The INSPIRE Conference 2013 will take place from Sunday 23rd - Thursday 27th June 2013 in Florence, Italy.

• March 15, 2013 Deadline for submitting paper and workshops proposals (extension given from March 1)
• March 29 2013 Deadline for submitting poster proposals
• April 8, 2013 Acceptance notifications begin
• April 19, 2013 Acceptance notifications end (extension given from April 15)
• May 10, 2013 Preliminary Conference Program Published

Europa Challenge

The Europa Challenge will inspire and challenge Europe's best and brightest to provide highly visible and measureable value to the European community. And do this in ways that serve local, regional, national or international interests while also advancing the career opportunities for those who accept the challenge.

How to win? You build a great application that serves the INSPIRE Directive and uses NASA's open source virtual globe technology, World Wind. To do this you must first establish a team of three to five students, from a single university, with any mix of undergraduate, graduate and PhD students. Each team must have a mentor. The mentor can be a professor, an associate or assistant professor, or an official lecturer at the same university as the team. Then together decide on, design and build your spatial data application in a way that serves local, regional, national or international interests and addresses the INSPIRE Directive.

Which spatial data application is best? Any virtual globe application (based on World Wind) that serves the European community (the heart of INSPIRE) should qualify. The exact purpose may be one of your own design or be one similar to proposed project designs. Ideally it will be one of value to your community. For more information, see the Guidance topic.

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Cen/tc 287 award for Excellence and Innovation in Inspire 2013

Since 2011, the Technical Committee “Geographic information” of the European Committee for Standardization, CEN/TC 287, organises the AWARD for Academic Excellence and Innovation in INSPIRE. This year, the AWARD will follow two tracks. It welcomes applications from students attending academic institutions within Europe, and for the first time also from Small & Medium Enterprises (SME’s) who perform innovative activities in the field of INSPIRE and SDI development.
This award, now in its third year, aims

1. To promote academic excellence within the European geospatial community, specifically in development of interoperability standards and the application or improvement of such standards.
2. To promote the application of innovative solutions by SME’s to facilitate the development of INSPIRE and the creation of value added applications and services on top of it.

CEN/TC 287 seeks to acknowledge the outstanding efforts of students and private industry, especially SME’s, in the area of geospatial interoperability and data sharing. The AWARD is open to all students and SME’s undertaking a research or development project in geospatial information. Students must submit the work in the form of a research paper, a position paper or similar. SME’s must submit the work in the form of a paper, report, � and provide access to their application or service.
The Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) will run the evaluation process. There will be two awards: one (1) for the best academic work and one (1) for the most innovative SME. The two successful candidates with the winning submission will each receive �2500. The AWARD is sponsored and supported by SPARX SYSTEMS Pty Ltd, the developers and distributors of the Enterprise Architect software, by smeSpire, an EU FP7 Support Action, and by GiStandards, a SME active in the geospatial standardisation sector. The winner will receive the prize at the INSPIRE conference which will take place between 23 and 27 June 2013, in Florence.

Administrative process and timeline
1) Submit by 15 April 2013 your work (paper/report) electronically including an abstract of maximum 500 words to award@gistandards.eu. You will be contacted within 15 days and advised whether you have been accepted to proceed to the next stage.
2) AGILE will set-up a small selection committee to review the submissions. The work that is considered of highest quality, and that is most innovative will be selected. �
Criteria
The received proposals will be reviewed and ranked based on the following criteria:
a) originality (i.e. novelty, degree of innovation);
b) technical quality (i.e. thoroughness, completeness, identification of issues and recommended solutions);
c) relevance to the scope of INSPIRE;
d) relevance to standardization in the field of geospatial information;
e) use of UML;
f) presentation (i.e. clarity, readability).

Learning Caf�

We invite you to attend� "European Location Initiatives - Putting Location in a Better Place Learning Caf�",� Monday 24 June 2013 � 11.00-12.30.

Who should attend? �National co-ordinators of INSPIRE, industry, standards developers, thematic communities and users � all welcome!

We will be gathering your views and perspectives during a "Learning Caf�" session on various topics relevant to these projects, including the relationships between the projects, the use of open source software for INSPIRE, the approach to capacity building and partnerships, and the role of the EULF in location-enabling e-Government.

Workshop description and agenda

 

Surveys at the INSPIRE Conference

ARE3NA Survey questionnaire

Are you interested in: � sharing open source software for INSPIRE and identifying where investments are needed? � identifying where 'bridges' can be built between INSPIRE and other European data-sharing initiatives? � promoting best practices in INSPIRE capacity building and innovative ways to support implementation? If so, please share this link with others and give us your views: Go to survey

Sharing Data and Accessing Web Services Going Practical! Survey questionnaire

This survey is being conducted by the presenters of the Sharing Data and Accessing Web Services workshop at the INSPIRE conference on Monday 24th June at 16:00. Material collated from the survey will be presented during the workshop.

The survey should take approximately 10mins to complete and we would appreciate you taking the time to participate.

Click here to take the survey

Your opinion counts!

"Information for Innovation and Socioeconomic Development"
International Workshop at the crossroad of Earth Information, Technology and Social Sciences, June 23 � 24, 2013, Florence, Italy

This workshop is the latest in a series of workshops on the “Socioeconomic Benefits of Environmental Information”, which have been held alternatively in Europe and the United States. The current two day workshop will take place in Florence, Italy, on June 23 and 24, 2013, as a pre-conference event to the INSPIRE conference.

The focus of the previous workshops was on methodologies and use case development. With this workshop, we intend to broaden the focus to include the following themes:

1. Information (Earth Observation, geospatial data, community generated data) as a driver for economic and social development, including measures of well-being that move beyond GDP as an indicator
2. Economic impact of innovations stemming from Open Data and the re-use of Public Sector Information
3. Importance of communications to reach across disciplines from scientists to citizen-scientists to end-users

Keynote addresses will highlight the state of the art, in this multi-disciplinary field and introduce the three themes above. The workshop will have a combination of invited presentations, submitted papers, and panel discussions on these themes. In addition, use cases addressing quantitative results are invited. Recommendations for a path forward will be presented at the conclusion of the second day.

This event is the next step in building a multi-disciplinary community of practice to further support the use of geospatial information as a socioeconomic driver. The workshop will provide opportunities to network with both developers and users of geospatial information to encourage long-term mutual support.

Deadline for submission is May 6, 2013. �
To view the workshop's agenda click here
To Register for the Workshop, click here.
To submit an abstract (500 words) for an oral presentation, click here.
For further information on this call for participation, contact Francoise Pearlman at francoise.pearlman@ieee.org or Mary Ann Stewart at mastewart@sunflower.com.

Special session

During the INSPIRE conference the specific Enlargement & Integration workshop will be organized as a continuation of very successful workshop held in Istanbul last year. This year topic of workshop is “INSPIRE in practice - Intelligent extensions and applications”. The workshop is addressed to the SDI community to transmit and discuss the experiences and lessons learnt in more practical way from the application point of view. The thematic focus is set on data transformation and manipulation, data representation, data usage, cross border usage of interoperable datasets, concrete existing applications and services. We kindly encourage possible participants from enlargement countries to submit their abstracts on this topic. The abstracts shall be submitted as a normal conference abstracts with the note “Proposal for E&I workshop”. Authors of best selected abstracts will be supported for the conference registration fee, travel and accommodation costs.

• Joint Research Centre, European Commission
• Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea
• ISPRA (Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research)
• Firenze Convention Bureau
• Enic

Programme committee

• Hugo de Groof, DG Environment, European Commission
• Alessandro Annoni, Joint Research Centre, European Commission
• Paul Smits, Joint Research Centre, European Commission
• Massimo Craglia, Joint Research Centre, European Commission
• Karen Fullerton, Joint Research Centre, European Commission
• Chris Steenmans, European Environment Agency
• Stefan Jensen, European Environment Agency
• Ezio Bussoletti, Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea
• Maria Dalla Costa, ISPRA (Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research)

All accommodation facilities are close to the conference venue and have been carefully selected to match the best value for money. They are all well served by public transportation and a few minutes away from the historical center of Florence. The choice can range from two up to four stars hotels.

As June is high tourist season in Florence and most hotels will be fully booked due to the Pitti fashion shows week, we would highly recommend to book in advance.

Should you book directly and not through our website, please kindly inform us which accommodation facility you will be staying in.

Please fill out the online registration form with your accommodation choice and send it to ENIC along with the payment of the first night deposit in order to secure your reservation. The total balance due, minus the deposit, should be paid directly upon checkout.

A signed authorization to charge your credit card in case of late cancellations (after May 3rd) and no-shows is also required. Please note that without this authorization, your accommodation cannot be guaranteed.

Upon receipt of the registration and first night deposit, ENIC will send you a voucher indicating the name and address of the accommodation facility, the reserved room type and the amount paid.

City tax (** Hotels 2�, *** Hotels 3�, **** Hotels 4� per person per night) is not included and must be paid directly to the hotel.

Cancellation policy

To cancel or to change your hotel booking, please send an e-mail to inspire2013@enic.it. No other form of cancellation will be acknowledged.

• For cancellations received within May 2nd, your deposit will be refunded*.
• For cancellations received between May 3rd and May 22nd included, your deposit will not be refunded.
• For cancellations received from May 23rd on, and in case of no-show, a penalty of 100% of the amount of the whole stay will be applied.

In case of no show, a penalty of 100% of the total amount of your stay will be applied and room will be cancelled after 24 hours from arrival date. Early departures will be charged in full.

*All refunds will be processed after the Congress.

In case of no show, a penalty of 100% of the total amount of your stay will be applied and room will be cancelled after 24 hours from arrival date. Early departures will be charged in full.

If you require alternative accommodation, or if you have special room requirements (e.g. non-smoking room, ground floor room, three-bedded room, more than one type of room....) please contact: inspire2013@enic.it

Hotel List

CATEGORY 3*** HOTEL DOUBLE ROOM SINGLE USE DOUBLE ROOM MERIDIANA € 120,00 € 140,00

CATEGORY 2** HOTEL DOUBLE ROOM SINGLE USE DOUBLE ROOM MEDICI € 90,00 € 110,00

Rates are per room per night inclusive of breakfast and VAT
Prices are NOT inclusive of the Florence City Tax

WELCOME COCKTAIL

Tuesday, June 25th 2013

The conference welcome cocktail will be hosted in Palazzo dei Congressi, located in the 19th century Villa Vittoria.

ACCOMPANYING PERSONS PROGRAM � Tuesday, June 25th 2013

Cost per person: � 100
Minimum number required: 25 pax
9:30- 14:30. Meeting point: at 9:30 in Piazza Adua, in front of the Conference Center. On Foot.

A walk through the exceptionally gorgeous streets and piazzas around the historical center, to discover the treasures of Florence: the Galleria Dell' Accademia, where we will admire Michelangelo's world-famous David, the Duomo Square with Giotto's Bell Tower, the Baptistery, the beautiful Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the spectacular Piazza della Signoria and the Old Bridge, one-of-a-kind symbol of Florence. The tour will end with lunch in a typical trattoria.
Afternoon will be at leisure, we will meet again at 18:30 in the beautiful garden of Villa Vittoria (Conference Center) to enjoy the conference welcome cocktail under the Tuscan sunset.

CLOSING DINNER � Wednesday, June 26th

Meeting point at 20:45 at Pizzeria Funicul�, Via il Prato 83/r
Cost per person: �35,00
Join us for a true Italian pizza night at one of the most renowned pizzerias in Florence!
Aperitif, pizza a go-go, dessert and beverages for a fun get-together.
Directions to the meeting point



Participation is upon registration. As the maximum capacity of the pizza place is 240 persons, we would encourage you to reserve your spot by either registering online or sending a registration form to inspire2013@enic.it

WINE GEOLOGY TOUR � Monday, June 24th

Meeting Point: in front of the Conference Center, first bus 17:15 pm, second bus 17:45 pm
Price per person: � 12,00 (vat included)
Maximum number: 100 participants
Please note that a minimum number of 52 participants is required to confirm the tour
The wine production represents an activity full of significance. The geologic and geomorphologic system influences strongly the land use arrangements. Vineyards are linked to the ground more than other kinds of cultivation, through many scientific, social and cultural reasons, as testified by history, religion, myths. The Professor of Geomorphology Lucilia Gregori, proposed the new term "Winescapes" to denote the link between the wine landscape and the so called "Terroir". The link between Earth, Landscape and Wine is a link between Nature and Culture, but it's also a link between landscape and the flowers of wine. The event represents a moment where the people could enjoy nature, landscape heritage and the good quality of agricultural fruits like a very good wine and food provides from the natural Tuscany territory. The tour shows the relationship between geology and wine terroirs and than allow to the people to tasting some good Antinori wine and some local foods.

SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES (VAT 21% included)