The establishment of Natura 2000 and the new transboundary EU approach for protected sites management has enforced the link between nature conservation and geo-information. This has generated the need for interoperable and accessible EU harmonised datasets. The link is also addressed by the INSPIRE Directive which pursues an EU Spatial Data Infrastructure to support environmental policies. Nature-SDIplus Network aims, through state-of-the-art methodologies and best practice examples, to improve harmonisation of national datasets and make them more accessible and exploitable. Therefore, it contributes to the INSPIRE implementation with specific reference to a cluster of data themes on nature conservation (as per the INSPIRE Annexes):
– Protected sites (Annex I);
– Biogeographical regions, Habitats and biotopes, Species distribution (Annex III).
The main objective of Nature-SDIplus Network is to: involve new stakeholders; share data and best practices; improve and stimulate exploitation and the re-use of information on nature conservation. The proposed project will analyse the usability and accessibility of data. The results of this analysis will be used to propose a new work item for a standard metadata profile and data model compliant with the INSPIRE Directive and in coordination with CEN/TC 287 Geographic information. Read More