López Romero Emilio

Emilio is a computer engineer. He is the Director of the National Centre for Geographic Information of Spain and member of the INSPIRE Committee and the Maintenance and Implementation Group. For more than 12 years Emilio has been working in the field of SDI with main focus on governance and IT architecture both in a national and international context.

National contact point, Christina Wasström, Lantmäteriet - the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authority

National contact point, Christina Wasström, Lantmäteriet - the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authority Christina Wasström has been the INSPIRE national contact point for Sweden since 2011. She support and coordinate the Swedish implementation of the INSPIRE directive on a national level, in both strategic and technical issues. Also a member in the maintenance and implementation group (MIG) that has been established by the European Commission to maintain and develop INSPIRE. Participates actively in different network at European and Nordic levels, e.g. vice chair EuroGeographics INSPIRE KEN.

She has worked in the agency for several years in different capacities; among these, Head of section for data maintenance, Quality manager.

Alessandro Pititto

Alessandro Pititto is the coordinator of EMODnet Human Activities. He is a Project Manager at Cogea, where he works in the fields of fisheries and maritime policy. Over the last few years, Alessandro has worked on data management for several projects funded by DG MARE, with an aim to collate and harmonise data from different sources from across the EU. He is involved in many European and regional studies and initiatives on maritime activities including the design, development and management of the European Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture products (EUMOFA), the first EU‐wide market intelligence observatory that provides data on price and volume of fish and fish products throughout the EU supply chain.

Sergio Anguita i Rovira – Head of Geotechnologies at Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya.

Sergio Anguita is Telecommunications Engineer, Master in Telematics (UPC), Master in IT Management (LaSalle URL) and PMD by ESADE. He has been working at ICGC for 16 years (formerly ICC) and currently is responsible for Geotechnologies Area. This department is in charge of developing web services and applications and pushing web services innovation through Geostart team. Entrepreneurship passionate, Sergio was co-organizer at Startup Weekend Barcelona (2013-2016) and Lean Startup Circle Barcelona (2012-2014). Adapting and adopting entrepreneurship methodologies, Sergio was responsible for launching Instamaps, a successful web platform for empowering users on geoinformation usage while promoting official datasets.

Mick Cory

Mick Cory is the Secretary General & Executive Director of EuroGeographics, the not-for-profit membership association of 60 National Mapping, Cadastre and Land Registry Authorities from 46 countries across Europe. EuroGeographics is a partner in the European Location Framework (ELF), the gateway to authoritative pan-European geospatial information, and will take ownership for the technical infrastructure and services developed by the project from November 2016. Mick has worked in Africa, the Middle East and all three Ordnance Surveys of Britain and Ireland. He was Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland until 2005, where he led the development of Northern Ireland’s geographic information strategy. He chaired the UK Location User Group and as a member of the Open Data User Group, advised the UK Government on achieving the greatest economic and social return from the release of public sector open data. He was Director of the Sport, Museums and Recreation in Northern Ireland’s Executive Department of Culture Arts and Leisure between 2005 and 2014, responsible amongst other things for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Northern Ireland, including the Torch Relay in Ireland. Mick is a Fulbright Scholar, holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Company Direction and a Masters in Land and Geographic Information Systems.

Danish Ministry of Energy, Utilities and Climate, Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency, Chief Advisor, Ulla Kronborg Mazzoli

Ulla holds a Master of Science in Geography and a diploma degree in Leadership and Management. She is the National Contact Point of INSPIRE and a member of the INSPIRE MIG group and of the ISA WG on Spatial Information and Services. On a national level Ulla is involved with drafting and implementing the common public digitization strategies hereunder the Danish Basic Data Program leading to free and open Geodata in Denmark in 2013.

She holds a seat on the executive board of the Danish Association for Geographic Information – “Geoforum” where focusing on the growth perspectives related to a closer collaboration between the private, research and public sector. Ulla is a part of the EU expert pool as an SDI/eGovernment adviser for EU associate countries.

Mário Caetano
Direção-Geral do Território

Mário Caetano is a principal investigator of Directorate-General of Territorial Development (DGT) and since October 2014 he is the Deputy Director-General of DGT with responsibilities on geographic information, remote sensing and the national spatial data infrastructure (SNIG). In 2015, Mário Caetano launched SNIG2020: a collaborative vision for the Portuguese spatial infrastructure. He is also an Associate Professor at Information Management School from the New University of Lisboa (NOVA IMS). He is the author of more than 150 publications in books, journals and conference proceedings.

Mauro Facchini

Mauro Facchini is Italian and has an engineering background with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Before joining the European Commission he hasworked in Italy, UK and Switzerland, mostly in the academic and research environment.

He joined the European Commission in 2002 where he was initially involved in the management of research projects funded by the EU. Mauro Facchini was then involved in Space aspects and participated to the definition of the European Space Policy from its early days by concluding the Framework agreement with ESA and in drafting and including article 189 (EU Space Competence) in the Lisbon Treaty.

From 2006 to 2012 he worked to the development of the European Earth Observation programme (GMES) and in Space Research matters. He is at present the Head of the Unit for the operation of Copernicus services.

Panu Muhli

Panu has been heading national INSPIRE Secretariat at the National Land Survey of Finland since 2013. The Secretariat is responsible for coordinating and supporting INSPIRE implementation and national SDI development in Finland. Panu is also the Secretary General of the National Council for Geographic Information which supervises strategic level development of Finnish SDI. As a member of MIG-P and ISA WG on Spatial Information and Services Panu participates actively in European SDI collaboration.

In his earlier duties at the National Land Survey of Finland Panu has been involved in designing and deploying the Finnish national Geoportal and a common interoperable map application platform for Finnish eGovernment services.

Margarida Abecasis

Margarida Abecasis is an ICT engineer specialised in telecommunications, with a master’s degree in electrotechnical engineering and computers. As an administrator at the European Commission since 1993, she defined the first service level agreements for data transmission services and managed IT projects supporting the modernisation of the decision-making procedures of the Commission and inter-institutional exchanges. In 2006, she was appointed Head of Unit in DG Informatics, responsible for ICT infrastructure services. She also chaired the inter-institutional sub-committee on telecommunications and networks (CII-TN). In 2011, she took over the responsibility of the unit in charge of the ISA programme. Ms Abecasis was also in charge of preparing the legal basis for the ISA² programme, the follow-up programme of ISA. The new EUR 131 million programme, approved by the Council and European Parliament in autumn 2015, started on 1 January 2016 and will run until December 2020.

William McCairns MBA FRMetS - ECOMET Chief Executive

Mr. McCairns has been ECOMET Chief Executive since 2012. ECOMET is an Economic Interest Grouping based in Brussels, set up for the purpose of ensuring availability of meteorological data and products in accordance with European legislation (PSI, INSPIRE) and international standards. ECOMET currently has 26 Members: National meteorological services mainly based in the EU. The ECOMET Secretariat monitors the implementation of the European PSI and INSPIRE directives in the countries of its Members. Before his appointment as Chief Executive, Mr. McCairns worked for the UK Met Office as Deputy Head of the Public Weather Service programme. His responsibilities included monitoring performance of Programme including performance indicators related to collection, processing and transmission of observational in-situ data. Prior to that he undertook several rolls within the Met Office including Corporate Risk manager, Quality Manager, Programme Manager of an ISO90001 and process re-engineering Programme and several account management positions.

Benoit Fribourg-Blanc, EU Project Manager

Benoit FRIBOURG-BLANC has been working for OIEau since 2000 on projects on water, water pollution and data, assisting the European institution for the implementation of water Directives. Graduate in agriculture and advanced master on drinking water production and wastewater management by education, he was particularly active on projects at the interface between water emission and pollution, and data management and reporting to European institutions since.

Since three years he is involved in the development of the UWWTD SIIF concept (uwwtd.oieau.fr). During this period he participated to the definition of the UWWTD SIIF concept document, to production of various assessments on country situation including as regards implementation of INSPIRE, and coordinated the team who developed the UWWTD SIIF platform.

He was in charge in 2013-2016 of the development of the European knowledge platform on Natural Water Retention Measures (http://www.nwrm.eu/). Before, he has been involved seven years in the technical assistance to the European Commission on the definition of relevant priority substances under the Water Framework Directive. He led the development of the new information system, managed the data collection, the database (14.6 million geo localised individual chemical analyses with up to 150 information on each analysis) and the associated website (still active) and produced assessments on the datasets.

He is also an active member of the European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine waters for the European Environment Agency since January 2014 and before from 2000 to 2006, period during which he was in charge of emission inventory. Since 2012, he is trainer on water statistics for EUROSTAT.

Janusz Dygaszewicz

Janusz Dygaszewicz is a director of Programming and Coordination of Statistical Surveys Department in the Central Statistical Office of Poland. Since March 2015 he is the President of the European Forum for Geography and Statistics. He was the director of the Central Census Bureau for the 2010 and 2011 censuses in Poland and currently he is the head of the UNECE task force on census technology. Member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) and UN-GGIM: Europe, member of the EU COPERNICUS Programme Coordination Committee in Poland, member of the Settlement and Physiographical Objects’ Names Commission, member of the UNECE HLG Modernization Committee on Production and Methods, member of the EUROSTAT Task Team for linking of statistical and spatial data, member of the UNECE and Eurostat Task Team on Big Data. He also serves as a lecturer in computer sciences and statistics in geographic information systems at the Warsaw University of Technology. Currently he is a Candidate Doctor PhD of Engineering Sciences in the Department of Cybernetics at the Military Technical Academy in Poland.

Joachim D'Eugenio

As environmental engineer by training, Joachim D'Eugenio started working in the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in Berlin. In 1999, he moved to the European Commission where he was involved in the negotiations and the implementation of the Water Framework Directive until 2007. After a few years in the Commission's Secretariat General, he became Deputy Head of Unit in 2011 working on marine and water industry policy. Since 2015, he joined the Unit on Compliance & Better Regulation of DG Environment where he is leading the Fitness Check on Environmental Reporting and is involved in the INSPIRE implementation.

Robert Konrad

Working for the European Commission Delegation/Representation in Bratislava between 1998 and 2010, Robert was responsible for EC communication in Slovakia. In 2010, he joined the Directorate General for Environment, initially as Head of the Communication Unit. From 2013, he is in charge of the Compliance and Better Regulation Unit, dealing also with environmental information, transparency and reporting policies.

Stefan Jensen

Stefan Jensen holds a geography degree and today heads the group on data management in the European Environment Agency (EEA) which supports the implementation of the EEA’s spatial data infrastructure and of INSPIRE. Before he had joined EEA in 2001 to lead projects on electronic environmental reporting and on establishing the European Water Information System, he began his career in the private sector on the marketing and application of Geographic Information Systems. He also worked as a private consultant for a couple of years and started his European work from the Environment Ministry in Hannover, Germany where he developed the state’s spatial environmental information system.

Miguel Ángel Esbrí

Miguel Ángel Esbrí is the Research Line Expert for geospatial technologies within Atos Research & Innovation (ARI) department. He holds a Master Degree in Computer Sciences Engineering from the Jaume I University in Castellón, Spain since 2002. He is specialised in Geo-Spatial technology and more particularly in interoperable systems based on Open Geospatial Service standards. He joined the Atos Spain, in September 2006 as a Consultant. Since then, he has been involved in the technical development, management and coordination of EU funded projects (mainly focused on environmental issues and natural and man-made hazards), like ORCHESTRA (Open Architecture and Spatial Data Infrastructure for Risk Management, www.eu-orchestra.org), DEWS (Distant Early Warning System, www.dews-online.org), EO2HEAVEN (Earth Observation and Environmental modelling,http://eo2heaven.org), ENVIROFI (The Environmental Observation Web and its Service Applications , http://envirofi.eu), ICARUS (Unnamed Search and Rescue, www.fp7-icarus.eu) and DRIVER (Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience, http://driver-project.eu). He is currently the Project Coordinator of the FOODIE Project (Farm-Oriented Open Data in Europe, http://www.foodie-project.eu).

Elisa Rivera Mendoza

Elisa Rivera Mendoza is the Spanish National Focal Point of the European Environmental Agency, coordinator of the Spanish Copernicus Users Forum and alternate in the Political Implementation Group of INSPIRE. Before becoming civil servant in the Spanish Administration she worked in the Council of Europe where she started her international career. She works as advisor in European and International affairs for more than 15 years now and teaches courses on European environmental policy.

Hugo De Groof

Hugo De Groof is a European Commission policy officer in the Directorate-General for the environment, DG ENV of Belgian nationality. He has an academic background in geography and informatics. He joined the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, JRC in 1986 where he worked first as a researcher and later as manager on various projects and programmes where remote sensing data and other spatial information were used to support European Union policies. He joined DG ENV in 1998 to help improving the knowledge base for the development, implementation and monitoring of environmental policies. Some of his main activities in which he collaborates with other Commission services, EU agencies such as the European Environment Agency and experts from Member States and stakeholders, relate to the development and implementation of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Union INSPIRE directive, the Shared Environmental Information System initiative, the Commission inter-service activities on the Copernicus programme, the Group on Earth Observations initiative and the interfacing with the wider EU's digital economy policies such as the Digital Agenda and Digital Single Market.

Luca Demicheli

Since April 2009 Luca Demicheli has been Secretary General of EuroGeoSurveys, the Brussels based organisation representing the Geological Surveys of Europe – the national institutions responsible for the geological inventory, monitoring, knowledge and research for the security, health and prosperity of the society. He also currently covers the position of Vice-President of the European Technology Platform on Sustainable Mineral Resources (ETP SMR) and of Acting Executive Director of the Minerals4EU Foundation. Following a Decree of the Italian Minister of the Environment, Luca has previously covered the position of Secretary General of the Italian Committee for the International Year of Planet Earth, a UNESCO initiative to promote earth sciences among decision-makers and public at large. Formerly responsible for the coordination of the international activities of the Geological Survey of Italy, he also served for several years within the European Commission where launched and coordinated the environmental strategy of several major international scientific projects. A geologist specialised in environmental engineering and environmental management and planning, performed his post-graduate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, at the National Technical University of Athens, and at the Imperial College London. He is member of several both national and international task forces, committees and management boards.

Marc Leobet

Since 2008, Marc Leobet is in charge of INSPIRE directive at the French Ministry of environment. Head of the French delegation to the European INSPIRE Committee, he chairs the " Implementing Rules" Committee of the French National Council for Geographic Information. Previously, he worked on pollution and risks in the same ministry, in charge of dissemination of free public information on the web and of urbanization of environmental information systems. Cartographer and analyst, he was trained to IGN-FR where he was responsible for major map productions among millions other things.

Eric Petermann

Involved for many years in various ICT activities at Météo France and in the private sector, Mr Petermann moved to management positions within Météo France as deputy regional director in Strasburg in 2001 and director of the Meteorological Service of New Caledonia in 2007. He then joined the International Affairs department at Météo France headquarters in 2011 as senior advisor before being appointed in 2015 as Executive Director of EUMETNET– the Grouping of 31 National Meteorological Services in Europe.

Dr Hans Bruyninckx

Hans Bruyninckx is the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, since 1 June, 2013.

In 1996 Dr Bruyninckx completed a PhD in international environmental politics at Colorado State University.

From 2010 until his appointment at the EEA, he was head of the HIVA Research Institute in Leuven, Belgium, a policy-oriented research institute associated with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he was also head of the Political Science department from 2007 to 2010.

Over the last 20 years, he has conducted research in more than a dozen countries, in areas including environmental politics, climate change, and sustainable development. He has taught on global environmental politics and global environmental governance in relation to the European Union (EU), publishing extensively on EU environmental policies and its role as an actor in global environmental governance.

Throughout his career Dr Bruyninckx has worked with governmental agencies, civil society and businesses, often in an advisory role.

Sanjay Kumar

As a social entrepreneur and Chief Executive at Geospatial Media and Communications, Sanjay Kumar has been working towards facilitating and accelerating growth of the geospatial industry worldwide and raising awareness of the industry's value proposition and contribution to world's economy and society.

Having co-founded Geospatial Media and Communications, Sanjay has been responsible for its transformation and evolution to be a leading geospatial media organisation making difference through geospatial knowledge and advocacy. He also co-founded Association of Geospatial Industries of India in 2008 and serves on Board of Directors of Open Geospatial Consortium since 2011.

He holds a Masters in Political Science and M. Phil. in International Studies from the University of Delhi.

Joaquim Pinto da Costa
Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente

Joaquim Pinto da Costa is Head of the Department of Technology and Information Systems of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA). Graduated as Msc Science in Environmental Engineering in 1989, did a Post-Graduation scholarship in "Sciences and Sea Technology", participated in several Oceanographic campaigns and the analysis of the gathered data. For the last 25 years he’s been working in the GIS field, teaching and applying it to environmental monitoring and hydrological modelling. Participated, published and presented technical articles in national and European meetings regarding the application of GIS in INSPIRE, Water Framework and Floods Directives.

Stavros Tekes

Stavros Tekes is a Software Engineer with more than fifteen years of experience in software engineering and web/mobile development. He has participated as a technical lead/ coordinator in more than ten international R&D projects (FP7, H2020, FIWARE) and has coordinated technical support contracts for several international organizations. He is involved in information systems analysis, design, development and maintenance of activities. He possesses excellent knowledge of system architecture, data modelling techniques, software development environments, methodologies and technological trends. He applies project management methodologies in monitoring the execution of a technical project, in recognizing critical issues and risks and in taking proper proactive actions. He is able to cope with fast changing technologies used in software development and he has a strong interest in following up the trends in application development. Stavros Tekes holds an Electronic and ICT engineering degree and an MSc in Advanced Informatics.

Martin Lenk – Head of SDI-Coordination Office Germany

Martin is working at the SDI-Coordination Office in Germany, which is the responsible institution for the nationwide coordination of INSPIRE-implementation. On behalf of the National SDI Steering Committee, he is also responsible for the tasks of the INSPIRE National Contact Point. From 2013 – 2015 he worked for the Federal Ministry of the Environment, where he focused on environmental INSPIRE tasks of the Federal Administration level. Prior to working for public administration he was an IT-Consultant for a private company (Accenture) and a research assistant at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he received a doctorate in Water Engineering.