Call for Submissions

1. Inspire the Users

In this strand we are looking for contributions from the user community of INSPIRE in the public and private sectors.

We are interested to hear from both the developers of applications and the end-users why, where, and how they have built on INSPIRE to execute their projects more effectively and efficiently or where they see a potential for using INSPIRE in the future.

We are not only interested in learning from their good practices' as we would also like to hear from them about any outstanding obstacles they encountered while doing their work. Such would be a valuable input into our reflections in the other strands of this conference where we will be addressing cooperation and fitness-for-purpose issues.

We have also an interest to learn of the qualitative and quantitative benefits of such projects expressed where possible in economic, social and/or environmental terms.

Such applications of INSPIRE may have been developed at European, national, regional, local and even global level, in the context of cross-border collaborations and could cover a wide range of policy relevant themes.

It would be most interesting, but not exclusively, to learn from projects which have been put in place as a direct support to the implementation of EU and national/regional policies, in particular but not exclusively, environmental policies and/or policies having an impact on the environment.

We are also interesting to hear about applications where data and information available through the Copernicus , GEO/GEOSS and Galileo/EGNOS programmes and other sources of 'Big Data' and/or citizens' science projects have been used in combination with the INSPIRE spatial data and services.

We are also looking towards the future. We would  welcome innovative ideas for applications of geospatial data and services in 'new' application areas. Such contributions may provide ideas on how INSPIRE could evolve to meet the emerging applications requirements.

Categories:

We are particularly, but not exclusively interested to hear from applications in one or more of the following thematic domains:

1. Sustainable management of natural resources and natural capital
2. Environmental monitoring and reporting
3. Use and potential of INSPIRE for the development of indicators
4. Compliance assurance  and environmental crime
5. Public participation and active dissemination of information – citizen science and VGI
6. Environmental, economic, social impact assessments (including public health)
7. Waste management  – and other aspects of a Circular economy (e.g. Sharing Economy)
8. Spatial planning (land – maritime – coastal zones)
9. Energy (renewable – non-renewable)
10. Transport - Mobility
11. Agriculture - forestry - aquaculture
12. Mitigation and management of natural and man-made hazards and disasters
13. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change
14. Utility and asset management – in both public and private sector
15. Smart Cities – Urban Agenda – Digital Transition
16. Other eGovernment services (e.g. health, integration, migration, security, …)
17. Other applications

2. Doing it Together 

In this strand, which is dedicated to 'cooperation', we are looking for examples where the co-operation between public and/or private sector organizations and programmes has been successfully developed to support the implementation INSPIRE as an underlying information infrastructure.

Such examples could cover the essential questions on 'Why', 'Where' and for 'What' purpose the co-operation was put in place, what obstacles had to be overcome and 'How' the implementation and use of INSPIRE has benefited from it.

Alike for the applications we would be most interested to learn about the qualitative and quantitative benefits of setting up such co-operations in the wider societal, economic and environmental context.

Such co-operations may have been developed at a local, regional, national to European and even global level (e.g. the Copernicus programme, UN GGIM, GEO/GEOSS) or for a particular thematic sector only (e.g. for geological information, mapping data, meteorological data, for environment alike the EEA EIONET, for agricultural policy purpose alike for the CAP, for civil protection, for macro-regional development purposes such as the Danube strategy etc.).

The EU environmental policies take a special place in these reflections as most environmental policies require strong  cross-administrations, cross-border and cross-sector cooperation to effectively manage all information and data required for their successful implementation (e.g. in river basis, sea regions, air quality zones, waste management, emission monitoring, protected areas, …).

We are also eager to identify emerging  requirements for cooperation and opportunities for increased synergies with inter-alea activities under the EU Digital Single Market, the European Cloud strategy and other opportunities such as the the partnership of the Urban Agenda for the EU on the digital transition, identified at local, regional, national and/or cross-border levels.

Categories:

1. National approaches and strategies
2. International cooperation at EU/EFTA/EEA level
3. Global cooperation
4. Macro-regional cooperation
5. Local – Regional cooperation
6. Cooperation on standardization
7. INSPIRE and Businesses​

3. Making it Work

In this strand we are looking for contributions from projects, programmes and initiatives from both the public and the private sector in which 'problems' related to implementing INSPIRE are being addressed.

We call for submissions where implementation issues of technical and/or procedural nature have been identified and where the source of the problems has been - or needs to be addressed (e.g. Simplifications encoding, Automatizations, quality assessment, licencing and data policies, etc.).

We call also for innovative solutions, business models  and other approaches such as cloud solutions, linked data, spatial data on the web, block chain, API's, plug-ins and other web services for addressing implementations issues.

We aim to foster the dialogue with the geospatial technology and Open Source sector and standardization bodies as INSPIRE spatial data and services should become available in such a way that they can be efficiently integrated in the many applications based on these technologies and standards.

Categories:

1. Making INSPIRE work in 2025
2. Tools and technologies
3. Training and capacity building
4. Fitness for purpose
5. Best practices
6. Making INSPIRE work for ICT developers