Learning from Research

The INSPIRE Database and Geoportal

INSPIRE is a spatial data infrastructure for EU environmental policies and policies or activities that may impact the environment. The INSPIRE infrastructure is accessible through its ‘Geoportal’, which allows monitoring the availability of INSPIRE data sets and discovering and accessing suitable data sets through spatial data services.

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Output Description

The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive has created a European Union comprehensive spatial data infrastructure for EU environmental policies and policies or activities that may impact the environment. 

The INSPIRE infrastructure is accessible through the INSPIRE ‘Geoportal’.  

The Geoportal allows for: 

  • monitoring the availability of INSPIRE data sets; 
  • discovering suitable data sets based on their descriptions (metadata); 
  • accessing the selected data sets by invoking spatial data services and APIs. 

It allows interested parties to browse and query suitable data sets through the Priority Data Sets Viewer and the Thematic Viewer.  

The priority data sets viewer provides two handy tools for exploring and accessing available data: the Environmental Domains tool and the Environmental Reporting Legislation tool.  

The Environmental Domains tool groups data under seven environmental domains: 

The air domain is related to ambient air quality and cleaner air and includes data sets on air quality (AQ), AQ management zones, AQ monitoring stations, etc.

The nature domain is connected to the conservation of natural habitats, wild fauna and flora and birds. It includes data sets related to biogeographical regions, habitat types distribution and range, species distribution and coverage, birds’ distribution and range, Natura 2000 sites, nationally designated areas, and alien species distribution

The water domain covers data sets related to the application and monitoring of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the Floods Directive (FD), the urban wastewater, the drinking water directive, the bathing water directive, the nitrates Directive, etc.

The noise domain covers ambient noise quality with data sets related to noise from roads, railways, air transport, industrial agglomerations, and the respective noise contour maps.

The waste domain covers the landfill of wastes, wastes from extractive industries and related issues. This domain also contains data sets related to agricultural sludge receiving facilities and agricultural sludge deposit sites.

The industrial emissions domain covers data sets related to the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) emission data and sites and facilities, the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) and the Large Combustion Plants (LCP) directive and others.

The industrial accidents domain covers spatial data of industrial accidents.

The Environmental Reporting Legislation tool groups data by environmental reporting obligations. 

The INSPIRE Thematic Viewer provides access to the following 34 data themes organised by the annexes of the INSPIRE Directive:  

Annexe I themes:

This theme establishes a structure for spatial referencing of features by coordinates. It provides a framework for the development of sector-specific applications using geographic data.

Geographical grids are an agreed, defined, and harmonised grid net for Pan-Europe with standardised location and size of grid cells. Examples of cell sizes could be 10x10 m, 100x100 m, 1x1 km.

Names of areas, regions, localities, cities, suburbs, towns or settlements, or any geographical or topographical feature of public or historical interest.

Units of administration, separated by administrative boundaries, divided areas where Member States have and/or exercise jurisdictional rights for local, regional, and national governance. The administrative units are divided by administrative boundaries. It also includes maritime units defined by international treaties and conventions, where the coastal states execute their jurisdictional rights.

Location of properties based on address identifiers, usually by road name, house number, postal code. An address identifies the fixed location and path of access of a home, business or other building or land parcel (real property).

Areas defined by cadastral registers or equivalent. Irrespective of the legal system adopted by each Member State, the Cadastre is defined as a register under the government's responsibility. Its use complies with the principles of equality, security, and justice to all the citizens of the European Union.

Road, rail, air and water transport networks and related infrastructure. Includes links between different networks. It also includes the trans-European transport network as defined in Decision 1692/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 1996 on Community guidelines for developing the trans-European transport network and future revisions of that decision.

Hydrographic elements, including marine areas and all other water bodies and related items, including river basins and sub-basins. Where appropriate, according to the definitions set out in the Water Framework Directive (Directive 2000/60/EC).

Areas designated or managed within a framework of international, EU and Member States' legislation to achieve specific conservation objectives. Many categories refer to nature conservation but could also refer to other objectives (e.g. fishing or forest resources, or cultural heritage objects or areas). Nature protection may be linked to specific landscapes, habitats, or species, and protected areas may be in terrestrial, aquatic, or marine environments.

Annexe II themes:

Digital elevation models for land, ice, and ocean surfaces. Includes terrestrial elevation, bathymetry, and shoreline.

Physical and biological cover of the earth's surface, including artificial surfaces, agricultural areas, forests, (semi-)natural areas, wetlands, water bodies. In this way, it is different from the land use data dedicated to the description of the use of the Earth’s surface.

Geo-referenced image data of the Earth's surface from either satellite or airborne sensors. An orthoimage is a raster image that has been geometrically corrected ("orthorectified") to remove distortion caused by camera optics, camera tilt, and differences in elevation.

Geology is characterised according to composition and structure. Includes bedrock, aquifers, and geomorphology. It provides basic knowledge about the physical and chemical composition and the genesis of the underground, in particular on the properties of the rocks and sediments (age, petrography, genesis and tectonic elements, etc.) and their structure.

Annexe III themes:

Units for dissemination or use of statistical information. Statistical units may refer to the following sub-grouping of administrative units: official administrative units, government management zones, blocks, census and statistical districts, civil security units, environmental reporting and management units, postal codes/ regions.

The geographical location of buildings. A building is a covered facility usable for protecting humans, animals, things or the production of economic goods. Information on the location of buildings may be supplied as points, surfaces, or with the building's actual basic (3D) form.

Soils and subsoils are characterised according to depth, texture, structure and content of particles and organic material, stoniness, and erosion, where appropriate mean slope and anticipated water storage capacity are appropriate.

The territory is characterised according to its current and future planned functional dimension or socio-economic purpose (e.g. residential, industrial, commercial, agricultural, forestry, recreational). There are two mainland use definitions, a functional one and a sequential one. The functional defines land use as the description of the land in terms of its socio-economic purpose (agricultural, residential, forestry, etc.). The sequential describes land use as a series of operations on land carried out by humans.

Geographical distribution of dominance of pathologies (allergies, cancers, respiratory diseases, etc.), information indicating the effect on health (biomarkers, decline of fertility, epidemics) or well-being of humans (fatigue, stress, etc.) linked directly (air pollution, chemicals, depletion of the ozone layer, noise, etc.) or indirectly (food, genetically modified organisms, etc.) to the quality of the environment.

Includes utility facilities such as sewage, waste management, energy supply and water supply, administrative and social governmental services such as public administrations, civil protection sites, schools and hospitals.

Location and operation of environmental monitoring facilities include observation and measurement of emissions, environmental media's state, and other ecosystem parameters (biodiversity, ecological conditions of vegetation, etc.) by or on behalf of public authorities.

Industrial production sites, including installations covered by the ‘Integrated pollution prevention and control” Directive (96/61/EC of 24 September 1996) concerning integrated pollution prevention and control and water abstraction facilities, mining, storage sites.

Farming equipment and production facilities (including irrigation systems, greenhouses and stables, tanks and pipelines). Aquaculture facilities include productions and treatment facilities for fish, mussels, seaweed and other kinds of aquaculture.

The geographical distribution of people, including population characteristics and activity levels, is aggregated by grid, region, administrative unit or another analytical unit.

Areas managed, regulated or used for reporting at international, European, national, regional and local levels. Includes dumping sites, restricted areas around drinking water sources, nitrate vulnerable zones, regulated fairways at sea or large inland waters, areas for the dumping of waste, noise restriction zones, prospecting and mining permit areas, river basin districts, relevant reporting units and coastal zone management areas.

Vulnerable areas are characterised according to natural hazards. Natural hazards are all atmospheric, hydrologic, seismic, volcanic, and wildfire phenomena that, because of their location, severity, and frequency, can seriously affect society (e.g. floods, landslides and subsidence, avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions).

Physical conditions in the atmosphere. Includes spatial data based on measurements, on models or a combination thereof and includes measurement locations.

Weather conditions and their measurements; precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, wind speed and direction

Physical conditions of oceans (currents, salinity, wave heights, etc.). For INSPIRE, ‘oceanographic geographical features’ are concerned with the high seas and larger oceanic physical/dynamic structures.

Physical conditions of seas and saline water bodies are divided into regions and sub-regions with common characteristics.

Bio-geographical regions show the extent of areas with common characteristics, usually based on climatic, topographic and geobotanical information. Thus, the bio-geographical regions show areas with relatively homogeneous ecological conditions. This theme includes vegetation map data, and vegetation can be mapped either as actual/existing or potential vegetation cover. Several high-level data exists for Pan-European level, large-scale data with fragmented systems, resolution and coverage.

Geographical areas are characterised by specific ecological conditions, processes, structure, and (life support) functions that physically support the organisms that live there. Includes terrestrial and aquatic areas distinguished by geographical, abiotic and biotic features, whether entirely natural or seminatural.

Geographical distribution of animal and plant species occurrence aggregated by grid, region, administrative unit, or other analytical units.

Energy resources include hydrocarbons, hydropower, bio-energy, the solar, wind, etc., where relevant, including depth/height information on the extent of the resource.

Mineral resources, including metal ores, industrial minerals, etc., where relevant, including depth/height information on the extent of the resource

For each of the 34 themes, INSPIRE documents its definition, description, scope, use examples, EU policies associated with the theme and its links and overlaps with other themes. While these 34 themes and data address many primary use cases, they often need to be extended to serve national and domain-specific needs. INSPIRE collects and documents best practices for extending data models and provides a list of such models. For example, the EAGLE Data Model further develops the INSPIRE specifications for ‘land use’ to satisfy European Environment Agency (EEA) requirements for land cover data.  

Relevance for monitoring and evaluation of the CAP

Access to environmental spatial data:  

The spatial data accumulated in the INSPIRE Database can be beneficial to monitoring and evaluation at various stages and for different objectives. For example, data on the spatial extent of Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) can assist in setting up a monitoring framework of agri-environmental measures targeting the control of nitrate surplus. The same data, combined with IACS/LPIS data, can delineate those farmers who may be eligible for joining a nutrient control programme (e.g. assisting the monitoring of R.21). Similarly, once the above hypothetical programme controlling nutrients has finished, the evaluator will be able to extract the population of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries for drawing samples for a counterfactual survey. The evaluator can also utilise the INSPIRE dataset on water monitoring stations to support work on R.21.  

Almost all INSPIRE data have the same versatility and multipurpose properties as the NVZ example above concerning monitoring and evaluation. For example, soil data and soil maps in INSPIRE can be an indispensable input for evaluating the impacts of various measures on soil erosion (I.13) or soil carbon storage (R.14). At the same time, a soil map or spatially organised soil data like the ones stored in the INSPIRE database can be a valuable support for estimating irrigation water needs in the course of evaluating pressure on water resources (I.17) or assessing the programme’s results on sustainable water use (R.22).  

The Geoportal relates stored data with the 34 themes, the seven environmental domains and Member States' environmental reporting obligations. This ready-to-use classification facilitates reporting, monitoring, and evaluation, especially of the effects of various non-agricultural policies such as the WFD or the Birds Directive on agriculture and rural development.  

Relevance of the output per CAP Objectives

  • Specific Objective 4 - Climate change action
  • Specific Objective 5 - Environmental care
  • Specific Objective 6 - Preserve landscape and biodiversity
  • Specific Objective 7 - Support generational renewal
  • Specific Objective 8 - Vibrant rural areas
  • Specific Objective 9 - Protect food and health quality

Additional output information

Data collection systems used:

  • INSPIRE

Spatial scale:

  • Parcel
  • Farm holding
  • Sub-regional / local
  • Regional

Associated evaluation approaches:

  • Data analysis
  • Impact evaluation ex ante
  • Impact evaluation ex post

Type of output:

  • New / improved data for M&E

Project information

Inspire Logo

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe 

The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive has created a European Union comprehensive spatial data infrastructure for EU environmental policies and policies or activities that may impact the environment. INSPIRE was born out of the need of public authorities, businesses, and citizens to access, share, and use relevant, harmonised and quality geographic information to make decisions, especially for policies, activities or developments that may impact the environment

INSPIRE is based on several common principles that aim to produce data that is: 

  • Efficient: is collected only once and is maintained regularly. 
  • Accessible: data can be easily identified, located and accessed under transparent rules of reuse. 
  • Interoperable: different data sources can be easily combined to seamless spatial information from different sources across Europe and shared with many users and applications no matter its origin. 
  • Scalable: information collected at one level/scale can be shared with all levels/scales.  
  • Transparent: geographic information needed for good governance at all levels should be readily and transparently available. 
  • Accountable/reliable: easy to understand how data can be used to meet a particular need.  

The data relating to environmental reporting made available by the Member States through INSPIRE in a step-by-step process are called spatial priority data sets. Data sets are organised into 34 themes.

Project’s timeframe: 2007 – 2021

Contacts of project holder: European Commission (ENV-INSPIRE@ec.europa.eu)  

Territorial coverage: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands

Website: 

About INSPIRE: https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/about-inspire/563 

INSPIRE Knowledge Base: https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/ 

INSPIRE Geoportal: https://inspire-geoportal.ec.europa.eu/  

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