Atlas of INSPIRE – evaluating SDI development through an inventory of INSPIRE experiences of European national mapping agencies

The paper describes how practice of INSPIRE implementation are affecting Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) development. It contains the results of a EuroSDR (European Spatial Data Research) project ‘Atlas of INSPIRE implementation methods’. Aim of the project was to make an inventory of experiences when implementing INSPIRE, in order to share exemplary practices and solutions among national mapping agencies and national INSPIRE contact points. This inventory formed the basis for the generation of the prototype Atlas for all national mapping agencies, policy makers and other stakeholders who have to implement INSPIRE. For SDI research the Atlas provides empirical base material for the conceptualization of SDI implementation approaches. The analytical framework to look at INSPIRE implementation drew on two theoretical notions of how implementation actions can lead to information infrastructure development: a cultivation approach and a design approach. A qualitative data collection process, through a survey and two workshops, tested the extent to which either of the two approaches were prevalent for the INSPIRE implementation. The survey and the workshops provided primary data on INSPIRE implementation experiences of representatives from twelve European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom). Comparing the national ∗ This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non commercial Works 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. DOI: 10.2902/1725-0463.2011.06.art6 International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, 2011, Vol.6, 126-144. 127 experiences showed that both types of approaches of INSPIRE implementation are present the EU countries. The cultivation approach is more prevalent in countries which established SDI organizational structures outside the NMAs, and the design approach is more prevalent in countries relying solely on NMAs for INSPIRE implementation. Embedding INSPIRE implementation in national SDI activities seems furthermore to relate to cultivation approaches, consisting of a gradually flatter inter-organizational working relations, and a scaling up strategy which iteratively links the (supra)national implementation plans of INSPIRE to the local implementation plans in national and sub national organizations, and vice versa. The variety in approaches imply that a uniform, best practice, INSPIRE implementation approach for all countries does exist, but that the choices for certain practices strongly relate to the local contextual conditions and windows of opportunities. The implication of these findings for research in SDI development is that more emphasis should be placed on the mechanism of interaction between the slowly changing socio-organizational context and rapidly technologies.