European Commission logo
Energy, Climate change, Environment

EMODnet compliance with the INSPIRE Directive: a matter of fact

The 2008/56/EC Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) defines some obligations agreed with Member States, for the implementation of strategies to achieve or maintain good status in the marine environment. One of these obligations, set out in Article 19(3), prescribes that Member States make data resulting from Article 8 and Article 11 available in agreement with the 2007/2/EC Directive (INSPIRE).

The EMODnet Chemistry portal has tested the application of INSPIRE Data Specifications to model nutrient data (MSFD Criterion D5C1 “Nutrients concentrations in water”) in the Mediterranean Sea. The use case builds on the Technical Guidelines related to Environmental Monitoring Facilities (EMF) and Oceanographic Geographical Features (OF) themes and to the Observations and Measurement (O&M) data model and was developed in collaboration with the SeaDataCloud and MEDCIS projects.

The data used for this case study was provided by the Croatian Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, via the EMODnet Chemistry infrastructure. The solution developed and proposed within the SeaDataCloud project to deliver data in compliance with the INSPIRE directive was adopted.

The classes used in this work are:

  • Environmental Monitoring Facility (EMF),
  • Feature of Interest (FoI),
  • Procedure (Proc) and,
  • Observed Property (Obs).

The mapping between SeaDataCloud metadata and INSPIRE elements was successfully carried out using metadata in SeaDataNet Common Data Index (CDI) format and in Ocean Data View (ODV) format (the Common Data Index format provides an ISO19115 - ISO19139-based index to individual data sets). The mapping can be downloaded here.

This mapping was developed using the matching tables for the EF theme, as improved by SeaDataCloud and uploaded in the INSPIRE Thematic Clusters platform. A complete version of XML files are downloadable here, where an example of nutrients data acquired in Mediterranean is described using INSPIRE standards.

The exercise demonstrated the completeness of EMODnet Chemistry metadata with respect to INSPIRE requirements and the feasibility to map EMODnet to INSPIRE models.

Once a centralized tool to convert formats has been developed, the EMODnet platform could be used to expose monitoring data following Art.19(3), i.e. compliant with INSPIRE.