Hello Stefania,

I do not agree with two points of your answer:

1. "the HabitatsAndBiotopesDistribution schema never got past the draft Stage" is wrong! The data specification was completely finalized and that is why there is no further news.

2. "the Habitat and Biotopes Distribution [...] is an ‘additional’ ‘recommended’ application schema in the Technical guidelines and therefore the provision of data encoded accordingly is not required." is wrong! The data specification includes a distribution application schema, because distribution maps are required under the reporting on the Habitats Directive. This directive was a major use case for the data specification. The IR was kept "reduced" for other reasons, NOT to indicate, that the content of the TG is "additional" or only "recommended".

Cheers, Dirk

Hello Dirk,

the terms "approved" and "draft"  referred to the application schemas respectively in the IR (repository https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/) and only in the TG (repository https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/draft-schemas/), are taken from what officially stated in the INSPIRE Knowledge base data model section , in which the following, among others, is stated "Please note that the extended data models not included in the IRs should be considered as draft and therefore be used with caution.

Regarding the news, I was referring to the moving of the distribution application schema from the “draft” repository to the official repository of approved application schemas. As written also in the linked post, the current HB distribution schema (as well as all the schemas in the draft repository) does not reflect the changes introduced in the amendment of the Implementing Rules (Commission Regulation (EU) No 1253/2013) and the corresponding Data Specification Technical Guidelines that led to the creation of  v4.0 of the “ approved” schemas and presents some minor issues that need to be fixed.

No doubt that “the data specification includes a distribution application schema, because distribution maps are required under the reporting on the Habitats Directive”, but the data model according to which they are currently mandated is not the INSPIRE one! Data provision that is mandatory under INSPIRE is currently only the one according to the HB approved schema. That’s why HB distribution schema is defined as “additional” and “recommended”. The HB Data Specification (Section 5.1.2) state that “In addition to the application schema listed above, the following additional application schema has been defined for the theme Habitats and Biotopes: HabitatsAndBiotopesDistribution application schema.... additional application schemas are not included in the IRs. They typically address requirements from specific (groups of) use cases and/or may be used to provide additional information”

That said, I absolutely agree with you that the HB distribution schema could and should be used to provide Article 17 data under INSPIRE, as it fits much better the use case needs, but that’s different from saying that it is mandatory.

Hope this clarifies

Stefania

For the sake of completeness, it might be worth commenting a little bit on the statement "The IR was kept "reduced" for other reasons, NOT to indicate, that the content of the TG is "additional" or only "recommended":

no doubt that following the Technical Guidelines is essential to ensure interoperability of spatial data sets and services. However, all the INSPIRE Data Specifications include a "How the Technical Guidelines map to the Implementing Rules” section in which it is made clear that “Technical Guidelines define how Member States might implement the requirements included in the INSPIRE Implementing Rules”. The Technical Guidelines provide practical guidance for implementation that satisfies the (legally binding) requirements included in the Implementing Rules (highlighted as “IR Requirement”) and contain as well technical requirements that must be met in order to be conformant with the relevant IR requirement (when using the proposed implementation)  highlighted as “TG Requirement “.

In addition to IR and TG requirements, the Technical Guidelines also include a number of recommendations for facilitating implementation or for further and coherent development of an interoperable infrastructure, whose implementation is not mandatory.

Coming back to the HB distribution schema, the HB Technical Guidelines place it in the Section “5.1.2 Additional recommended application schemas”.

Kind regards,

Stefania

Gridded data - cool! Any chance you'd prefer to provide this as a coverage model? There's a deprecated one I've been itching to revive!

:)

For more details on this topic (use of  coverage model for HB gridded data), have a look at this interesting INSPIRE Community Forum post https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/forum/discussion/view/207594/habitatsandbiotopes-in-wcs?

Stefania

More also at: https://workshops.inspire-helsinki-2019.fi/workshop5

:)

Kathi