WRITTEN QUESTION E-1848/01

by Angelika Niebler (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(26 June 2001)

Subject: Use of geoinformation in the Member States

Geoinformation (geographical and spatial data describing the features of a particular country) form an essential part of the knowledge available in modern information and communications science. It is required at all levels of administration, the economy, science and by the public at large. It is the basis for planning in numerous fields, such as for infrastructure projects in the energy, water and telecommunications sectors, waste management, telematics, environmental protection and nature conservation, and in the insurance industry. Geoinformation is an increasingly important commodity worldwide. Its availability is a crucial factor in taking decisions on location and investment. The USA spends USD 7 billion a year on developing geodata infrastructure.

1. To what extent does the Commission monitor practice and developments in the Member States in relation to the collection and compilation of geodata and their transfer to interested individuals (data access)?

2. In the Commission's view, would it not be necessary, in order to create a single market for geoinformation, to lay down Community-wide minimum criteria to establish transparent procedures for the collection, compilation and transfer of geodata?

3. In the Commission's view, should there be an improvement in cooperation between the Member States' agencies responsible for the management of geodata? To what extent could Community funds be used for that purpose?

Answer given by Mr Solbes Mira on behalf of the Commission

(18 September 2001)

1. To meet its internal needs, the Commission has set up a geographical reference database (GISCO) accessible to all its departments and used by the Joint Research Centre at Ispra and the European Environment Agency. This database contains topographical and thematic data of general interest at scales of between 1:100 000 and 1:10 000 000. The data come from various sources. The contours of the local administrative units were harmonised and provided by cartographic agencies, which have set up a structure (Eurogeographics - http://www.eurogeographics.org) entrusted with coordinating and designing European products (metadata systems, topographical reference bases, etc.).

Apart from that activity, the Commission neither monitors nor intervenes in the capture and collection of geographical information in the Member States.

2. and 3. The Commission is currently running a series of initiatives that are contributing in different ways to supporting and promoting Geographic Information (GI), and that in the medium term should lead to the setting-up of a European Geographic Information Infrastructure.

Two Community programmes, Information Society Technologies (IST), in the more general framework of the Fifth Research, Technological Development and Demonstration framework programme, and eContent, European Digital Content on Global Networks, one of the implementations of the eEurope initiative, support activities in the field of technological research and production, dissemination and use of European digital content. Both are targeting in a specific way Geographic Information, with particular regard to issues like metadata, interoperability, standards, reference data, access and use of data. The IST programme has planned a specific call for proposals on the Use of Geographic Information; selected projects will run and operate during the coming years, significantly contributing, together with the currently active ones, to the setting up of a European GI vision. The eContent programme, covering the period 2001-2004, will also make a contribution, through the selected projects, to improving the access to and exploitation of public sector information.

A planned Communication from the Commission, the follow-up to the Green Paper on Public Sector Information: a key resource for Europe(1), adopted on 20 January 1999, will define European initiatives and frameworks for Geographic Information seen as a part of the more general Public Sector Information. The Communication, eEurope 2000: creating an EU framework for the exploitation of Public Sector Information, will build on the reactions to the above-mentioned Green Paper, and on the experience of the past two years, a co-ordinated set of actions including proposals for a legislative framework on the exploitation of Public Sector Information, an updating of the policies of the Community Institutions on the exploitation of Community information, and the setting up of a Working Group to promote Digital Public Data. The Communication is still under discussion, and this discussion includes a thorough analysis of the role that the Commission has to play, taking into consideration its coordination role on the one hand and respect for the subsidiarity principles on the other.

More specifically, some legislative initiatives set rules for the collection and transmission to the Commission by Member States of geographic data. Currently applied to specific domains (e.g. environment), this framework contributes to the definition of European common rules.

Finally, the Commission itself has established since end 1999 an internal inter-service group for the use of Geographic Information in the Commission, COGI. Its mandate,

to co-ordinate the use of Geographic Information within the Commission services to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of European policy monitoring that require a spatial analysis of the European territory at European and global level, while being primarily concerned with the Commission's internal needs, can clearly contribute to setting up the framework for a European Spatial Data Infrastructure. Among its decisions, the adoption of a common metadata standard and a single reference system can be considered as the first steps in the direction of defining an integrated Geographic Information Landscape for Europe.

(1) COM(98) 585 final.