The MOTIIVE project will be presented at the 13th EC GI & GIS Workshop to be held in Porto, Portugal, from 4-6 July 2007. See http://www.ec-gis.org/Workshops/13ec-gis/ for details on this annual workshop conducted by the SDI Unit of the European Commission's DG Joint Research Centre, which is now responsible for managing the work in creating INSPIRE Implementing Rules. An abstract of the presentation is available here.

We are sure this has happened to you more than once: You or your staff needed to combine geographical data sets from different sources, but they did not match, because they were based e.g. on different standards, time scales, or geographical units. The data sets were not “interoperable”, they were not harmonised. In order to counteract this phenomenon, the European Commission has initiated INSPIRE (INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe). If you want to refresh your memory about what INSPIRE exactly wants to achieve, please have a look at summary information (http://www.eucc.net/en/motiive/index.htm) online. On 12th February, the Directive text was approved by the European Parliament and has been officially publish on the Official Journal of the European Union on 25th April 2007, so things are moving ahead.

EUCC – The Coastal Union, representing coastal stakeholders, lead the production of a position paper to shape the implementation of this legislation and to ensure the aspirations of coastal managers are met. The first results of this exercise have been presented and discussed at the recent ICCCM’07 Conference, Hammamet –Tunisia (final paper to be publish in proceedings). 

We believe harmonisation offers great benefits in terms of cost-savings and efficiency. We have captured key coastal and marine stakeholders practices and aspirations and would like to share with you. We also would like to learn if these are the same as yours and would like to receive your comments on our Executive Summary paper "Data Harmonisation - why does it matter to coastal managers". Your professional experiences are welcome! We are glad to receive your comments, please mail to Maria Ferreira at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

The European Parliament and Council have reached agreement on the text of the proposed INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial InfoRmation in Europe) Directive, which aims to harmonise spatial information across Europe. The Directive was approved on 12th February by the European Parliament and has been officially publish on the Official Journal of the European Union on 25 April 2007. It will oblige EU member states to improve the administration of their map services and other spatial data services according to common principles. This will give Europe's citizens better opportunities to find useful information about the environment on the Internet. It will also enable the authorities to benefit more from information compiled by other official organisations. Data search services designed for the public will generally have to be free of charge, although the Directive allows fees to be charged for access to data that has to be updated frequently, such as weather reports.
The Directive has been designed to control various aspects of managing spatial data in the possession of authorities around Europe, such as the creation of metadata, technical developments promoting interoperability, the use of data services, the principles of access to data, and a the establishment of national co-ordination mechanisms. The implementation of the Directive will be a considerable challenge for authorities at national, regional and local levels, that maintain electronic maps and spatial data bases on the themes specified in the annexes to the Directive – many of them related to coastal and marine management. The full text of the Directive can be found at http://inspire.jrc.it/proposal/EN.pdf.

EUCC-The Coastal Union is both a partner of the project MOTIIVE - one of the pilot projects of INSPIRE - and a Spatial Data Interest Community registered with INSPIRE. If you like to be updated on these issues, please join the moderated list of MOTIIVE by sending an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with the phrase "subscribe motiive" in the body of the message. More information on the e-mail list can be found in the PDF “MOTIIVE -  Why participate?” available at: http://www.eucc.nl/en/policy/MOTIIVE_Why_Participate_nov06.pdf.