Land Information Services_on hold
Three ESA GSE projects, which during the first stage aimed to deliver land applications, have merged their skills into one unified consortia to provide a joint portfolio of mature GSE Land Information Services. The three projects are CoastWatch-Land (focusing on integrated coastal zone management), GMES Urban Services (Urban mapping and monitoring services), and SAGE (water pollution, water abstraction, agro-environmental indicators and soil sealing indicators). Many partners form the FP6 IP geoland are also members of the 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. This requires a close co-operation with the end-users on all levels of the production chain, on the validation and quality assurance procedures, on delivery conditions and on the development or adaptation of respective interfaces or tools for direct integration into the internal workflow. Hence, a pre-requisite of all GSE services is the willingness of all partners to jointly implement, test and apply such services.
Services
The GSE Land Information Services portfolio has been structured by
- Mapping Services – a common up-stream approach on three levels of scale;
- Geo-Information services – addressing three main customer segments.
The overall goal is the integration of space-borne geo-information services into user-side management and reporting tools. That includes a service evolution from “simple mapping and monitoring” towards “management” services for decision makers.
The four levels of adding ‘information’ are reflected by the portfolio’s structure with:
- Maps (inventories)
- Indicator services
- Predictive models integrating a broad range of data sets (incl. In-situ measurements)
- Management tools
The principle behind the portfolios ‘building blocks’ are interoperable elements that can be ex-changed between different applications and across user segments. Additionally, each product itself has got an ‘evolution path’ building on up-grades becoming available from parallel activities.
User Feedback & Involvement
Under leadership of the ETC-TE – a strong attempt was undertaken to bring together the fragmented European land user community. This user network will be the backbone of GSE Land Information Services. It will set the requirements and guidelines for the complete GSE Land Information Services production process in order to assure harmonised interoperable products and services across GMES and to communicate results and benefits to a broader audience.
At present, an impressive number of users have already committed their interest. Most of them have signed a Service Level Agreement, have submitted a Letter of Commitment, or are negotiating on details.
The consortium has put major efforts to enable users to sign SLAs. Currently, GSE Land Information Services serves 88 user organisations from 17 nations. They do cover all administrative levels involved, from local actors, through regional and national bodies to European agencies and international organisations.
14 of these organisations are also members of collaborating projects e.g. the EC FP6 Integrated Project Geoland; 61 have already been receiving services during ESA’s Stage 1 form the GSEs SAGE, Urban Services and CoastWatch.
| Administrative Level | No. of Organisations | No. of Nations addressed |
| Internationa | 5 | EU-25, EEA-32 UN |
| National | 21 | 17 |
| Regional | 38 | 17 |
| Local | 22 | 17 |
| Totals | 88 | n.a |
The Extension services has been set up by the consortium and Infoterra GmbH in response to the Stage 2 ITT.
| Administrative Level | No. of Organisations | No. of Nations addressed |
| Internationa | 1 | 4 (UN Habitat) |
| National | 9 | 12 |
| Regional | 26 | 12 |
| Local | 16 | 12 |
| Totals | 52 | n.a |
This is the overview of users currently addressed by the Extension Services of GSE Land Information Service. The project team stays identical with inclusion of service providers from Poland and Czech Republic.
Future Visions
The project is scheduled in three phases, lasting one year each. After each production phase an annual review from the end-users is foreseen. This will assure that only services will continue which have been fully approved by the respective end-user or that new services will be added to the portfolio which are fully validated and demanded by the users.
Deficiencies and gaps detected and reported will be analysed, possible improvements based on benchmarking, effort involved and impact. New production tools will be implemented or production chains for new services will be validated and installed for production.
This review process will lead to the scaling up of services in new areas, new products, new users and improved production. This will assure that service continuity will be demonstrated together with further roll out.
To reinforce the sustainability and to benefit most form ongoing activities, it is mandatory to establish close relationships to other stakeholders from science and industry, in order to create a certain momentum on GMES land applications and to establish a common voice to be listened to at political level.
For GSE Land Information Services this demands;
- a common portfolio, which is interoperable
- a common user base which is interacting between policy sectors
- agreed content and quality standards accepted by all stakeholders.
The consortium has committed itself to use this project as a focal point to join forces of all stakeholders involved and on all levels to achieve its vision on a sustainable GMES market for the benefits of the European citizens. Thus, GSE Land Information Services is aimed to;
- Increase awareness among decision makers and users about GMES services. Here, the GMES land applications user network envisaged will offer a forum to discuss and communicate GMES as a whole. This forum together with its working groups will play an active role in order to customize GSE services for harmonised European roll-out. In addition, targeted lobbying on decision maker level is required to transport the GMES vision in high levels.
- Deliver within this year stories of success as the new budget lines for 2008 – 2013 are currently discussed. For that, the consortium has structured the first year Workplan accordingly.
- Set the path towards a common cross-compliant European GIS data pool and European procurement mechanisms for common services. Here, again the user network together with the parallel activities within the FP6 project geoland and the ongoing discussions with EEA will play a major role.
- Stimulate the service industry to jointly create new operational capacities to produce and deliver the services. The consortium has taken up this idea creating a network of service providers to be tested and improved throughout the project time line.
- Support the long-term plans of GMES to enable Europe to have access to independent and operational EO monitoring systems demand the provision of sustainable sensor capacities.
