Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
was initiated by the European Parliament and the Council.
2
INSPIRE addresses 34
spatial data themes which are needed for various applications of spatial data.
However, the focus is set on environmental applications. The aim of INSPIRE is to
provide metadata and spatial data in an interoperable way across country and
system boundaries. In particular Geo-Web-Services such as Web Feature Services
(WFS) (Vretanos
2010
) will be employed.
An essential prerequisite for interoperable access are unified, harmonized data
models. To cover the applications targeted by INSPIRE, manifold data models are
needed. For 34 themes, corresponding data models have been developed. In a first
phase (called Annex I) which was completed in 2010, unified models for the
following basic themes have been designed: Administrative Units, Cadastral
Parcels, Geographical Names, Hydrography, Protected Sites, Transport Networks,
Addresses, Coordinate Reference Systems, and Geographical Grid Systems. Based
on these models, a second phase (Annex II & III) is conducted which covers
themes such as Agricultural/Aquaculture and Production/Industrial Facilities,
Buildings, Elevation, Energy Resources, Environmental monitoring Facilities,
Geology, Human health and safety, Land cover and use, Natural risk zones,
Oceanographic geographical features, Orthoimagery, Population distribution, Soil,
Statistical units, and Utility and Government Services. The specifications of the
second phase have been completed in 2013.
The theme Buildings plays a crucial role for a large number of relevant spatial
applications from many fields such as simulation of noise, of water flood or of air
circulation, for the computation of population for statistical units, for communi-
cation and construction purposes, risk assessment and management, to mention
only a few applications. Hence, the model for buildings is one important part of the
INSPIRE specifications. The model has been developed since 2010 by the The-
matic Working Group on Buildings (TWG BU), in which 15 experts from cadastral,
mapping and other agencies as well as from universities cooperate.
3
In a first step
of the modeling process, the group analyzed various use cases for buildings in the
European Union and collected the corresponding requirements for the model.
Afterwards, existing models for buildings—either national models such as the
German cadastral model (AAA) (AdV
2009
) or international standards such as
CityGML (Gröger et al.
2012
; Gröger and Plümer
2012
), Industry Foundation
Classes (IFC) (buildingSMART
2007
), Land Administration Domain Model
(LADM) (ISO TC 211
2012
), ISO 6707 (Building and Civil Engineering) (ISO/TC
59/SC 2
2004
) and DGIWG Feature Data Dictionary (DFDD) (DGIWG
2010
)
were analyzed in order to check whether the models or particular concepts are
suitable for the INSPIRE building model.
The INSPIRE building model consists of a normative part (profiles Core 2D
and Core 3D) which are included in the Implementing Rules and will be legally
2
INSPIRE was initiated by the Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 14 March 2007.
3
The first author of this chapter is member of the TWG BU.
