Land Information Services
The Land Information Services is based on the main results related to land issues of the three projects SAGE, GMES Urban Services (GUS) and CoastWatch from the GSE consolidation phase and provides guidelines to establishing a set of priority information service centres responding to the main information needs of European institutions.
SAGE was concentrating on water pollution, water abstraction, agro-environmental indicators and soil sealing indicators, GMES Urban Services put emphasis on Urban mapping and monitoring services, where as the land, oriented part of CoastWatch addressed integrated coastal zone management. This specifies the main focus of the service provision with respect to mainly European policies (with priority on Water Framework Directive, Soil Thematic Strategy, Integrated Coastal Zone Management, Urban Environment Thematic Strategy, European Spatial Development Perspective), users (national ministries of environment, regional authorities, etc.) and information demand.
Coordination with complementary ongoing activities e.g. IP geoland will be ensured by the GSE Land Information Services Consortium.
The philosophy of Land Information services are:
Demonstrate progress towards long-term sustainability for a set of GMES services
Deliver services and benefits to users on progressively larger scales
Establish a durable, open, distributed GMES Service Provision Network
Establish standards and working practices for GMES services
GSE Land Information Services are aimed to deliver geo-information services, which are harmonised and standardised for cross-border applications. They are based on general space borne geo-information on Land Cover and Vegetation (LC&V). By integrating this information into existing infrastructure, models and management tools international and national public institutions should be enabled to fulfil their reporting and management obligations in an improved way.
Services
Based on the policies the GSE Land Information Services portfolio has been structured in four service areas:
European Urban Atlas - land use and land cover mapping of European urban functional areas
Impervious areas and sealing levels
Inland Water Quality / Contamination
- Irrigation / Agricultural Water Consumption
The overall goal is to implement a European service network to responding to the demand of international, national, regional and local user organisations.
