadata over to the INSPIRE National Geoportal. The guarantor for these activities is the Prague Institute of Planning and Development (Prague IPD), which has these duties set out in its foundation document.
The basic duties of Prague IPD, as a mandatory provider of INSPIRE data, include:
- The creation, management and updating of metadata for spatial data that are created at Prague IPD and handed over, as mandatory, to the national geoportal, including services that are operated over such data;
- The establishment and operation of network services – search services, map services, data download services, transformation services and services enabling the launch of services based on spatial data.
Metadata
Prague IPD has been dealing with the issue of metadata for a long time. ESRI ArcGIS (ArcCatalog) tools are used to create and maintain metadata for spatial data. The format of the description of metadata is ArcGIS metadata, which supports the output of the metadata profile in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive. Administration and distribution of metadata in the form of website catalogue services is handled using the Esri Geoportal Server extension.
Catalogue Services
The correct completion of the metadata is the basis for the search services. They enable searches for files of spatial data and services based on spatial data in accordance with at least seven criteria that are the subject of the INSPIRE Directive and enable the display of the content of metadata. More about catalogue services.
Map Services
Map services enable the displaying, browsing, zooming, moving or covering of displayable spatial data. More about map services.
Download Services and Licensing Terms
Download services enable the downloading of spatial data and, where it is practically possible, also direct access to data. Prague IPD enables the downloading of data directly from the Open Data Catalogue or over the online E-výdej application.
The provision and further use of all data and output is governed by the licensing conditions.
Prague IPD as a Mandatory Provider
From the viewpoint of geodata, Prague IPD is a mandatory provider of only two themes of spatial data in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive – Land Use and Environmental Monitoring Facilities. Prague IPD’s strategy, however, is the maintenance of metadata records of all administered data and services, regardless of whether Prague IPD is the mandatory provider, and the publication of such information at its own geoportal. Only mandatory themes and data sets that have better quality than the data sets of mandatory providers (e.g. orthophotos), as well as mapping services, are harvested at the National Geoportal.
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